Comments – Every May 1st, like clockwork, Uganda joins the rest of the world, ensuring that real workers will support it hard. It’s a national holiday and is nothing more than for the majority of wheel-changing.
Labor Day was not intended to be a photo shoot. It starts with blood, sweat and a real struggle, and considers the fundamental demands of the Chicago, Haymarket incident in 1886, and the eight-hour working hours. But like many good ideas, it has since been softened, polished and served lukewarm by people who no longer have to fight for what they already have. Meanwhile, the global economy has changed rules, and Labour is gig-based, informal, or simply unpaid, but speeches remain the same since the ’60s.
For example, consider the United States and Canada. Very uncomfortable with the innovative energy of May 1, they shifted Labor Day to September and rebranded it as a safe, family-friendly picnic rather than a worker revolt. result? A celebration of labor where labor politics is barely visible. genius.
When you return to Uganda, this event is still on your May Day schedule, but don’t make yourself a child. Who actually celebrates Labor Day here? Not the boda riders weaving Pothole, not the domestic workers who see their employers post “Happy Labor Day” on WhatsApp, nor the unofficial traders whose food stalls have been destroyed due to “beautifying the city.” It is primarily a civil servant, politician, and some well-dressed union leader who receives the honor of pretending to be a worker.
The issues at the heart of the day, fair wages, decent jobs, union rights and eight-hour issues quietly packed away from the building. Today in Uganda, an eight-hour shift is my dream. Most people juggle multiple hustles from dawn to dusk. Not because they love hard work, but because they don’t pay rent, tuition fees, and airtime on their own. As for labor unions, they exist on paper. Approximately 15% of Uganda’s workforce is unionized. This sounds honorable until you realize that most Ugandans work in the informal sector. That’s a bit ironic, really: we have a union, but not where most workers were found. It’s impressive, but oddly misguided, like building a hospital in a shopping mall.
Yes, Labor Day was hijacked. Perhaps a minimum wage debate and go ahead with business as usual, not by workers, but by rulers who use it to issue promises and praises. It has become a classic case of tokenism: a ritual that pays justly lip service while doing little to challenge the status quo.
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Still, core principles, dignity, solidarity and justice are more relevant than ever. Only now, solidarity must extend beyond the factory floor. It should include digital gig workers, climate change farmers, caregivers, and millions of people struggling in the informal shadows. You also have to ask uncomfortable questions. How did you normalize working like a machine while you were making money like a farmer? Who decided that human values should be measured by daily wages that barely cover lunch?
Labor Day deserves better. Not because of nostalgia, but because workers and actual workers deserve more than a tired slogan. Perhaps the most honest way to respect that day is not through another meeting or parade, but to refuse normalizing exploitation, to listen to those still excluded, to be bold to imagine a system in which work is paid and life flourishing.
Until then, if you’re lucky enough to be able to afford it, Happy Labor Day.
