In My Opinion: After a Century, Battle for the 8-Hour Day Continues

The issue that was the rallying cry for the formation of the American labor movement was establishment of the eight-hour day and 40-hour week as the national job standard.

As early as 1869, the New York Times editorialized against the Eight-Hour Movement with what today reeks of elitist condescension: "The lower class of workmen, we think, will be nowise benefitted by this new privilege (a shorter workday). They will only the more frequent liquor shops and work for politicians."

The eight-hour day was the focus of the closest thing we have had to a general strike in the United States, when half a million workers left their jobs and rallied in a score of cities on May 1, 1886.

In a Labor Day newspaper column in 1916, AFL President Samuel Gompers appealed for federal eight-hour legislation, stating: "It is a demand for opportunity for rest, recuperation, and (personal) development; things which make life more than mechanical drudgery." The 40-hour week, he said, makes workers more productive and resourceful than "those who are so worn by toil that they have neither energy nor mind for other things in life."

Finally, in 1941, the Supreme Court upheld the labor-supported Fair Labor Standards Act which called for overtime pay of time and one half after 40 hours. Unions generally have been able to negotiate premium pay after eight hours and higher premiums after 40 hours and for holidays.

But the fight for the eight-hour/40-hour standard continues. There is now a pending assault on federal and state wage/hour laws by corporate forces that seek to extend the overtime standard from 40 to 80 hours and to substitute compensatory time off (scheduled at the employer's discretion) instead of premium pay.

At the same time, employers including the major phone companies are perverting the intent of the FLSA by forcing people to work relentless overtime hours because they find it cheaper to pay the time and half rather than hire the extra workers they need, and pay their benefits.

We realize that there is always a need for overtime work for a variety of reasons, and indeed there are always plenty of workers who appreciate the opportunity to work more hours for the extra money. And we realize that it can't always be voluntary in the case of natural disasters and unforeseen emergencies.

However, levels of forced overtime have grown excessive, as the story on pages 6-7 describes, and this issue has been a major one in this year's round of telecom talks. The entire industry downsized far too deeply a few years ago to appease the Wall Street crowd. And rather than staff up sufficiently to meet business demands, these companies have been squeezing our members for extra hours, intensifying work quotas and, in some cases, forcing people back from disability before they're well enough to return.

The lengthening workweek has been a national trend for years. Economists Barry Bluestone and Stephen Rose recently documented the fact that Americans are continuing to work longer hours at stagnant wage levels even in one of the lowest unemployment periods in decades - seemingly in defiance of marketplace forces. They conclude that there is no job shortage because the labor supply is increasing - but from the existing workforce in the form of longer hours.

The reason: "increased job insecurity." "Workers now toil as many hours as possible when jobs are plentiful in anticipation of future downsizing and job loss," they state.

Moreover, Bluestone and Rose show that it has been the growth of two-wage-earner families that has maintained living standards. Over a 15-year period, a 18.5 percent increase in real earnings was purchased at the expense of an increase of 16.3 percent in hours worked by working couples.

The intent of the federal wage/hour law was to establish overtime pay as a penalty to discourage employers from overworking people. Overtime wasn't meant to be an extra income source or an alternative to the creation of jobs with good benefits and wages.

Some employers really don't get it. In bargaining with U S West, which has been demanding extreme levels of forced overtime work instead of hiring the number of people it needs, the company had the nerve to propose eliminating premium pay after eight hours - because its overtime costs are so high. Maybe we should counter-propose triple-time pay.

The problem of lengthening workdays and workweeks on a regular basis is a health and safety issue, and it is very much a family issue. Employers that like to claim they are "family friendly" are talking out of both sides of their mouth when they force senior service reps with children to regularly work 10 hours a day six days a week, and keep outside technicians on the job for 13 days straight, month after month.

Clearly, an issue that galvanized the fledgling labor movement in the 19th century is still a major problem for millions of working families on the eve of the 21st. We in CWA represent workers in the leading industry of the new Information Age. We are in the position of fighting to set the standards for good American jobs for the future.