Eight Hours Is Not Enough

May Day in the United States is often associated with maypole dancing, as part of the celebration of a holiday with its origins in centuries-old pre-Christian traditions. But May 1 is also celebrated worldwide as International Worker’s Day to commemorate the battle for an eight-hour workday, with strong roots in U.S. history.

In 1886, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (a precursor to today’s AFL-CIO, now the largest U.S. trade union) declared that May 1, 1886, should mark the start of a limited, eight-hour workday.  This was a response to the intolerable working conditions that arose during the Industrial Revolution, when workers were consistently required to labor 12 to 14 hours, 6 days or more a week, in often dangerous and even life-threatening situations. In support of this effort, labor unions organized strikes across the country for that day.  In Chicago, the strikes culminated in a rally at Haymarket Square on May 4, which turned violent when a pipe bomb was thrown at the police line, killing an officer, and police opened fire.  Within minutes, more than 100 policemen and civilians were reportedly wounded, with several dead.

The ensuing trial of eight strikers and organizers, who were all convicted, caused an outpouring of global support for the cause of the working man.  May Day became an international symbol for worker’s rights, but nearly a decade later,  when President Cleveland designated the U.S. federal holiday of Labor Day, he chose a date in September to limit any connection to the controversial Haymarket Affair.  The eight-hour workday took 50 more years to take a strong hold with the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

The Act’s provisions and omissions were informed by the values, demographics, and politics of the mid-20th century. It set the minimum wage at 25 cents, established a 44-hour workweek, and banned “oppressive child labor.”  There was nothing to prohibit discrimination based on any form.  Workplace safety concerns were not addressed.  Domestic workers and farm workers were not included.  The law was crafted with a working father and stay-at-home mother in mind.

Over the years, Fair Labor Standards Act has been amended to include farm workers and domestic workers, and to ban pay inequities based on sex discrimination. It remains an important illustration of the role government and advocates must play in establishing equitable, productive, and safe employment.  The Occupational Health and Safety Act was enacted to set minimum workplace safety standards.  Unfortunately, we have yet to see significant laws addressing the demographics and needs of a 21st-century workforce.

In The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything, Open Society Foundations grantee the Center for American Progress reported that as of 2009, “for the first time in our nation’s history, women are half of all U.S. workers and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families.”  This new demographic desperately needs a new kind of workplace: one that guarantees paid parental leave, paid sick leave, and flexible scheduling, so that men and women alike can balance the demands of their jobs and their families.

The United States is the only industrialized country in the world with no compulsory paid parental leave.  In February of this year, Open Society grantee Human Rights Watch released Failing Its Families: Lack of Paid Leave and Work-Family Supports in the US, which notes that “academic research covering 190 countries shows that as of 2011, 178 countries guarantee paid maternity leave under national law,” adding that “Just three countries definitively offer no legal guarantee of paid maternity leave: Papua New Guinea, Swaziland—and the United States.”

As a result, new parents interviewed in the U.S. “described delaying immunizations and health care visits for babies; physical and mental health problems for parents; short periods or early cessation of breastfeeding and dismal conditions for pumping; financial hardship; debt; demotion; and denials of raises or promotions.”

The U.S. also has no national standards around sick days, which means that “only 1 in 5 low-wage workers have access to paid sick days on the job,” reports our grantee 9to5.  Family Values at Work, another grantee, adds that 55 million (48 percent) of private sector works in the U.S. are not entitled to paid sick days. The U.S. is far behind here, again: Family Values adds that “145 of 173 nations worldwide guarantee a minimum number of paid sick days to all workers.”

Paid leave is just one piece of the puzzle.  More broadly, today’s workforce needs new flexibility in workday scheduling, so that parents can attend parent-teacher conferences, so that spouses can support each other by sharing household tasks, so that adults can care for their elderly relatives.  As Family Values at Work stresses, “You shouldn’t have to risk your job to take care of your family, and you shouldn’t have to put your family at risk just to do your job.”

Working people fought with fervor for an eight-hour day to improve their lives, and today, as we mark 125 years of International Worker’s Day, it would be an injustice to their efforts not to continue the pursuit of tolerable working conditions in line with modern needs.