MAY Day is the worker’s day, set aside internationally to commemorate centuries of struggle for equal rights and justice, especially in working environments. 

The world over, labour not only celebrates, but assesses its gains and victories, its setbacks and failures, and lays the basis for the future.
In 1919, the first trade union movement in Guyana was formed by Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow, the British Guiana Labour Union. Critchlow subsequently became known as the Father of Trade Unionism in Guyana.
Born in 1884, Critchlow evolved as a dynamic force to reckon with in fighting for workers’ rights, and eventually decided to form a trade union to allow workers to have a say in improving their working conditions, increasing their pay, having proper homes and medical attention, after he observed that workers were not receiving enough money for themselves and their families to enable survival without starvation, much less upward mobility.
Many of them worked long hours and lived in cramped houses, and others in a few rooms called logies, which were inherited from the former slaves and indentured servants who were brought to then British Guiana to work on the sugar cane plantations. Most of them were very poor.
In the yard of the Parliament Buildings stands a statue of Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow, a monument erected by Dr. Cheddi Jagan to honour the great fighter of all workers in Guyana.
In 1946, at age 29, Dr. Cheddi Jagan, moved by the horrifying conditions which existed at plantation Port Mourant and beyond, decided to struggle toward the alleviation of the poor and suffering. He joined the M.P.C.A., then the sole bargaining agent in the sugar industry, and rose to the position as its treasurer. Dr. Jagan soon resigned as he was against company unionism. In 1947, he joined Dr. J.P. Latchmansingh’s G.I.W.U. with the intention of providing genuine representation to the workforce in general, and the oppressed in the sugar industry in particular.
On June 16, 1948, tragedy struck. Police shot and killed five striking sugar workers and wounded 14 others. The five are referred to as the Enmore Martyrs. The Enmore shooting led Dr. Jagan to pledge his entire life to the cause of the struggle of the Guyanese people against bondage and exploitation. The union, which continued to champion the workers’ interest, was later renamed GAWU. Mr. Ashton Chase, former Labour Minister, wrote “By May Day, 1951, the powerful influence for unity cast by the PPP forged a united parade in Georgetown.” From 1951, the Trades Union Congress began sponsoring the May Day marches, and in 1958, the PPP Government declared May 1, a public holiday, replacing Empire Day, May 24th. History was recorded.
While the Trade Union Movement has made some important strides, the movement and the workers as a whole face many barriers to progress. Labour leaders failed their membership specifically, and the movement generally, during the era of PNC dictatorship, although GAWU, under the leadership of Dr. Cheddi Jagan, determinedly remained militant, undergoing much oppression in the process.
Division in the labour movement is counter-productive; rather than working towards creating one united workers’ organisation capable of defending the interests of all working people, labour leaders have compromised their integrity for opportunism, encouraging their members to destroy the productive systems to support their political leaders. In the process everyone loses, and everyone suffers – the workers of Guyana most of all.