The eight-hour day movement or 40-hour week movement, also known as the short-time movement, was a social movement to regulate the length of a working day, preventing excesses and abuses. It had its origins in the Industrial Revolution in Britain, where industrial production in large factories transformed working life. At that time, the working day could range from 10 to 16 hours, the work week was typically six days a week and the use of child labour was common. Robert Owen had raised the demand for a ten-hour day in 1810, and instituted it in his socialist enterprise at New Lanark. By 1817 he had formulated the goal of the eight-hour day and coined the slogan: "Eight hours' labour, Eight hours' recreation, Eight hours' rest". Women and children in England were granted the ten-hour day in 1847. French workers won the 12-hour day after the February Revolution of 1848.
A shorter working day and improved working conditions were part of the general protests and agitation for Chartist reforms and the early organisation of trade unions. The International Workingmen's Association took up the demand for an eight-hour day at its Congress in Geneva in 1866, declaring "The legal limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvements and emancipation of the working class must prove abortive", and "The Congress proposes eight hours as the legal limit of the working day." Karl Marx saw it as of vital importance to the workers' health, writing in Das Kapital (1867): "By extending the working day, therefore, capitalist production...not only produces a deterioration of human labour power by robbing it of its normal moral and physical conditions of development and activity, but also produces the premature exhaustion and death of this labour power itself."
Although there were initial successes in achieving an eight-hour day in New Zealand and by the Australian labour movement for skilled workers in the 1840s and 1850s, most employed people had to wait to the early and mid twentieth century for the condition to be widely achieved through the industrialised world through legislative action. The first country to adopt eight-hour working day nationwide was Uruguay on 17 November 1915, by the government of José Batlle y Ordóñez. Nevertheless, the law was not effective on all type of works. Spain became on 3 April 1919 the first country in the world to introduce a universal law effective on all type of works, restricting the workday to a maximum of eight hours. The "Real decreto de 3 de abril de 1919" was signed by the prime minister, Álvaro de Figueroa, 1st Count of Romanones. The first international treaty to mention it was the Treaty of Versailles in the annex of its thirteenth part establishing the International Labour Office, now the International Labour Organization.
The eight-hour day was the first topic discussed by the International Labour Organization which resulted in the Hours of Work (Industry) Convention, 1919 ratified by 52 countries as of 2016. The eight-hour day movement forms part of the early history for the celebration of Labour Day, and May Day in many nations and cultures.
Asia
Iran
In Iran in 1918, the work of reorganizing the trade unions began in earnest in Tehran during the closure of the Iranian constitutional parliament Majles.
The printers' union, established in 1906 by Mohammad Parvaneh as the
first trade union, in the Koucheki print shop on Nasserieh Avenue in Tehran,
reorganized their union under leadership of Russian-educated Seyed
Mohammad Dehgan, a newspaper editor and an avowed Communist. In 1918,
the newly organised union staged a 14-day strike and succeeded in
reaching a collective agreement with employers to institute the
eight-hours day, overtime pay, and medical care. The success of the
printers' union encouraged other trades to organize. In 1919 the bakers
and textile-shop clerks formed their own trade unions.
However the eight-hours day only became as code by a limited
governor's decree on 1923 by the governor of Kerman, Sistan and
Balochistan, which controlled the working conditions and working hours
for workers of carpet workshops in the province. In 1946 the council of
ministers issued the first labor law for Iran, which recognized the
eight-hour day.
Japan
The first company to introduce an eight-hour working day in Japan was the Kawasaki Dockyards in Kobe (now the Kawasaki Shipbuilding Corporation).
An eight-hour day was one of the demands presented by the workers
during pay negotiations in September 1919. After the company resisted
the demands, a slowdown campaign was commenced by the workers on 18 September. After ten days of industrial action, company president Kōjirō Matsukata
agreed to the eight-hour day and wage increases on 27 September, which
became effective from October. The effects of the action were felt
nationwide and inspired further industrial action at the Kawasaki and Mitsubishi shipyards in 1921.
The eight-hour day did not become law in Japan until the passing of the Labor Standards Act
in April 1947. Article 32 (1) of the Act specifies a 40-hour week and
paragraph (2) specifies an eight-hour day, excluding rest periods.
Indonesia
In
Indonesia, the first policy regarding working time regulated in Law No.
