Why do the US and Canada celebrate Labor Day in September, when almost everyone else celebrates in May?

The US doesn't have a great reputation for the amount of holidays its workers typically get to take.

But the government actually recognises 11 calendar days as federal holidays (Canada 12!), which is a darn sight more than the UK's paltry 8 (apparently only Mexico has fewer).

Labor Day is one I'd never heard of.

(I will try, for the rest of this email, to spell 'labour' without the 'u' so beloved on my side of the Atlantic).

National workers' days the world over are typically around 1st May, so why is North America so different?

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Labor Day became an official federal public holiday in both the US and Canada back in 1894, at a time when the power of organised labor was growing across the Western world.

About 160 countries around the world celebrate 'International Workers Day' on 1st May as their version of 'Labor Day', but even though that date was inspired by Chicago's Haymarket Affair, joining everyone else seems to have been too conformist for the individualist US.

Instead the US and Canadian labor movements promoted their own early September date.

Depending on who you believe, the American workers' holiday was either the idea of Mathew Maguire, secretary of the Central Labor Union, or the funny-coincidence-similarly-named Peter J. McGuire, vice president of the American Federation of Labor.

I love this idea that you can put forward the radical notion that everyone should get an extra holiday, and become famous simply for that, with people writing emails about you centuries later.

"Let it hearby be noted, that I, Luke Pearce, propose my birthday, 20th November, as an international annual public holiday for all. Let people exchange Radical Tea Towels in celebration."

Don't let some other guy with the mistaken 'Pierce' spelling muscle in on the credit for that one.

Chicago's Haymarket Affair, where police shot at a crowd of protesting workers, led the Second International to designate 1st May as International Workers' Day

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Anyway, whether it was Mathew Maguire's idea of commemorating and repeating a successful public parade of labor organizations in New York City in September 1882, or Peter J. McGuire's idea of copying Toronto's labor celebrations which he'd seen in July 1882, the suggestion of an American Labor Day in early September caught on.

Oregon was the first state to make it an official public holiday in 1887. Montreal, Quebec made it a civic holiday in 1889.

The federal governments of both the US and Canada recognized Labor Day in 1894, though that technically only made it a holiday for federal government workers.

Over the years all the states followed Oregon's lead.

The textile workers' strike of 1934 was the largest in US history at the time

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Here's a more controversial theory for why North America's Labor Day ended up in September rather than in May like almost everyone else in the world.

US President Grover Cleveland, a conservative Democrat, had decided to give a green light to the idea of a holiday to commemorate workers as a way to pacify labor unrest following the Pullman Strike of 1894.

However, he was concerned that a May holiday might lend credence to the Haymarket affair and riots, and strengthen the socialist and anarchist groups who backed International Workers' Day.

A holiday on the first Monday in September, nestled conveniently between Independence Day and Thanksgiving, could be a less inflammatory alternative.

One that perhaps distracted from the antagonism between government and unions which had emerged in the 1880s and was symbolised by the violence in Chicago in May 1886.

So Cleveland gave workers a holiday, but on a date of his choosing. Canada, with its close cultural and labor ties to the US, followed suit.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world went on to mark those workers tragically killed in Chicago each year in May.

America remembers its own workers today.

The rest of the world commemorated American workers four months ago.

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