Eight Hours and After

On April 21, 1856, the stonemasons working on the construction of the University of Melbourne stopped work at midday, marched through the center of the city, and held a celebration at the Criterion Hotel. They had just won a reduction in their working day from ten hours to eight by walking off the job during a construction boom, when building contractors could not afford to wait them out. It was the first time anywhere in the world that workers had achieved the eight-hour day; they did it not through moral persuasion but by applying collective leverage at a moment of their opponents’ weakness. The demand itself was older. Robert Owen, the Welsh manufacturer and social reformer, had called for “eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest” as far back as 1817. The slogan was catchy, but Owen could not make it happen through goodwill and argument. It took workers who understood that goodwill was irrelevant and that argument only mattered when backed by the capacity to…