Eight hour day

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Eight Hour Day Banner, Melbourne (1856)
Halle move for the eight-hour day (1912)

The eight-hour day was one of the oldest demands of the labor movement . It was first formulated as a demand in Great Britain in the 1810s by Robert Owen (1771-1858), the Welsh entrepreneur and social reformer . Owen coined the slogan : "Work eight hours, sleep eight hours and eight hours of free time and relaxation". The eight-hour day was a working day on which the pure working time , i.e. without adding breaks, was a maximum of eight hours .

The beginnings

In the early 1830s, the union movement began to grow and cooperatives to form in Britain . They began to actively fight for reductions in working hours , for an end to child labor , for the formation of cooperatives and for job placement offices - demands for which Robert Owen had been actively campaigning for two decades. After Owen suggested that the unions should join forces, the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union was formed in 1834 , with 30,000 members Owen took part in the fight to reduce working hours and improve working conditions and training. Even if the movement was crushed by the British government, the call for an eight-hour day was raised for the first time, was picked up and went around the world. As a milestone on the arduous road to enforcing the eight-hour day, the Factory Act 1847 came into force in Great Britain on May 1, 1848 , in which a ten-hour day was made binding for the first time.

The first documented successful eight-hour strike was fought in Wellington , New Zealand , in 1840 . The first officially introduced eight-hour day with full wages did not exist until 1856 in Australia . Stonemasons and building workers won the eight-hour day on April 21, 1856 in Melbourne with a demonstration march to Parliament. From this point on, the eight-hour day stood as a symbol for democratically fought for workers' rights. In Germany, Degussa workers were guaranteed the 8-hour working day for the first time as early as 1884, and in Great Britain a few years later, in 1889, the Beckton Gas workers.

Europe

Germany

Before 1900

The fight for the eight-hour day , commemorative publication for May 1st , 1890

At the Geneva Congress of the International Workers' Association (IAA) in 1866, with the participation of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the international legal introduction of the eight-hour day was demanded and thus raised to the general demand of the working class of the entire world. In 1869 this demand was already reflected in the Eisenach program of the Social Democratic Workers' Party . But as recently as 1885, in a draft of the Workers Protection Act, social democratic members of the Reichstag demanded a ten-hour day for workers over the age of 16, which was in line with international standards. When Degussa (Deutsche Gold- und Silberscheideanstalt) introduced the eight-hour day in its company in Frankfurt am Main in 1884, it was an international frontrunner. In Great Britain, for example, an eight-hour day was not installed for Beckton Gas workers in east London until 1889.

On May 1, 1890, a commemorative publication with arguments for the eight-hour day was printed in 60,000 copies and distributed to almost 1,000 events by the end of the year.

1900 to 2000

In Germany , the eight-hour day has been required by law since 1918. After the end of the First World War (1914–1918) and with the beginning of the November Revolution, Friedrich Ebert , the majority Social Democrats , the trade unions and the employer representatives of the most important German economic sectors (especially the armaments industry ) had to prevent the formation of a Soviet republic based on the Russian model tried, and were agreed in the Stinnes-Legien Agreement on November 15, 1918, i.a. to introduce the eight-hour day in all companies in the heavy and armaments industry.

What the workers and unions had fought for for so long - eight-hour days with full wages for all workers, regardless of age or gender - became a reality eight days later under these circumstances by government decree. On 23 November 1918, the director issued the November 12, the Council of the People's Deputies created Reichsamt for economic demobilization , Joseph Koeth that the eight-hour introductory arrangement on the organization of the working industrial workers . This was preceded by more than half a century of struggle for shorter working hours and for the eight-hour day.

In 1923, after the social structures had stabilized again, the entrepreneurial side achieved an important success: the legally anchored eight-hour day was canceled again. The Working Hours Ordinance of December 21, 1923 permitted an eight-hour day as well as a ten-hour day. In addition to the struggle for collective bargaining sovereignty for the trade unions, the issue of working hours was the focal point of the socio-political struggles in the years from 1923 to the Great Depression in 1929, without either side being able to achieve any significant modification of the 1923 regulation.

The 1938 working time regulations did not bring about any significant changes in content either. With their help, the participation rights of the works councils were also eliminated. During the Second World War , most of the working time protection regulations were suspended. It was not until Directive No. 26 “Regulation of working hours” of January 26, 1946 that the Allied Control Council ordered the official reintroduction of the eight-hour day. At that time, Saturday was the normal working day with 8 hours of working time. So there was a 48-hour week.

