The TEU has set up a Labour Day website to remind us of the many rights we owe to all the workers down the years who have had the sense and the strength to contribute to unions. The site has tells the story of how the 8-hour day and Labour Day were won, the unions’ wins in recent years, and the issues facing workers at the moment. There’s even a cheeky competition to win a book on the legacy of Samuel Parnell by saying what extra public holiday you would like to have.
Anyway, it’s such a good yarn, I’ve copied the story of Samuel Parnell and the fight for the 8-hour week below. As you read, remember it was only low unemployment and workers cooperating in their collective action that made victory possible:
In 1839, before the Treaty of Waitangi, Samuel Parnell organised to introduce the eight-hour working day making New Zealand the first country in the world to achieve such conditions. His first job in New Zealand was when a shipping merchant, George Hunter, asked him to erect a store for him.
‘I will do my best,’ replied Parnell, ‘but I must make this condition, Mr. Hunter, that on the job the hours shall only be eight for the day.’
Hunter demurred, this was preposterous; but Parnell insisted. ‘There are,’ he argued, ‘twenty-four hours per day given us; eight of these should be for work, eight for sleep, and the remaining eight for recreation and in which for men to do what little things they want for themselves. I am ready to start tomorrow morning at eight o’clock, but it must be on these terms or none at all.’
Other employers tried to impose the traditional long hours, but Parnell met incoming ships, talked to the workmen and enlisted their support. A workers’ meeting in October 1840, held outside a hotel is said to have resolved to work eight hours a day, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., anyone offending to be ducked into the harbour.
‘I arrived here in June, 1841,’ a settler told the newspaper in 1885, ‘found employment on my landing, and also to my surprise was informed that eight hours was a day’s work, and it has been ever since.’
By 1890 the eight-hour working day had become standard for tradesmen and labourers. Trade unions publicised the campaign for shorter hours by holding annual processions late in October on what became known as Labour Day. In 1899 Labour Day became a public holiday and became a suitable occasion to pay tribute to Parnell and the other pioneers of the eight-hour day.
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