The fight for an 8-hour working day
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The workers fought a battle to have their demand for an 8-hour working day met. The demand was raised during the industrial revolution in England. Working days of 10 – 16 hours were common. So was child labor. The fight for an 8-hour working day is perhaps the most important victory for working people of all time.
The story
The 8-hour working day had already been introduced for some groups. For example, Spain introduced the 8-hour day for construction workers in the Spanish regions of America. It wasn’t until the early 1800s that the demand for a shorter working day became a major issue, particularly in England.
It’s the industrial revolution. Thousands of people move from the countryside to the cities and factories. There is work there. However, the working day is long and working conditions poor. Spinning mills grew up, with several thousand employees, many of them young children. The working day lasted for 10-16 hours. Those who worked in the factories were often people at the bottom of the social ladder. The Industrial Revolution began in England and gradually spread across Europe.
The first person to propose an 8-hour working day was Robert Owen. He ran cotton spinning mills in England and later moved to America. Robert Owen was a pioneer of utopian socialism. Utopian socialism is the first thoughts of modern socialism. Utopian socialism was largely an academic way of thinking. Robert Owen is also known as one of the creators of cooperatives. His thoughts were that workers should work 8 hours, then 8 hours for recreation and 8 hours for sleep.
The working day gradually declined throughout the 1800s, but it was not until 100 years after Robert Owen’s thoughts that the 8-hour working day was legislated. Throughout the 1800s, there was a struggle between factory workers and owners for shorter working hours and a better working environment.
Shorter working day leads to more free time
It goes without saying that workers who work 10-16 hours a day, 6 days a week, do not have much free time. The shorter working day that was gradually introduced has resulted in people having more free time. This free time should be filled with something. The emergence of sports in working-class neighborhoods is one example. Football in England really took off when workers formed football teams. Football quickly became a symbol in England. The workers against the upper class. Not only did football become popular among those who played, people rallied around their local team to show support for the workers there. It was the workers against the upper class from London.
It wasn’t just football that workers filled their free time with. In England, many factories also started brass bands. This is said to have been done because the owners believed it was better for the workers to play music than to be influenced by socialist ideas. Brass bands are still going strong in England and many of the leading bands are still named after the factories where they originated.
The cinema arrived in the early 1900s. Cinema became a very popular activity. Without shorter working hours, it is unlikely that cinema would have become popular immediately. The time in the past would have made cinema almost impossible for large groups of people. Other activities saw the light of day, differing slightly from country to country. But what they all have in common is that without a shorter working day, none of these activities would have been possible.
Positively
The 8-hour day is positive in many ways. It’s positive because it gave people the opportunity to do something other than just work. That in itself is good for health. Child labor also gradually disappeared, largely as a result of the 8-hour day.
Increased leisure time has led to the emergence of new industries. These industries are entirely dependent on people having free time. Millions of jobs have been created in these industries.
Today, there are forces that want to introduce so-called individual employment contracts. These are agreements between employers and employees where wages and working hours are an individual agreement.
Stand firm on the collective agreements. Don’t say yes to any individual agreements, where workers will compete to sell their labor.
Sources:
Wikipedia: Eight-hour day movement
CNN: Why do we work 9 to 5? The history of the eight-hour workday
Classical Music: The history of the brass band: how brass bands began and why they remain popular