In 1956, the DGB began a campaign to introduce the 5-day or 40-hour week under the motto “Saturday is my father”. This prevailed in West Germany from 1965 onwards. From 1980, IG Metall fought for a 35-hour week in West Germany , which was partially enforced from 1990 onwards. From the mid-1990s, however, the metalworking companies gradually increased their working hours again to 40 hours, initially for non-tariff employees.

In the Working Hours Act (ArbZG) of June 6, 1994, the eight-hour day was legally stipulated with restrictions. In § 3 - Working hours of the employees it says: “The working day of the employees may not exceed eight hours. It can only be extended to up to ten hours if an average of eight hours are not exceeded on working days within six calendar months or within 24 weeks. Since a six- day week is assumed - Saturday is a working day - the working week is therefore a maximum of 48 hours.

Since 2000

From the turn of the millennium in 2000, various industrial companies, banks and the authorities of the federal states again demanded working hours of more than eight hours a day, including in collective bargaining, and the trend is rising. According to a study by the Cologne Institute for Research into Social Opportunities (ISO) on real working hours in German companies, in 2004 a full-time employee worked an average of 42 hours per week and thus significantly longer than agreed in the collective agreement. The Directive 2003/88 / EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 November 2003 concerning certain aspects of the organization of working time lays even found that the average working time must not exceed including overtime in a seven-day period and a reference period of four months, 48 hours must .

Austria

In Austria , an eight-hour day was agreed for the first time in 1889 in the Seegraben mining industry . As a provisional solution for factories, it was introduced in 1918 under the direction of the social politician Ferdinand Hanusch (1866–1923) and was enshrined in law in 1918. Since then the working hours have been further reduced, on February 1, 1959 from 48 to 45 hours and from 1969 to 1975 gradually to 40 hours per week. From 1985 there were individual branches that also agreed to 38 hours per week.

France

In France, the eight-hour day with full wages after the end of the First World War was passed on April 23, 1919 by the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate with some difficulty and enshrined in law. On June 21, 1936, a law on the 40-hour week was passed. Even after the mobilization for the Second World War, it was no longer shaken.

Great Britain

The only statutory eight-hour day in Great Britain was the Factory Act 1847 , which did not allow a working day to exceed eight hours for children between the ages of 9 and 13. For everyone else, the upper limit was still 12 working hours. With the Factory Act 1847 , with which the 10-hour day was legally established in 1848, there was also a limitation to 58 hours of working time per week, which was raised again to 60 hours in 1850. The first workers who were able to legally enforce their call for an eight-hour day were the workers at the London gas works in 1889. All British governments have refused to this day to make the eight-hour day legal.

America

United States

Appeal printed in the office of the Arbeiter-Zeitung (Chicago 1886)

In the United States, the fight for the eight-hour day was closely linked to the Haymarket uprising in Chicago in 1886 .

The labor movement that emerged in the United States in the 1830s was initially more interested in wage increases than in reducing working hours. By 1860, ten hours a day were still standard. But that was to change after the US Congress and six other states passed the eight-hour day for state service workers in 1868. With the signature of President Andrew Johnson on June 29, 1868, the first legally documented eight-hour day in the USA came into effect. Even if this law was not yet widely imitated, it had a considerable signal effect for the labor movement and the trade unions.

The Knights of Labor , founded in 1869 , which rose from 1879 under Terence Vincent Powderly to what was then the largest national trade union organization at the time, took over the campaign and leadership in the fight for the introduction of the eight-hour day from 1884. The movement that arose now culminated in the demonstrations and clashes around May 1, 1886. The May 4th bombing attack on the Haymarket in Chicago and the subsequent persecution and convictions initially put a damper on the eight-hour day movement, but they were unable to prevent its introduction.

The automobile manufacturer Henry Ford was one of the pioneers in the introduction of shorter working hours . On January 5, 1914, after a board meeting in a press conference, he announced to the local newspapers in Detroit that from January 12, the company reduced working hours from nine to eight hours and at the same time reduced the minimum wage from 2.34 to 5.00  US dollars will be raised per day. The eight-hour day finally became law in all of the states in 1938, albeit late.

Canada

At the Carpenter's Congress in Seattle in 1891 it was decided that the introduction of the eight-hour day should be given top priority. In 1893, the Canadian government decided that the 8-hour working day should apply to all government-mandated construction work. Six years later, on June 12, 1899, the eight-hour day in British Columbia became law for all workers.

Oceania

Australia

The idea and demands for the eight-hour day came from the homeland of Great Britain to the Australian colonies in the 1850s and quickly spread there. The inspiration for this also came from neighboring New Zealand (see New Zealand below). In addition, the region of Victoria and especially the capital Melbourne got rich very quickly due to the Australian gold rush . Craftsmen and construction workers were in great demand and were therefore able to enforce demands more easily.

