May 1 is celebrated around the world as International Workers' Day. Today many remember it as a free day for barbecues and a walk. Historically, it's a day for people who lost their lives fighting for something we now take for granted: an eight-hour workday.

1886. Chicago. Tens of thousands of workers took to the streets. The demand: an eight-hour workday. The slogan: "three eights" - eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, eight hours of free time. In the America of that day, this was a radical idea. The capitalists had workers doing 12 to 14 hours a day, six days a week.

The protests lasted several days. On May 4 and 5, the police broke them up brutally. At least six dead. Around 50 injured. Not on the "bloody" May 1 - on May 3, 4 and 5, days that history later folded under a single name.

In response to these events, in 1889 in Paris, the Founding Congress of the Second International took a decision: May 1 would be marked as International Workers' Day. In 1891 in Brussels, the day was formally declared a holiday of workers' solidarity.

Today in Macedonia May 1 is a state and non-working day. Day trips, barbecues, beer. That's fine. But it doesn't end there. The message "workers' rights are not a gift" - is old. Today workers have rights on paper, but in practice they are often on the unguarded terrain of the employer. Contracts with "probationary periods" of 12 months. Overtime without compensation. Dismissals with no explanation.

When we look back to Chicago 1886 - it isn't to celebrate the past, it's to admit that what we have wasn't given. It was won. And if we stop defending it, it doesn't come back on its own. They can take it away - including from workers who aren't ready to take to the streets for themselves.