Roots of Resistance

Imagine it's 1850 and you're in the heart of a booming industrial city.

The factory bell rings before the sun rises and you go to join the endless stream of workers inside the factory.

The noise is deafening.

Air thick with soot and safety is a complete afterthought.

Your 14 hour shift begins and you are standing at your station, repeating the same motions day in and day out.

There's no weekend to look forward to.

Six, sometimes seven days a week.

The clock pulls your life in by the end of the day.

Though your body aches, you know that tomorrow it all begins again.

It's hard to imagine now, but for these workers in 1850, this grind was life long hours.

No weekends and dangerous conditions were the norm.

Now, today, things look very different.

I mean, some of us now work in climate controlled offices, complete with ergonomic chairs, unlimited coffee and even nap pods.

We have weekends paid vacations and laws protecting our safety.

In fact, workers today are pushing for even more flexible schedules, like the right to be left alone after hours and even the four day workweek.

Of course, none of these changes happened overnight.

Over the past two centuries, worker resistance and collective action incrementally transform the way that we work today.

So why did our relationship to work change and what exactly drove these changes?

Let's find out.

This is roots of resistance.

The historian E.P.

Thompson argued that before the Industrial Revolution, time wasn't something to be measured or controlled.

Work was dictated by the natural world, like the rising and setting of the sun, the changing of the seasons and the demands of crops or handcrafts.

Thompson called this way of working.

Task oriented labor.

People weren't ruled by the taking of a clock, but by the tasks and rhythms that flowed with the day.

Clocks were considered status symbols, and very few people even owned one.

In fact, Thompson argued that there was no strict divide between work life as we know it today.

Chores blended into social and family time.

Many scholars argue that in the wake of industrialization in the early 19th century, the imposition of a new time discipline radically restructured the way that people worked.

Clocks now demarcated a sharp line between work and life, synchronizing people's inward conceptions of time.

People came to see time as something to be spent and saved, even to be stolen.

As artisanal shops gave way to massive factories and the pace of work intensified.

Time became currency.

The employer's time and money and idle workers found themselves accused of things like time theft.

Most workers at the time came to accept these norms until they learned that they could fight against them.

One of the first and most important changes in the way we work was the invention of the eight hour workday.

Exhausted factory workers in America's biggest cities formed labor unions to advocate for shorter working hours.

Their agitation regained traction after the Civil War as soldiers returned home to fast growing cities seeking to rebuild their lives and demand better conditions.

Millions of formerly enslaved individuals joined these soldiers, calling for decreased hours and eventually the eight hour workday.

Robert Owen, a Welsh manufacturer and socialist, had begun pushing for an eight hour workday in the early 19th century, and by 1817, he coined the slogan 8 hours labor, 8 hours, recreation 8 hours rest, dividing the 24 hour day into thirds.

Owens appealed to capitalists by observing that, like machines, humans, too, need rest in order to work efficiently.

Rallying around Owen's slogan, 80,000 people marched down Michigan Avenue in Chicago on May 1st, 1886, as part of a nationwide strike for an eight hour workday.

In the ensuing days, the atmosphere turned violent, resulting in the deaths of several police officers and civilians in Haymarket Square.

This incident, later known as the Haymarket affair, dealt a significant blow to the labor movement and demonized unions for years to come.

But it also helped to solidify the eight hour workday as a concept in people's minds.

A few decades later, the eight hour movement regained momentum as the U.S. prepared to enter World War One.

America's railroads were under rising pressure to transport troops and supplies.

In 1916, overworked railway employees banded together and threatened a nationwide strike poised to cripple industrial production.

On the eve of war, that is, unless they were given that eight hour workday.

Negotiations went on for months until Congress finally passed the Adamson Act, enshrining an eight hour day, though only for railroad workers.

The labor shortage during the war strengthened workers demand for shorter hours, leading to widespread adoption of the eight hour day.

However, this structure wasn't formally enacted into law for all workers until 1938.

Decades of collective action and economic pressure from the Great Depression drove the passage of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, or the FLSA, which cemented the five day 40 hour workweek.

In addition to setting workout limits, the FLSA introduced vital protections like a minimum wage and overtime pay, marking a significant milestone in securing workers rights that continued to shape labor standards today.

