Strike for the 8-Hour Day

A major victory for the Labor Movement is the achievement of the eight hour workday. The fight for the eight hour day was not an easy one, and the struggle to attain it was long and harsh. Workers and labor leaders alike sacrificed in the attempts to gain the eight hour day. Like the push for the 10 hour day, the eight hour day movement came on the heels of great advances in industrial technology. This technology made work faster and increased the overall production of goods. Even though production was increased the demands on the workers were not decreased. This new labor saving technology only increased production, but left workers with no increase in pay or reduction of hours for increased production.

In order to gain the eight hour day, Frank Foster, former leader of the Knights of Labor and editor of the Labor Leader, proposed a general strike. On May 1, 1886 his idea came to fruition as the Boston Building Trades led a general strike in the city of Boston.  The general strike came only 3 days before the infamous Haymarket Strike in Chicago in which labor activists came into confrontation with police and violence ensued. Four labor activists were hanged after the incident for supposedly inciting the riot.

Though the eight hour day was not achieved until much later, this impressive showing by the Boston Building Trades was a step in the right direction for the cause of the eight hour workday. The strike was a display of solidarity between the working people in the city of Boston and Massachusetts, and a sign to their opposition that they would not sit silently by as their rights were trampled over.