Chicagoans gather to mark Int'l Labor Day

Thousands of people gathered Monday on the International Labor Day to demand the legitimate rights for workers and immigrants.

Braving heavy rain, they held banners, chanted slogans, waved flags, and gathered in the Union Park in west Chicago.

"We've been fighting to gain union rights and the 15-dollar per hour for over a year now." said Olivia Pac, who has worked at Chicago O'Hare Airport for four years.

"It's been a very tough fight," she said, adding that it was not the airlines but the workers that run the airport, help passengers and clean the airport.

"But the City of Chicago doesn't want to provide us with healthcare and doesn't want to pay for the 15-dollar per hour for all the physical work we have to do at the airport. That is why I'm here today," she told Xinhua.

Vernon Beck, union president of NIPSCO workforce, said his union was 5present to support other unions and keep solidarity. He wants to raise the awareness of what the workers are going through since the 19th century.

The International Labor Day takes its root in Chicago. On May 1, 1886, some 350,000 U.S. workers struck and protested nationwide to demand improvement of work conditions and introduction of an 8-hour-a-day work system.

Though the protest ended in bloody slaughter of union leaders in Chicago, it planted the roots for fight for workers' rights and interests, and May 1 was listed as the International Labor Day in 1889 to commemorate the history. The United States legalized the 8-hour-a-day work system in 1935. Endi