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Time to get behind the a r o f n g i a p m ca k e e w y a d r u o f BY CAOILFHIONN NÍ DHONNABHÁIN Melbourne’s eight-hour day monument stands opposite the Trades Hall – reputedly the oldest trade union building in the world. I found myself there tracing the footsteps of my granduncle Gus, a trade union activist in the city from the 1930s to 1960s. The monument honours the world’s first successful battle to secure an eight-hour working day in 1856. Its design symbolises the demand, first associated with textile manufacturer and social reformer Robert Owen, for “Eight hours labour. Eight hours recreation. Eight hours rest.” We have to understand how we came to the eighthour day and the five-day week to understand that it is a very arbitrary place to stop. For workers, for progressives this was never meant to be the end point. We have not progressed – in fact in many instances we have regressed as workers are expected to work longer hours and give ever greater commitment to their jobs. Employee rights including job security achieved over the course of the 20th century have been eroded as workers have lost out while corporations have been emboldened and empowered. Our understanding of work has changed over the centuries. Our semi-religious devotion to work and the idea of fulfilment through work is very much a modern phenomenon. It has been a boon for employers and exploiters. Work changed with the industrial revolution. That change was sharp and brutal. With industrialisation came the birth of trade unions fighting back against the
anphoblacht UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 - 2019 - ISSUE NUMBER 3
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