13 of 2003 about employment. In the law, it stated that a worker should
work for 7 hours a day for 6 days a week or 8 hours a day for 5 days a
week, excluding rest periods.
Europe
Demonstration in the Netherlands for the eight-hour day, 1924
Belgium
The 8-hour work day was introduced in Belgium on 9 September 1924.
Denmark
The 8-hour work day was introduced by law in Denmark on 17 May 1919, after a year-long campaign by workers.
Finland
The
8-hour work day was first introduced in 1907. Within the next few
decades, the 8-hour system spread gradually across technically all
branches of work. A worker receives 150% payment from the first two
extra hours, and 200% salary if the work day exceeds 10 hours.
France
The eight-hour day was enacted in France by Georges Clemenceau,
as a way to avoid unemployment and diminish communist support. It was
succeeded by a strong French support of it during the writing of the
International Labour Organization Convention of 1919.
Germany
The first German company to introduce the eight-hour day was Degussa in 1884. The eight-hour day was signed into law during the German Revolution of 1918.
Hungary
Eight-hour campaign in Denmark, 1912.
In Hungary, the eight-hour work day was introduced on 14 April 1919 by decree of the Revolutionary Governing Council.
Poland
In Poland, the eight-hour day was introduced 23 November 1918 by decree of the cabinet of the Prime Minister Jędrzej Moraczewski.
Portugal
In
Portugal a vast wave of strikes occurred in 1919, supported by the
National Workers' Union, the biggest labour union organisation at the
time. The workers achieved important objectives, including the historic
victory of an eight-hour day.
USSR (Soviet Russia)
In USSR, the eight-hour day was introduced four days after the October Revolution, by a Decree of the Soviet government in 1917–1928, and later 1940-1957 (World War II).
Spain
In the region of Alcoy, a workers strike in 1873 for the eight-hour day followed much agitation from the anarchists. In 1919 in Barcelona,
after a 44-day general strike with over 100,000 participants had
effectively crippled the Catalan economy, the Government settled the
strike by granting all the striking workers demands that included an
eight-hour day, union recognition, and the rehiring of fired workers.
Therefore, Spain became on 3 April 1919 the first country in the world
to introduce a universal law effective on all type of works, restricting
the workday to a maximum of eight hours: "Real decreto de 3 de abril de
1919", signed by the prime minister, Álvaro de Figueroa, 1st Count of Romanones.
United Kingdom
The Modern Bed of Procrustes
Procrustes. "Now then, you fellows; I mean to fit you all to my little bed!"
Chorus. "Oh lor-r!!"
"It is impossible to establish universal uniformity of hours without inflicting very serious injury to workers." – Motion at the recent Trades' Congress.
Cartoon from Punch, Vol 101, 19 September 1891
Procrustes. "Now then, you fellows; I mean to fit you all to my little bed!"
Chorus. "Oh lor-r!!"
"It is impossible to establish universal uniformity of hours without inflicting very serious injury to workers." – Motion at the recent Trades' Congress.
Cartoon from Punch, Vol 101, 19 September 1891
The Factory Act of 1833
limited the work day for children in factories. Those aged 9–13 could
work only eight hours, 14–18 12 hours. Children under 9 were required to
attend school.
In 1884, Tom Mann joined the Social Democratic Federation
(SDF) and published a pamphlet calling for the working day to be
limited to eight hours. Mann formed an organisation, the Eight Hour
League, which successfully pressured the Trades Union Congress to adopt the eight-hour day as a key goal. The British socialist economist Sidney Webb and the scholar Harold Cox co-wrote a book supporting the "Eight Hours Movement" in Britain.
The first group of Workers to achieve the 8 hour day were the Beckton [
East London] Gas workers after the strike under the leadership of Will Thorne,
a member of the Social Democratic Foundation. The strike action was
initiated on 31 March 1889 after the introduction of compulsory 18 hour
shifts, up from the previous 12 hours. Under the slogan of " shorten our
hours to prolong our lives" the strike spread to other gas works. He
petitioned the bosses and after a strike of some weeks, the bosses
capitulated and three shifts of 8 hours replaced two shifts of 12 hours.
Will Thorne founded the Gas Workers and General Labourers Union, which evolved into the modern GMB union.
