And what about the other and remaining...

...not to mention the remaining days of May and the remaining months? 

Almost to the day exactly five years ago I wrote: „It is the first of May! Labour Day. Wikipedia says that it is „The day when in 1886 in Chicago about 40,000 workers protested, putting forward demands symbolized by three eights: 8 hours of work, 8 hours of rest and 8 hours of cultural education, and when the police intervened and killed six and wounded about 50 workers. Many protesters were arrested, and the strike leaders were brought to trial. Five were sentenced to death, and three to long-term imprisonment. In memory of the bloodshed in Chicago, at the 1st congress of the Second International in 1889, it was decided that on that day, every year, workers' protests would be held, so that already from the following year (1890) the 1st of May became the international day of general solidarity of the working class... During the following years, workers in Western countries, through the mediation of trade unions and agreements with employers, i.e. the state, achieved notable successes in the fight for their rights, so social tensions calmed down over time. In Eastern countries, workers' movements were supervised by Bolshevik, i.e. communist parties, which formally advocated social justice, but workers were even more exploited than in the West. Low wages, forced and extended work due to alleged state interests, along with strictly controlled trade unions, were the basic features of democracy and any workers' self-organization in those countries.“

In some primitive era, more than a hundred years ago, trade unions - on behalf of workers - in the USA demanded the introduction of standards, at least an eight-hour working day. When that promise was not fulfilled, the unions launched a general strike with a bloody outcome. From a Bosnian perspective, these sacrifices – like, incidentally, many others – make no sense at all because, apart from the fact that nothing changed with them, more than a hundred years later, labour is more humiliated and workers more disenfranchised than ever before. In failed economies like ours, with an undetermined number of unemployed and pathetic employment programs that „give the unemployed the right and enable them to look for work themselves“ – as the director of the Federal Employment Bureau said the other evening – the worker is a means by which the employer acquires capital. And a means that is not valued at all because there are too many unemployed, which gives the employer the „right“ not to value the one who brings him profit, because „if you don't want to, there is someone who does“.

Trade unions have devolved in those hundred years: in private companies, trade unions do not exist, and the so-called „sectoral“ ones, in most cases, instead of advocates of workers' and human rights, have turned into misanthropic collaborators of the authorities, sacrificing even latent influence for crumbs from the powerful people's table. It seems that trade unionists had more awareness in the 19th century, when American workers demanded the introduction of the standard of an eight-hour working day. The prophetic words of German immigrant August Spies spoken in Chicago: „we must stick together, otherwise we will not succeed“ still sound as relevant today as they are, utopian. 

It is interesting that the 1st of May first began to be traditionally celebrated in Mexico, with grandiose festivities, so some American trade unionists in the second half of the last century went to Mexico to see how this holiday was celebrated in an organized manner. Returning, they stated that they were ashamed of the American ignorance of this day, which in the USA was associated with communism, partly because the 1st of May, already since the October Revolution, was celebrated as Labour Day in the then USSR. This is the main reason why Americans celebrate Labour Day – instead of the 1st of May – on the first Monday in September. Once upon a time, the scent of May lilacs on the first of May muffled the smell of lamb and ćevapi. The working class would flee the cities for nature, and breweries would raise production quotas for their workers weeks in advance. Once upon a time, the entire political elite would rush to the parks where citizens come for May Day portions of free beans, to strut, with or without red carnations in their lapels, in front of cameras and television cameras. Today, even that is not interesting to them. Disliked faces have recently been announcing new measures in favour of employment or promising that by coming to power they will solve all workers' problems, but none of that has anything to do with the 1st of May, but with elections. Workers will be dealt with – if at all – only for one day, and already tomorrow the working day for the underpaid will last longer than eight hours, and for the others – the unemployed and civil servants – they will again have to do nothing all day. 

How does this date in Bosnia and Herzegovina differ from April 30 or May 3? In that the economic system in our country is more akin to feudalism than capitalism, or, in that morbid imagination colloquially calls it „when the lambs fall silent“, alluding to the number of young sheep that will be sacrificed and eaten that day in the name of not working. The 1st of May will thus be celebrated mainly by the unemployed, underpaid, (in terms of salary) deprived and dissatisfied; the others will mark it; they will take the opportunity to combine two non-working days and the weekend and travel somewhere to rest their heads and bodies. Exactly one year ago I wrote: „I cannot ... but reflect on the small collective annual holiday on the occasion of the so-called Labour Day. Only the exceptionally uninformed can be surprised by the absence of initiative and even any interest in organizing some form of workers' protests. Apart from the well-known facts that the most numerous monolithic groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina are the unemployed (over 550,000) and pensioners (over 350,000), workers in this country are a real rarity. Almost an incident. Reduced to a subcritical mass, extremely exhausted not only by unpaid wages and unpaid contributions, but above all by the constantly looming threat of possible and certain job loss in case of any reaction contrary to the employer's mood, but above all thanks to the futility of all previous protests organized by their anemic, bureaucratized but also suspiciously inactive „unions“, workers neither know with whom to protest, nor against whom to protest. The systemic and systematic devaluation, destruction and finally privatization of the capacities of all production branches from basic, through construction to defense industry, entrusting their fates to the hands of more or less „controversial businessmen“, mostly prominent members and/or sponsors of parties and political parties for which they voted hoping for a better tomorrow, decapitated and castrated, workers have completely lost awareness of themselves as a serious force capable of causing, initiating and conditioning changes.“ 

Before us is an election(s): will we continue to wait for the next 1st of May to conclude that we are (still) being exploited and not paid, or will we, with a hefty bill, charge them already at the beginning of autumn.“

Obviously, five years later there was no need to write anything new...