The historic May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, is being observed in Bangladesh as well as around the world with demands to ensure workers’ rights, including the rights to workplace safety and the rights to form and join trade unions.

To observe the day, various labour bodies organised rallies, processions and discussions to press home their demands, including the national minimum wage and workplace safety.

The day is a public holiday.

May Day marks the 1886 uprising of workers at Hay Market in Chicago in the United States for their rights, including an eight-hour working day.

Several workers were killed in police firing, for which the day was initially marked as a black day.

President Mohammed Shahabuddin and prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday issued separate messages on the eve of the historic day.

May 1 was adopted as International Workers’ Day by socialist delegates in Paris in 1889. More than 400 delegates on the centenary of the French Revolution met in Paris at the Marxist International Socialist Congress, the founding meeting of the Second International.

The 1889 resolution called for a one-time demonstration but it became an annual event in course of time.

May Day was celebrated in Russia, Brazil and Ireland first in 1891.