Working hours in the UK are currently not limited by day, but by week, as first set by the Working Time Regulations of 1998,
which introduced a limit of 40 hours per week for workers under 18, and
48 hours per week for over 18s. This was in line with the European
Commission Working Time Directive of 1993. UK regulations now follow the
EC Working Time Directive of 2003, but workers can voluntarily opt out of the 48 hour limit. A general 8 hour limit to the working day has never been achieved in the UK.
North America
Canada
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The labour movement in Canada tracked progress in the US and UK. In
1890, the Federation of Labour took up this issue, hoping to organise
participation in May Day.[19]
In the 1960s Canada adopt the 40-hour work week.[20]
Mexico
The Mexican Revolution
of 1910–1920 produced the Constitution of 1917, which contained Article
123 that gave workers the right to organise labour unions and to
strike. It also provided protection for women and children, the
eight-hour day, and a living wage. See Mexican labour law.
United States
Banner from the 1835 Philadelphia general strike
promoting the ten-hour workday. In the lower right-hand corner is
written the slogan 6 to 6. Also the worker points to the clock which
shows six indicating it is time to stop working.
In the United States, Philadelphia carpenters went on strike in 1791
for the ten-hour day. By the 1830s, this had become a general demand. In
1835, workers in Philadelphia organised the first general strike in North America, led by Irish coal heavers. Their banners read, From 6 to 6, ten hours work and two hours for meals.[21] Labor movement publications called for an eight-hour day as early as 1836. Boston ship carpenters, although not unionised, achieved an eight-hour day in 1842.
In 1864, the eight-hour day quickly became a central demand of
the Chicago labor movement. The Illinois legislature passed a law in
early 1867 granting an eight-hour day but it had so many loopholes that
it was largely ineffective. A citywide strike that began on 1 May 1867
shut down the city's economy for a week before collapsing.
On 25 June 1868, Congress passed an eight-hour law for federal employees[22][23]
which was also of limited effectiveness. It established an eight-hour
workday for laborers and mechanics employed by the Federal Government.
President Andrew Johnson had vetoed the act but it was passed over his
veto. Johnson told a Workingmen's party delegation that he couldn't
directly commit himself to an eight-hour day, he nevertheless told the
same delegation that he greatly favored the "shortest number of hours
consistent with the interests of all." According to Richard F. Selcer,
however, the intentions behind the law were "immediately frustrated" as
wages were cut by 20%.[24]
On 19 May 1869, President Ulysses Grant issued a National Eight Hour Law Proclamation.[25]
In August 1866, the National Labor Union at Baltimore
passed a resolution that said, "The first and great necessity of the
present to free labor of this country from capitalist slavery, is the
passing of a law by which eight hours shall be the normal working day in
all States of the American Union. We are resolved to put forth all our
strength until this glorious result is achieved."
During the 1870s, eight hours became a central demand, especially
among labor organisers, with a network of Eight-Hour Leagues which held
rallies and parades. A hundred thousand workers in New York City struck
and won the eight-hour day in 1872, mostly for building trades workers.
In Chicago, Albert Parsons
became recording secretary of the Chicago Eight-Hour League in 1878,
and was appointed a member of a national eight-hour committee in 1880.
At its convention in Chicago in 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions
resolved that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labour from
and after May 1, 1886, and that we recommend to labour organisations
throughout this jurisdiction that they so direct their laws as to
conform to this resolution by the time named."
The leadership of the Knights of Labor, under Terence V. Powderly,
rejected appeals to join the movement as a whole, but many local
Knights assemblies joined the strike call including Chicago, Cincinnati
and Milwaukee. On 1 May 1886, Albert Parsons, head of the Chicago
Knights of Labor, with his wife Lucy Parsons
and two children, led 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue, Chicago, in
what is regarded as the first modern May Day Parade, with the cry,
"Eight-hour day with no cut in pay." In support of the eight-hour day.
In the next few days they were joined nationwide by 350,000 workers who
went on strike at 1,200 factories, including 70,000 in Chicago, 45,000
in New York, 32,000 in Cincinnati, and additional thousands in other
cities. Some workers gained shorter hours (eight or nine) with no
reduction in pay; others accepted pay cuts with the reduction in hours.
Artist impression of the bomb explosion in Haymarket Square
On 3 May 1886, August Spies, editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung
(Workers Newspaper), spoke at a meeting of 6,000 workers, and
afterwards many of them moved down the street to harass strikebreakers
at the McCormick plant in Chicago. The police arrived, opened fire, and
killed four people, wounding many more. At a subsequent rally on 4 May
to protest this violence, a bomb exploded at the Haymarket Square.
