OUR OWN TIME:
A History of American Labor and the Working Day by David R. Roediger & Philip S. Foner, 1989. The Haymarket Series Books, VERSO PRESS UK / Greenwood Press U.S
"...The progress towards a shorter work day and a shorter work week is a history of the labor movement itself." George Meany.
How long we work, daily or weekly, full time or part time, is the major challenge facing us as we enter the 21st Century. Not only in Canada, but around the world, the length of the working day and the working week is changing. But is it for the better?
The hours we work has been the major issue facing working people these past two hundred years. The struggle to reduce the hours worked in a day gave rise to the labour movements of Europe and in North America in the last century. The length of the working day is a norm by which we measure a nation's status as a modern civilization.
In this century we have finally seen the working day reduced to " eight hours for work, eight hours for relaxation and eight hours to do as you will! " A demand first raised over one hundred years ago. And it was not an easy fight.
As we face a a global economy in the midst of recession, we find major corporations in the Europe and the United States laying off workers, cutting wages and benefits and reducing the hours of work. In the retail industry in Canada this reduction in the hours of work began ten years ago, when full time employees were reduced to part time hours. That the majority of retail workers are older, women and non union, made it easier to implement these changes. The case of Woodwards is a good example of how corporate greed leads the company into eventual ruin regardless of these drastic attacks on their employees. Now we face employers offering us a four day week, with less pay, fewer benefits and cuts in holiday time. Canadian business complains that it pays us too much compared to American businesses. American business complains it pays its workers more than Mexico and South East Asia. Ironically German companies complain their workers are paid more, have better benefits and more time off than American workers. The new Global economy allows companies to play off their workers against each other.
When business introduces, flex time, the four day work week, or job sharing, it is no different than going from full time employment to part time. We lose. But it doesn't have to be so. The Labour movement has always been in the forefront of the struggle for full employment, pay equity and shorter hours. Before Ford introduced the $5, eight hour day, it had been won in 1906 by strikes and labour agitation in the United States and Canada, as Roediger and Foner make clear in their book. Ford introduced his revolutionary wage and hour's idea to stop the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) from unionizing his plants. This was during a time when the average work week was 58 hours. In steel plants the work days were 12 hours long six days a week.
Since the first Trade Unions began in North America we have raised the demand of a shorter work day. In 1799 workers began the struggle to control the hours of work thus enabling them to regulate production and work. The demand then was for a Ten hour day. By the middle of the 19th Century the demand had become one for a nine hour day. Nine hour marches and rallies were held in cities all across North America.
The Industrial revolution created a movement of workers fighting uncontrolled technological change that threatened their craft skills. Workers fought for increased wages and reduced hours of work. The major strikes and union drives of the Nineteenth Century were primarily about hours of work. That mass unemployment was a direct result of industrialization and redundancy, lead workers to see that shorter hours would give more people work.
As factory production and new manufacturing techniques were introduced in North America and Europe, this meant that those employed in these industries had to be less skilled. It also meant that a new source of cheap labour could be hired by companies; namely women and children. The reality of the new machines wasn't that they produced more leisure time, but rather they were used to increase production, thus lengthening the hours worked. They also produced more unemployment, as skilled workers were displaced from their jobs as redundant. As it has always been, technological change in society produces more unemployment. Workers in the 19th century, especially women in large textile factories, lead the fight for shorter hours as a solution to the unemployment problems facing them.
" Machinery emanates from the hand work and brain work of the toiler. And accordingly should lead to more free time for the worker not unemployment." William Sylvis, Pres. International Moulders Union.1870.
The demand for shorter hours of work, was demand to participate fully in society. The long and tiring workdays in the factory meant that workers had no time to participate fully in their community. "It is true that churches are erected, school houses are built, mechanics institutes are founded and libraries are ready to receive us....but alas! We lack the time to use them." Frances Wright, Ten Hour League Reformer,1830.
The struggle to limit the use of child labour in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries arose parallel with the 8 hour movement. The demand of workers to shorten the working day, with no loss in pay, and to limit the hours worked by children was embraced by a wide variety of social reformers. This struggle was both political and economic, as reformers tried to get state and federal laws passed regulating the hours worked, factory workers fought for it on the shop floor.
The reformers and unions had an easier time passing time limits on children's work, than getting the same for adults. In fact the promotion of public education for working class children was intimately tied to the struggle to limit the hours of work for children. Here to the idea that children should have time to go to school was fought, though unsuccessfully, by factory owners.
While laws were passed as early as the 1870's in some states and federal jurisdictions, it was a poorly enforced. Not until the 1900's did 8 hour laws get stronger state support, and inclusion in contracts in a wider selection of industries. By this time more radical unions like the IWW were demanding a 6 hour and 4 hour day!!!
By the 1930's one of the demands raised by the fledgling Committee of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as a solution for unemployment was 36 FOR 40. Yet many industries were still not even providing a 40 hour week. Steel factories in particular who had fought since the twenties against the 8 hour day were still working 10 and 12 hour shifts. This gave an impetus to the CIO to successfully organize its Steel Union drive in the thirties.
By the late 1950's most industries in Canada, the United States and Europe had accepted the 40 hour work week both in contracts and by provincial and state legislation. In Europe however the demand to shorten the work day continued unabated. During the recession of the seventies, European countries formed tripartite councils between the government, unions and businesses to pass a social contract. To reduce the time lost in strikes and to limit wage increases to the rate of inflation, workers were given more time off and a reduced work week. European workers were now working 36 for 40 with a minimum of six week's vacation!!!
Their time or ours? The question we now face is the same as it always has been. Who controls the time we work? The trend towards "homework", means in reality an increase in time spent working. The recent auto contracts are a good case in point. In the U.S. the UAW signed off a contract that allows Ford to use "flex time" a four hour day of 10 hours, in some factories. In Canada the CAW got a four day week, a forty hours pay, without lengthening the day, and a ban on overtime. The CAW gained a shorter work week, the UAW got a longer day!!! In Europe the recent move is not towards a shorter working day but a flex time model as Ford used. A ten hour day, in reality European, especially German, workers are losing what they gained in the Seventies.
Roediger and Foner have written an easy to read, well-documented history of our struggle over hours, public education, and control of our workplaces. The predominate role played by women as well as immigrant and black American workers is detailed in this book. Often the importance of the struggles in the textile mills is overshadowed by the later struggles of miners and steelworkers. Today women workers face the same problems as their forebears did. The use of part time work, flex time and now homework, directly affects the majority of women in the workforce. Most of these are unorganized.
The issues raised in this book are not those
of some long dead past. This is a struggle that is fast becoming,
again, the main issue of work for the 21st Century.
Originally published in Labour News
This review of "Our Own Time" is the work and sole property of Eugene W. Plawiuk.
All rights are reserved. Except where otherwise indicated it is © Copyright 1996 Eugene W. Plawiuk.
You may save it for offline reading, but no permission is granted for printing it or redistributing it either in whole or in part. Requests for republication rights can be made to the author at:
"ewplawiuk@geocities.com"
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