May 1st is Labor Day: but actually, why is this day a public holiday?

This Wednesday, May 1, 2024, like every year, no need to set the alarm to go to work, for a large part of the French (if not almost all). Because May 1st is a public holiday. So, every year, you probably take advantage of this day to rest or spend time with Family, without really knowing why we don’t work. We’ll explain it to you.

Born in the United States

First of all, you should know that May 1 is Labor Day. Historically, it is “a day of wage and union demands”, recalls the government site vie-publique.fr.

This day “refers to the anniversary date, in 1886, of the call by American labor unions to demand an eight-hour day.”

Across the Atlantic, from May 1, 1886, more than 300,000 workers demonstrated peacefully across the country, responding to the call of the unions.

Popular gatherings and parades

Under North American influence, France aligned itself, and two years later, “on the occasion of the centenary of the French Revolution, in 1889, it was decided to make May 1 a day of demonstrations”, specifies vie-publique.fr. It was celebrated for the first time on May 1, 1890.

Thus, traditionally, May 1 is the occasion to popular gatherings and parades.

But in 1891, the May 1 demonstration turned into a tragedy with the shooting at Fourmies in the North, which ended with the death of around ten demonstrators.

Some years, May 1 is the occasion for collective union between the different unions, which sometimes combine their forces to claim their positions in a united manner, as in 2023 during the joint mobilization against pension reform.

Since 1919

It was in April 1919, after Parliament voted for an eight-hour day, that this day became a non-working day.

In 1941, under the Vichy regime, a May 1 public holiday was established as “Labor and Social Concord Day” (in reference to the motto of the Vichy regime “Work, Family, Fatherland”). Day which disappears at the Liberation.

” She is reintroduced in 1946 then with law 47-778 of April 30, 1947 before being definitively established as a public, non-working and paid holiday in 1948.

The only truly non-working day of the year

Moreover, it is the only truly non-working day of the year. Which means that it is not worked for all employees (all companies and categories combined). Because even if ten other days in the year are public holidays, in addition to May 1, in certain sectors of activity, these are days on which you can still work. Except May 1, therefore.

If you work on May 1, because your sector of activity requires it, you benefit from the doubling your salary That day.

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