Hundreds of labor activists were rounded up and the prominent labor
leaders arrested, tried, convicted, and executed giving the movement its
first martyrs. On 26 June 1893 Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld
set the remaining leader free, and granted full pardons to all those
tried claiming they were innocent of the crime for which they had been
tried and the hanged men had been the victims of "hysteria, packed
juries and a biased judge".
The American Federation of Labor,
meeting in St Louis in December 1888, set 1 May 1890 as the day that
American workers should work no more than eight hours. The International
Workingmen's Association (Second International),
meeting in Paris in 1889, endorsed the date for international
demonstrations, thus starting the international tradition of May Day.
The United Mine Workers won an eight-hour day in 1898.
The Building Trades Council (BTC) of San Francisco, under the leadership of P. H. McCarthy,
won the eight-hour day in 1900 when the BTC unilaterally declared that
its members would work only eight hours a day for $3 a day. When the
mill resisted, the BTC began organising mill workers; the employers
responded by locking out 8,000 employees throughout the Bay Area. The
BTC, in return, established a union planing mill
from which construction employers could obtain supplies – or face
boycotts and sympathy strikes if they did not. The mill owners went to
arbitration, where the union won the eight-hour day, a closed shop for
all skilled workers, and an arbitration panel to resolve future
disputes. In return, the union agreed to refuse to work with material
produced by non-union planing mills or those that paid less than the Bay
Area employers.
By 1905, the eight-hour day was widely installed in the printing trades – see International Typographical Union § Fight for better working conditions – but the vast majority of Americans worked 12- to 14-hour days.
Poster promoting the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) campaign for the eight-hour workday, 1912.
In the 1912 Presidential Election Teddy Roosevelts Progressive Party campaign platform included the eight-hour work day.
On 5 January 1914, the Ford Motor Company
took the radical step of doubling pay to $5 a day and cut shifts from
nine hours to eight, moves that were not popular with rival companies,
although seeing the increase in Ford's productivity, and a significant
increase in profit margin (from $30 million to $60 million in two
years), most soon followed suit.[26][27][28][29]
In the summer of 1915, amid increased labor demand for World War I, a series of strikes demanding the eight-hour day began in Bridgeport, Connecticut. They were so successful that they spread throughout the Northeast.[30]
The United States Adamson Act
in 1916 established an eight-hour day, with additional pay for
overtime, for railroad workers. This was the first federal law that
regulated the hours of workers in private companies. The United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Act in Wilson v. New, 243 U.S. 332 (1917).
The eight-hour day might have been realised for many working people in the US in 1937, when what became the Fair Labor Standards Act (29 U.S. Code Chapter 8) was first proposed under the New Deal.
As enacted, the act applied to industries whose combined employment
represented about twenty percent of the US labor force. In those
industries, it set the maximum workweek at 40 hours,[31] but provided that employees working beyond 40 hours a week would receive additional overtime bonus salaries.[32]
Puerto Rico
In Puerto Rico in May 1899, while under US administration, General George W. Davis
acceded to Island demands and decreed freedom of assembly, speech,
press, religion and an eight-hour day for government employees.
Australasia
Australia
Eight-hour day march circa 1900, outside Parliament House in Spring Street, Melbourne.
The Australian gold rushes attracted many skilled tradesmen to Australia. Some of them had been active in the Chartist
movement in Britain, and subsequently became prominent in the campaign
for better working conditions in the Australian colonies. Workers began
winning an eight-hour day in various companies and industries in the
1850s.
Eight-hour day banner, Melbourne, 1856
The Stonemasons' Society in Sydney issued an ultimatum to employers
on 18 August 1855 saying that after six months masons would work only an
eight-hour day. Due to the rapid increase in population caused by the
gold rushes, many buildings were being constructed, so skilled labour
was scarce. Stonemasons working on the Holy Trinity Church and the
Mariners' Church (an evangelical mission to seafarers), decided not to
wait and pre-emptively went on strike, thus winning the eight-hour day.
They celebrated with a victory dinner on 1 October 1855 which to this
day is celebrated as a Labour Day holiday in the state of New South Wales.
