Eight Hour Workday Becomes Law – Dale’s Daily Data

Can you imagine working 12 hours a day - every day six days a week and sometimes Sundays too? That's just the way it was back in the mid 1800’s. But around the country a call for a shorter work day led to the formation of the National Labor Union that asked Congress to officially trim the workday. Federal employees were the first to enjoy shorter days when Congress passed legislation in 1863, but it wasn’t until decades later that it became common in most American workplaces.

The issue really broiled over when workers at the McCormick Reaper Manufacturing Company in Chicago went on strike over work hours. When the company hired replacement workers who tried to cross the picket lines, a battle between police and workers left seven policemen and four workers dead in what became known as the Haymarket Riots.

For more than 30 years after that, workers who called for shorter work days were labeled radicals, but finally in 1923, the big breakthrough came when the Carnegie Steel Corporation granted shorter work hours to its employees. Eventually, President Franklin Roosevelt made the eight-hour workday an official part of his New Deal legislation.

SOURCE: americanhistory.com