In Australia , the eight-hour day with full pay was first enforced on April 21, 1856. That day, in Melbourne, stonemasons and construction workers who were employed in the university district marched through the city and gathered with the construction workers from the East Market and the Parliament building and went to Parliament with their protests and demands. The actors were mainly inspired by their colleagues from Sydney , who had already fought for the eight-hour working day on August 18, 1855 just a year earlier, albeit at the price of a loss of wages. The eight-hour day was first anchored in 1916 in New South Wales with the Eight Hours Act , with which the weekly working time was reduced from 60 to 48 hours for a six-day week.

New Zealand

With the Bark Cuba of the New Zealand Company on July 29, 1839, the demand for the eight-hour day came to Wellington . Where in other countries labor movements and unions fought for the introduction of the eight-hour day, the same in New Zealand took its own course. Initiated by Samuel Duncan Parnell , a carpenter from Wellington , who in 1840 stubbornly and successfully refused to work more than 8 hours a day for even a minute, a movement arose among the carpenters in Wellington that led to the fact that whoever was to undermine them tried to land in the harbor basin.

In 1849, workers in Dunedin were allowed the eight-hour day, and in 1857 Auckland followed rather late. All of these concessions were based on voluntary agreements. From 1882 onwards, campaigns and demonstrations for the legal introduction of the eight-hour day were started by the trade unions, but all legislative initiatives introduced regularly from the year onwards failed because of the majority of employers and landowners in parliament. Although all legislative initiatives have failed to date, the eight-hour day is now generally valid due to other agreements.

