Did you know the “weekend” and working only 8 hours per day used to be considered a radical, liberal idea?
139 years ago today, in Bay View, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 7 workers (including a 13 yo) lost their lives to advance this revolutionary idea.
A 🧵
May 5, 2025 11:55Let’s begin by revisiting the working conditions in the 1880s.
Many workers (including children) toiled in filthy, hot, cramped and dangerous conditions for 10-16 hours every day.
Life-altering injuries and even death were quite common.
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Labor history should be a required course in all high schools.
The 8-hour day, paid vacations, health care, the end of child labor, and the right to negotiate a contract are all victories paid for with the lives of working-class warriors. No one knows their names.
The 8 hour day may have been a radical idea for Americans 139 years ago, but it was actually Australian stone masons in 1856 that first fought for and won the 8 hour day.
This so called 'radical' idea had already been the standard in Australia for decades prior.
atui.org.au/2022/04/14/2...
21 April 1856 - Melbourne Stonemasons take action for the 8-Hour Day - Australian Trade Union Institute
On 21 April in 1856, building workers in Melbourne took strike action and won the...
Correction:
Once again, Australia has been one upped by New Zealand. It was actually the workers on the other side of the ditch that pioneered the 8 hour day.
Everything that is good for you and your health is always considered as a too radical idea by the ones that oppress you.
And to think that some republican officials are thinking about bringing back child labor.
We shouldn't even be working 40 hours a week. We should have way more free time.
Great set of posts; 888 movement has many parents one is the Australian labour movement. Always been rather proud of the 888 monument celebrating the start of the movement in Melbourne Australia - 26th feb 1856 (seriously!).
monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/cultu...Did you know that many American right now as we speak would love to be able to work only 8 hours a day and have weekends off?
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God bless Francis Perkins, a woefully unrecognized American hero, the mother of Social Security and many of today's federal labor (8-hr work week, federal minimum wage) and workplace safety laws.
This is the ‘great’ America Trumps gang want. It’s already happening in Florida.
Honestly, 40 hours a week is too much time at work. Higher wages, less hours, more paid time off.
That was then.
The productivity dividend should be paying us not to work, but a few individuals have captured all the economic output from some fairly obvious innovations.
Important reminder👆
Excellent thread, thank you!!
Really shoulda made that 4 hours of work.
A five-day work week is not the standard in Latin American countries where I have lived. Those folks work an extra day or half day each week.
what do ya’ll think about this?
The good old days. MAGA.
Well, that's the 19th century for you. Is that what they mean by taking America back? Back to the 19th century?
That 8 hours to do as we will thing ain’t worked out so well 😂
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Don't forget the Triangle Shirt factory massacre as I call it
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you and me.
Just....gonna throw this out there because it's lowkey related, but not super important, just interesting:
Back in ye old days (I forget when, I'm not as cool as Isaac with dates. I know my place 😂), people would sleep for about 4- 6 hours, wake up in the middle of the night for about 2-3 hours, -
- and would read, maybe some very light chores, tea and snacks, and even have neighbors and friends over, and then back to bed. Sleeping through the entire night is "new" in terms of history, as I know. Definitely need to go back and reread the articles, but YUP.
MAGA thinks the 8 hour day came out of the bible somewhere.
Call the moronic
@slotkin.senate.gov and REMIND her of this--and of the many other policies Murkans take for granted, thanks to progressive activism. PROGRESS -ive.
When
#slotkin bashes progressives, she not only divides
#Dems, she bashes myriad policies/programs that ppl like & DON'T want to lose.
And we wouldn't have them today if we didn't have UNIONS!
Cracks me up that people still talk about a "9 to 5" job LOL Do you know the last time I worked 9 to 5?
No, neither do I.
Great Share! Thank you.
That is why Donald loves the uneducated. They will follow blindly that which is against their own happiness and self-interest.
MANY people do not understand why they have benefits from their jobs! They have no idea of labor history and the people who died to obtain them.
Very sad 🥺 but interesting.
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