The established moment of the eight hour workday was a crucial moment in labor history.

It laid the groundwork for future reforms and sparked ongoing discussions about the ideal workweek and worker welfare more broadly.

The second pivotal change in the history of labor activism was the concept of worker safety.

From where we stand, it's easy to take for granted the legal protections that shield workers from unsafe conditions in the workplace.

But throughout U.S. history, laborers have fought fiercely for safer working conditions.

The rise of machines in factories during the Industrial Revolution introduced a host of new hazards for American laborers in factories.

Loose clothing easily became caught in machines leading to serious injuries or even amputations.

On railroads, workers risked being struck by moving trains or caught between cars while miners encountered caverns or gas explosions or injuries from falling tools.

Yet without enforceable safety standards, workers struggled to hold their employers accountable.

One of the most tragic events in labor history was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, when 146 garment workers, mostly young immigrant women, became trapped inside a building with locked exits.

The common practice at the time to discourage that time theft and unauthorized breaks, many jumped to their deaths or were burned alive, which ignited widespread public outrage.

Intense news coverage of this workplace disaster.

Emboldened workers and organizations like the National Women's Trade Union League to demand major safety reforms like mandatory fire escapes, fire extinguishers and sprinkler systems.

The rise of mass media played a crucial role in amplifying the impact of this tragedy, and many that came after galvanizing laborers like never before.

All of these issues the boundary between life and work, the concept of ownership over one's time and workplace safety remain highly relevant today, thanks to years of labor movements pushing for workplace safety.

Employers are increasingly viewed as responsible for ensuring the health and safety of their employees.

This perspective gained even more urgency during the COVID 19 pandemic, and the commitment to safety has evolved further, as evident in recent legislation like Oregon's new heat law, which prohibits outdoor work during dangerous heat waves.

In fact, the COVID 19 pandemic triggered one of the most significant shakeups of our work lives in recent history social distancing measures and the great resignation, which was a mass voluntary exodus of employees from the workforce, have compelled many employers to reassess how Americans work.

This shift has led to more flexible, virtual and hybrid working options for many workers.

And while some companies like Amazon, IBM and even Zoom are starting to mandate more in-person days, many office employees are no longer expected to spend 40 hours a week on site.

Today, some countries are questioning which safety measures workers should be entitled to.

For example, in Australia, politicians have introduced new right to disconnect laws to safeguard workers from unwanted after hours contact and from uncompensated time.

These laws empower employees to decline calls, emails and messages from their employers outside of designated working hours.

The goal is to combat employee burnout and to create a clearer boundary between work and personal life.

A boundary that was blurred by the pandemic when many people took their work home.

Amid all of these shifts, the buzz around a four day workweek is growing louder.

Spurred by rising employee reports of burnout in the wake of the pandemic, more and more employers are getting four day curious before the pandemic.

Pilot trials in Iceland demonstrated the potential benefits of a shorter workweek from 2015 to 2019.

2500 participants took part in the largest pilot of a four day workweek.

Employers reduced worker hours to 36 per week, spread out over four days, and with no reduction in pay to fit all of their work into a shorter week.

People cut down on work meetings, moved some meetings to email and sacrificed some of their coffee breaks.

And all told, worker productivity improved.

People felt more attached to their work and they even had more time to spend with their loved ones.

The results have been so encouraging that many employers acted even before the official report was released.

And as of now, 86% of Iceland's workforce have either shifted to a shorter workweek or secured the option to reduce their working hours.

Similar to the push for the 40 hour workweek in the early 1900s, shifting worker attitudes in the U.S. have pushed for reduced work time and higher pay.

One third of large companies have now experimented with reduced workweeks.

And in March of 2024, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a bill called the 32 Hour Workweek Act.

Some organizations are also trying to see how this could benefit low wage workers who often juggle long hours in multiple jobs.

The push for a four day workweek reflects a broader cultural shift towards valuing well-being alongside productivity.

Challenging us to rethink how we define success in the modern workplace.

How has your relationship with work evolved and what changes do you want to see?

Tell us in the comments.

I'm Felicia for the win, and this is Roots of Resistance.

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