“Amazon workers are fighting for the things we fought for one hundred years ago,” said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flights Attendants–CWA and a leader of the US labor movement’s left wing, at a rally for Amazon workers on Staten Island last Sunday.

Nelson was referring to Amazon’s warehouse-work scheduling practices, which entail ten- or twelve-hour shifts as well as mandatory overtime during “peak season,” the period around the holidays when customers order more items than ever from Amazon and the company brings on additional temporary workers.

At the time of the first May Day demonstration, twelve- and even sixteen-hour workdays were the norm, leaving the working class with little time for what they pleased. On May 1, 1886, the date that would become known as International Workers’ Day, three hundred thousand workers across the United States demonstrated in a unified demand for an eight-hour day.