We congratulate the First May, International Labour Day to all workers in B&H



In memory to the labour demonstration organised in Chicago 127 years ago and out of respect for the struggle for workers rights, the Labour and Employment Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina congratulates the International Labour Day to all workers in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the desire that the number of workers in our country rise each year and workers’ rights be worthy of man.

The International Labour Day is celebrated in commemoration of the mass labour demonstrations held on 01 May 1886 in Chicago when more than 40,000 workers demanded the eight-hour workday and better working conditions.

At the demonstrations in which the labour leaders put up the workers’ demands symbolically represented with the slogan Eight hours for work, Eight hours for rest and Eight hours for recreation, the police confronted the workers and more than two hundred of them were killed and the labour leaders arrested and sentenced to death. 

The average workday at the time lasted 12 hours and in some factories workers had to work for 18 hours a day.

Three years later, at the First Congress of the Second International held in Paris First May was declared as the International Labour Day and as such has been celebrated ever since 1890.