Eight-hour Day campaign may resonate today
The idea that employers might be robbed of the power to set work hours for their employees at almost any level they chose scandalised the English-speaking world in the 1800s. Bosses declared the idea was preposterous. It would make businesses unprofitable, drive some to the wall, hurt the poor and upset the natural order of things. Nevertheless, despite those arguments and despite sometimes ferocious punishments for workers found guilty of working together to press for better pay and conditions, some people kept arguing that eight hours was a fair working day. The idea was that, in…