When the six-month ultimatum expired in February 1856, stonemasons
generally agitated for a reduction of hours. Although opposed by
employers, a two-week strike on the construction of Tooth's Brewery on
Parramatta Road proved effective, and stonemasons won an eight-hour day
by early March 1856, but with a reduction in wages to match.[33]
Agitation was also occurring in Melbourne where the craft unions were more militant. Stonemasons working on Melbourne University
organised to down tools on 21 April 1856 and march to Parliament House
with other members of the building trade. The movement in Melbourne was
led by veteran Chartists, and masons James Stephens,
T.W. Vine and James Galloway. The government agreed that workers
employed on public works should enjoy an eight-hour day with no loss of
pay and stonemasons celebrated with a holiday and procession on Monday
12 May 1856, when about 700 people marched with 19 trades involved. By
1858, the eight-hour day was firmly established in the building industry
and by 1860, the eight-hour day was fairly widely worked in Victoria.
From 1879, the eight-hour day was a public holiday in Victoria. The
initial success in Melbourne led to the decision to organise a movement,
to actively spread the eight-hour idea, and secure the condition
generally.
In 1903, veteran socialist Tom Mann
spoke to a crowd of a thousand people at the unveiling of the Eight
Hour Day monument, funded by public subscription, on the south side of
Parliament House on Spring St. It was relocated in 1923 to the corner of
Victoria and Russell Streets outside Melbourne Trades Hall.
Eight-hour day procession by miners in Wyalong, New South Wales – late 1890s
It took further campaigning and struggles by trade unions to extend
the reduction in hours to all workers in Australia. In 1916 the Victoria Eight Hours Act
was passed granting the eight-hour day to all workers in the state. The
eight-hour day was not achieved nationally until the 1920s. The
Commonwealth Arbitration Court gave approval of the 40-hour five-day
working week nationally beginning on 1 January 1948. The achievement of
the eight-hour day has been described by historian Rowan Cahill
as "one of the great successes of the Australian working class during
the nineteenth century, demonstrating to Australian workers that it was
possible to successfully organise, mobilise, agitate, and exercise
significant control over working conditions and quality of life. The
Australian trade union movement grew out of eight-hour campaigning and
the movement that developed to promote the principle."
The intertwined numbers 888 soon adorned the pediment
of many union buildings around Australia. The Eight Hour March, which
began on 21 April 1856, continued each year until 1951 in Melbourne,
when the conservative Victorian Trades Hall Council decided to forgo the tradition for the Moomba
festival on the Labour Day weekend. In capital cities and towns across
Australia, Eight Hour day marches became a regular social event each
year, with early marches often restricted to those workers who had won
an eight-hour day.
New Zealand
Promoted by Samuel Duncan Parnell as early as 1840, when carpenter Samuel Parnell refused to work more than eight hours a day when erecting a store for merchant George Hunter. He successfully negotiated this working condition and campaigned for its extension in the infant Wellington community. A meeting of Wellington carpenters in October 1840 pledged "to maintain the eight-hour working day, and that anyone offending should be ducked into the harbour".
Parnell is reported to have said: "There are twenty-four hours
per day given us; eight of these should be for work, eight for sleep,
and the remaining eight for recreation and in which for men to do what
little things they want for themselves." With tradesmen in short supply
the employer was forced to accept Parnell's terms. Parnell later wrote,
"the first strike for eight hours a day the world has ever seen, was
settled on the spot".[34][35]
Emigrants to the new settlement of Dunedin, Otago, while on board ship decided on a reduction of working hours. When the resident agent of the New Zealand Company, Captain Cargill, attempted to enforce a ten-hour day in January 1849 in Dunedin,
he was unable to overcome the resistance of trades people under the
leadership of house painter and plumber, Samuel Shaw. Building trades
in Auckland
achieved the eight-hour day on 1 September 1857 after agitation led by
Chartist painter, William Griffin. For many years the eight-hour day was
confined to craft tradesmen and unionised workers. Labour Day, which commemorates the introduction of the eight-hour day, became a national public holiday in 1899.
South America
A strike for the eight-hour day was held in May 1919 in Peru. In Uruguay, the eight-hour day was put in place in 1915 of several reforms implemented during the second term of president José Batlle y Ordóñez. It was introduced in Chile on 8 September 1924 at the demand of then-general Luis Altamirano as part of the Ruido de sables that culminated in the September Junta.
