Enjoy your long Labour Weekend

Remember that Labour Day is a celebration of unions, and workers sticking together for fairness. It was bought to you by one of New Zealand’s first union activists, Samuel Parnell:
Parnell organised to introduce the eight-hour working day – making New Zealand the first country in the world to achieve such conditions.
Herbert Roth describes Parnell`s first job in New Zealand in 1839, 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.’

Fifty years later the first ever Labour Day holiday was held and Parnell was honoured for his achievements.
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.
Labour Day celebrates workers joining together and asking for fair working conditions and fair pay for a day’s work. There are still many victories that need to be won, but it is useful to remember the many union achievements by working people over the 165 years of New Zealand history since Samuel Parnell won an eight-hour day for working Kiwis.

(thanks to Herbert Roth and the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand for the story)