I live in a European (non EU) developing country, where this day is considered a holiday. Usually most people don't have to work, and those who do are paid 40% more and get an additional day of PTO because they worked on a holiday. I never had to work on this day, until now because I work for a company located in the US. I was baffled at the fact that this is just a regular day there. The widely held belief is that it dates back to 19th century America, when the workers in Chicago organized a strike to demand an eight-hour workday. And yet, instead of a paid free time for workers to spend it in rememberance of the strike and to compare their current working conditions to those of those times in order to see how much they have progressed (or regressed), the holiday is rescheduled to some random Monday in September. Huh.