literature

  • Irmgard Steinisch: Reduction of working hours and social change . In: Publication of the Historical Commission in Berlin . tape 65 . Verlag Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-11-010483-0 .
  • Norman J. Ware : The Labor Movement in the United States 1860-1895 (A Study in Democracy) . Vintage Books , New York 1929 (English).
  • Melvyn Dubofsky : Industrialism and the American Worker 1865-1920 . Harlan Davidson Inc. , Wheeling, Illinois 1969, ISBN 0-88295-925-5 (English).
  • Bert Roth : The Labor Movement in the United States 1860-1895 (A Study in Democracy) . Vintage Books , Toronto 1929 (English).
  • Bert Roth : Days of action: May Day, Eight-hour Day, Labor Day . Ed .: Trade Union History Project . Wellington 1990, ISBN 0-473-00963-3 (English).
  • Robert Noel Ebbels : The Australian Labor Movement 1850-1907 . Ed .: Noel Ebbels Memorial Committee in association with Australasian Book Society . Sydney 1960 (English, edited by LG Churchward ).
  • Joe Harris : The Bitter Fight: a Pictorial History of the Australian Labor Movement . University of Queensland Press , Brisbane 1970, ISBN 0-7022-0613-X (English).
  • C. Brauner, AM Wöhrmann: 100 years of the eight-hour day in Germany . Ed .: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (=  baua: facts ). Dortmund February 2018, doi : 10.21934 / baua: fakten20180117 ( Online [PDF; 585 kB ; accessed on February 23, 2018]).
  • Adolf Douai: The Eight Hour Movement in the United States . In: The Gazebo . Issue 14, 1866, pp. 224 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b History of the Eight Hour Day . (PDF 388 kB) (No longer available online.) The Eight Hour Day 150th Anniversary Committee , archived from the original on August 22, 2011 ; accessed on February 23, 2018 (English, original website no longer available).
  2. ^ The Grand National Consolidated Trades Union . Robert Owen Museum , accessed November 17, 2011 .
  3. ^ History of Working Time - The history of European working time laws 1784–2015 . (No longer available online.) Federation of European Employers (FedEE) , archived from the original on February 24, 2018 ; accessed on February 23, 2018 (English).
  4. ^ Karl Marx - Instructions for the delegates of the Provisional Central Council on the individual questions . Lüko Willms , accessed on November 17, 2011 (English).
  5. ^ Degussa AG (Ed.): Focus on Partnership . Personal Sozialbericht 2001. Frankfurt 2001 ( Online [PDF; 1.7 MB ; Retrieved May 12, 2015] stored at CorporateRegister.com Ltd ).
  6. ^ Eduard Schulzes Buchhandlung publisher (ed.): The fight for the eight-hour day - Festschrift for May 1, 1890 . Leipzig 1890 ( Online [PDF; 1.1 MB ] Source: Library of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation ).
  7. ↑ Stinnes-Legien Agreement. German Historical Museum , accessed on May 12, 2015 .
  8. ^ Draft of a law on the regulation of the working hours of industrial workers. The Federal Archives , accessed on November 17, 2011 .
  9. ^ Decree on the establishment of the Reich Office for Economic Demobilization (Demobilmachungsamt). documentArchiv.de, November 12, 1918, accessed on November 17, 2011 .
  10. ↑ Order on the regulation of the working hours of industrial workers. documentArchiv.de, accessed on November 17, 2011 .
  11. ↑ Eberhard Kolb: The Weimar Republic . 7th edition. De Gruyter Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-49796-0 .
  12. ↑ Peter Huebner: Consensus, Conflict and Compromise . Workers' interests and social policy in the Soviet occupation zone / GDR 1945 to 1970. In: Zeithistorische Studien . tape 3 . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-05-002683-9 .
  13. ↑ 1949-1958 Reconstruction and the economic miracle - social market economy and co-determination. German Federation of Trade Unions, accessed February 23, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Working Hours Act - § 3 Working Hours of Employees. Federal Ministry of Justice , accessed on November 17, 2011 .
  15. ↑ Extension of working hours - 42-hour week and 24 days vacation in the banking industry? (No longer available online.) Verdi, archived from the original on May 16, 2008 ; accessed on February 23, 2018 (original website no longer available).
  16. ^ Institute for Research into Social Opportunities (ISO). (No longer available online.) Klaus Birkelbach, archived from the original on June 29, 2012 ; Retrieved November 17, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.klaus-birkelbach.de
  17. ↑ Marie-Thérèse Nercessian: 42-hour week is a reality. In: Die Welt Online. Axel Springer SE, July 24, 2007, accessed on November 17, 2011 .
  18. ↑ Directive 2003/88 / EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of November 4, 2003 on certain aspects of the organization of working time , accessed on May 12, 2015
  19. ↑ Richard Hussl: world of work 1900-2000: 100 years of Austrian labor policy . In: Reinhold Gärtner (Ed.): Blitzlichter: Austria at the end of the century . Studies Verlag, Innsbruck-Vienna 1999, ISBN 978-3-11-010483-7 .
  20. ↑ eight-hour day. In: Web Lexicon of Social Democracy in Vienna. Social Democratic Party of Austria, Regional Organization Vienna, November 18, 2003, accessed on November 17, 2011 .
  21. ↑ Michel Cointepas : Il ya 80 ans, la journée de huit heures . (PDF 101 kB) Ministère du Travail , accessed on February 23, 2018 (French).
  22. ↑ 1847 Factory Act . Spartacus Educational , accessed May 12, 2015 .
  23. ^ The First Dispute - The Eight Hour Day . (No longer available online.) Britain's General Union (GMB) , archived from the original on May 18, 2015 ; accessed on December 2, 2015 .
  24. ↑ The Bomb at Haymarket . (No longer available online.) The Lucy Parsons Project , archived from the original on September 22, 2011 ; accessed on November 17, 2011 .
  25. ^ Government first to grant 8-hour day . In: The New York Times . New York September 1, 1916 (English, online [accessed December 2, 2015]).
  26. ↑ Selig Perlman : A History of Trade Unionism in the United States . The Macmillian Company , New York 1922 (English, online [accessed May 12, 2015]).
  27. ^ Norman J. Ware : The Labor Movement in the United States 1860-1895 (A Study in Democracy) . Vintage Books , New York 1929 (English).
  28. ↑ Rudolph Alvarado, Sonya Alvarado : Drawing conclusions on Henry Ford . University of Michigan , Michigan 2001, ISBN 978-0-472-06766-4 , pp.  27 (English).
  29. ^ Eight-Hour Movement . Encyclopedia of Chicago , accessed November 17, 2011 .
  30. ↑ Historical Highlights of the Carpenter Locals in Victoria . (No longer available online.) United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners , archived from the original on August 19, 2012 ; accessed on May 12, 2015 .
  31. ^ A b The Eight Hour Day and the Holy Spirit . Workers Online , accessed November 17, 2011 .
  32. ^ Herbert Otto Roth: Trade Union in New Zealand - past and present . Reed Education , Wellington 1973, ISBN 0-589-00754-8 (English).
  33. ^ Bert Roth : Days of action: May Day, Eight-hour Day, Labor Day . Ed .: Trade Union History Project . Wellington 1990, ISBN 0-473-00963-3 (English).
  34. ^ Herbert Otto Roth: Eight-Hour-Day Movement . In: Alexander Hare McLintock (Ed.): An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand . 1966 (English, online [accessed May 12, 2015]).