The Nation: Whatever Happened to the Eight-Hour Day?

[marmar]

comment | posted October 23, 2007 (web only)
Whatever Happened to the Eight-Hour Day?
Steve Early & Suzanne Gordon



One afternoon in mid-August, Senator Hillary Clinton visited a Nevada hospital to participate in a union-sponsored "Walk a Day in My Shoes" program for presidential candidates. There she learned firsthand about the new realities of work schedules for nurses--and many other wage-earners.

Clinton expressed amazement at the workload of a typical healthcare professional. "Your mother worked me to the bone today," she told the children of Michelle Estrada, RN, during a dinner-table conversation at their home later that evening.

What's really amazing--and appalling--is that Estrada's twelve-hour days are not unique. Americans today spend far more time on the job than workers in any other advanced capitalist country. Whether unionized or not, most lack the legal protection necessary to resist forced overtime and "nonstandard" shifts. As a result, one of labor's greatest twentieth-century achievements--the eight-hour day and forty-hour week--is rapidly becoming a thing of the past for millions of people, with neither the AFL-CIO nor "labor-friendly" Democrats doing much about it.

For unions, the decline of the eight-hour day is no minor embarrassment. Their ninteenth-century movement to shorten ten, twelve and fourteen-hour work days spawned general strikes in the 1880s, the Haymarket Martyrs and worldwide celebrations of May Day ever since. Until the New Deal, US workers rallied, marched and lobbied for humane work schedules that would--in the words of the old labor song--provide "eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will." When Congress finally enacted the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1938, the eight-hour day became standard, thanks to union bargaining and the FLSA requirement of "time-and-a-half" pay for any hours worked in excess of forty during a single week. Well into the 1970s, some union activists--particularly in the auto industry--even sought a reduction in the forty-hour week.

Extra pay for overtime hours--whether legally mandated or privately negotiated--was not intended to fatten weekly paychecks. It was supposed to be a financial penalty, encouraging employers to expand their workforce rather than rely on overtime to meet production needs. But as Kim Moody and Simone Sagovac explain in Time Out: The Case For A Shorter Work Week: "When job-based benefits like health insurance began to bulk up labor costs, premium pay ceased to be a deterrent to overtime. It became cheaper for employers to schedule overtime than hire new workers." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071105/early_gordon

[yourout]

1. It left when NAFTA came.

[fenriswolf]

2. yeah

i work at least 60 hours+ to pay the bills and i'm not even a home owner

[Redneck Socialist]

3. I'd like to know the answer to that...

as I just worked two of them in one day.

Yuppers, a SIXTEEN hour day.

I hate my fucking job. :grr:

[truedelphi]

4. I saw this happening way back in the 1980's and realized even then

What it meant for an older workforce.(I was quite young then.)

You may be happy to work long grueling hours when you are in your twenties - as long as they pay you the overtime.

But after decades of doing it, you are burned out.

And then the company is not happy with you. Plus they need to get rid of you anyway.

After all, there is no need for older workers - what is valued these days is information and technology - not wisdom. And if the workforce employed is older, than the insurance premiums for all are higher.

And then they have a whole new group of young people who have at least fifteen or twenty years of overtime in them.

And the cycle repeats again.

[Yael]

5. Just another reason to pull health care coverage out of the mix

Thanks for posting. I have bookmarked this.

[shireen]

6. nurses typically work 12-hour shifts

Most nurses I've met work 3 days a week in 12-hour shifts. That's 36 hrs/week, considered standard full-time. But it's gruelling work, some work more hours for supplemental income.

I'm not challenging the fact that most workers spend more than 8 hours/day on the job. But nurses are not good examples to illustrate that point. They do not have typical 8-hour day work hours like most people. I would have liked to know more about hours spent in different professions that typically have 8-hour workdays, like office workers, police officers, lab techs, construction workers, etc..

[Skittles]

7. I work 12 hour shifts at night - usually 4, 5 or sometimes 7 nights a week

what kills me is some of our overseas outsourced teams are prohibited from working such god-awful hours

[Igel]

8. Nursing might not be a great example.

"Nurses are allowed by hospitals, often with union acquiescence, to work as many shifts, twelve hours or longer, per week as they wish."

I've seen a couple of places where nurses threatened strikes when their supervisors decided that it was risky having so many 12-hour shifts and wanted to go to 5 8-hour days.

Their complaints were understandable: They were used to 4-day workweeks, some had second jobs or had day-care arrangements. 36 hours in 4 days = 24 at straight time and 12 and time-and-a-half, so it was equivalent to working 42 hours/week. Others put in more than 4 days and really rather liked the even greater effective salary increase, considering it to be part of their pay package.

They complained about it, but preferred it. It's probably not true of all--maybe not even of most--nurses. But it makes for a bad example for a story.

[freebrew]

9. Raygun started it

when he fired the air traffic controllers while they were on strike.
The country should have revolted at that time, but all were so concerned with the ATC guys making SO MUCH MONEY...

The reality is that the intense pressure on those guys was why they were paid well, but not nearly enough for what they went through.
Union busting started pretty regularly after that.