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Labor/Work
The following article originally appeared in Salt of the Earth. It is posted here for private use only. It may not be reprinted in whole or in part without the permission of Salt of the Earth magazine.
Don't punch the clock
on the 8-hour day
John Sweeney
IT HAPPENED WHILE ALMOST no one was noticing. Little by little, one of the most important victories American working people have won in the last century—the eight-hour day—has been whittled away.
The statistics, as far as they go, tell a frightening story. In 1967, the average working person put in 1,633 hours per year and worked 42.4 weeks. But by 1994, those numbers had risen to 1,740 annual hours and 44.9 weeks. And it didn't happen because workers were less productive than before. In fact, their productivity per hour actually rose by more than 40 percent in the same period.
For millions, the situation is even worse than the numbers indicate. Many working women and men no longer have the option of an eight-hour day at all. They are forced to put in 12-hour shifts for three days a week, until they're so tired they can barely function. Moreover, many see their work schedule bounced from daytime in one week to nighttime the next, and then back again the following week.
The nurse in Phoenix who is called in unexpectedly for a 2 a.m. shift so a doctor can keep his golf date the next morning; the steelworker in Indiana who is exhausted after ten hours at the mill and now has to put in four more; the waitress in Boston who is frantically trying to persuade the baby-sitter to stay until midnight because the boss won't let her leave on schedule—each of them knows exactly what it's like.
OF COURSE, THERE ARE WORKERS who need and want flextime, or who aren't bothered by drastic, unpredictable shift changes. But for millions of others, these are a terrible burden. They must submit their life schedules to the whim of the employer.
Statistics don't measure that. Nor do they quantify the thousand ways that more work hours make the rest of life harsher and meaner. The numbers don't tally up the stress and exhaustion. They don't record the soccer games that parents can't attend, the vacations that families don't take, the quiet time with aging relatives that never happens.
And the statistics don't really show that the erosion of the eight-hour day is part of a much larger problem, which is that Americans are working harder and harder for less and less. Earlier this year, we in the AFL-CIO heard what this means in "America Needs a Raise" town-hall meetings around the country—forums for working people to speak out about their concerns and ideas.
We heard workers like a young Latina mother in Denver. She works two jobs for 12 hours a day, earning just $4.55 an hour, yet she can barely support herself and her child. She was crying when she told us, "I haven't had the time to see my son grow up. I haven't had the time to see him take his first steps. I haven't heard him say his first words."
Fair wages, good benefits, and decent work hours are what the AFL-CIO is fighting for. How do we get to those goals from where we are now?
THE ANSWER MOST CERTAINLY ISN'T an unregulated, unrestricted market. We're too close to that already. As one pro-market economist wrote, "Nowhere else in the industrial world is it easier to set up a discount store, start a new airline, or declare a bankruptcy." To that we can add, "And almost nowhere else is it easier to abuse workers."
The single most effective way to get America a raise and restore the eight-hour day is a reinvigorated labor movement, precisely because it gives working people an effective voice in determining not only what their wages and benefits will be but how many hours they will work and how their schedules are organized.
Is the eight-hour day an economic issue? Is it a collective-bargaining issue? Is it a moral issue? As a Catholic labor activist, I believe the answers to those three questions are: "Yes, yes, and yes." The first two answers may be immediately obvious. The third answer perhaps needs a little explanation. I have learned from my faith that we are all created in the image and likeness of God.
God did not create us to subordinate our humanity to the needs of production. In his 1981 encyclical Laborem exercens, Pope John Paul II explains that though we are all destined to work, "work is for us," not "we for work." But as Catholics we also know that in too many workplaces, the dignity of the worker is being challenged. Workers are being exploited and dehumanized. We believe that it doesn't have to be that way.
Laborem exercens states that people must be able "to become in work 'more a human being' and not be degraded by it, not only because of the wearing out of [her or] his physical strength . . . but especially through damage to the dignity and subjectivity that are proper" to all human beings.
THERE IS NO MORE PRACTICAL EXAMPLE of how "dignity and subjectivity" can be protected than the eight-hour day. The very fact that it has been eroded for a generation is powerful proof that workers need an effective labor movement today as much as they ever have.
The pope was perceptive when he wrote, "It is always to be hoped that, thanks to the work of their unions, workers will not only have more but above all be more: in other words, that they will realize their humanity more fully in every respect."
That is why Catholic labor activists see their secular activity and their spiritual belief as seamless. It is why we struggle to restore the integrity and universality of the eight-hour day. And it is why we call upon all people of faith to join us as we dream of and strive for a community where work is cherished, workers and their unions are respected, and justice is finally done.—END
©1999 by Claretian Publications