Montana Log Truckers Association

Sometimes we do not realize that we are losing something until it is nearly gone. Something that we thought was a foundation of our society, something that we thought we had won long ago, something like the eight hour day.

More and more workers are finding themselves being forced to work longer and longer hours. And because of this we are finding out why the eight hour day was fought for many years ago. Over a hundred years ago the struggle for the eight hour day was a massive movement for working people. Because of that struggle the eight hour day became the standard working hours throughout industry.

This writing is not about statistics. It is hard to relate to statistics alone. For that reason this is a personalized account of forced overtime.

There are two basic reasons why we work overtime: 1. Because our employer demands it and we work it to keep our job. 2. Our wages have not kept up with the cost of living, so many of us have been forced to work overtime to be able to pay for those things we need.

But no matter how much we may make with overtime, we cannot buy back our lives and those things we have lost being slaves to continuous production. For when we work these long hours we have little time for anything else but to work, eat and sleep.

By giving up the eight hour day, we are not only dooming ourselves, but we are also dooming future generations. Because once we have lost the eight hour day, we will not regain it without another massive struggle.

This writing is based upon a shipyard job that I had where they were working us 14 hours a day, seven days a week for two and a half months.

Sleep: a thing that if you do not get enough of because there just is not sufficient hours in a day, becomes one of the few pleasures of living. When working a 14 hour day, seven days a week, the only escape is found in sleep. You think about it all day long. You long for it. It becomes your greatest desire. And the greatest disappointment in your life is when your alarm wakes you from your slumber.

I am the type of person who must raise right up, dress myself and go off to work, if I give myself any time to think I'll talk myself into not going to work. Given the fact that you never seem to get enough rest when working such long hours, it does not take much for me to convince myself to go back to bed.

Most of my working life I have worked as a marine pipefitter in shipyards. The majority of the time I have had to drive long distances to get to work. Thus, my driving time must be included in the hours my jobs have taken away from my life. The overwhelming thought that is always on my mind is "why in the hell am I doing this?" And the answer is always the same. "Because I must."

Like many other working people in the trades, I am stuck in my trade. Once you have worked a trade for a number of years, employers do not like to give you a job outside of that trade. Even if you learn a new trade it is damn hard to find a job. I know for I have tried. Employers would rather give a job to someone younger than me.

The work that I am able to find in the shipyards in the last ten years has included massive amounts of overtime hours. This was not always the case, for when the industry was booming there was not so much overtime work. This may seem a little strange, but there are two reasons for this. First the shipyards are trying to maximize their profits by cutting labor cost, and it cost them less to work their workers long hours than it does to hire more workers. Second, it is hard to find skilled shipyard workers anymore.

While making my way to work I tend to think about all those things that I never have time to do. Half dazed, I arrive at work, punch in my time card and get ready for work.

With what ever parts I need that morning, I drag myself up the gangway of the ship and go over to the gangbox to get my tools. I have found that if I don't get a fast start in the beginning of the shift, the day will drag by slowly. So in the first hour of the day is one of my most productive.

Few working people know the true history of their class. This is not their fault. The history of the working class is not taught in the schools and the business unions don't touch on it much. What we are taught is the history of the employers and the politicians, and how great the U.S. has always been. The fact that everything that working people have gained has come about through struggle, is a fact that has been censored out of the history books used in schools. The Eight Hour Day Movement is one such struggle that few workers today know anything about.

One of the first universal demands of the U.S. labor movement was the eight hour day. In the early 1860s this demand spread across the country as eight hour day leagues were founded. Such labor organizations as the International Labor Union of America (the forerunner of the AFL) made the eight hour day their priority. The reasons given for this movement was the right of leisure time for working people and that an eight hour day would reduce unemployment.

By 1867, several states and cities had granted public employees the eight hour day. In 1868 Congress granted it to federal workers.

Across the country the eight hour day movement continued to grow. Massive marches and rallies were held and a number of strikes were called. Songs and poems were written that were known by working people across the land. One of the more popular ones was written by J.G. Blanchard.

After it was found that the passing of labor laws did little, because it was hard to get them enforced, many eight hour day activists decided that only economic action would win the demand. A general strike was called for the eight hour day, to begin on May 1, 1886. Hundreds of thousands of workers went on strike that day across the U.S. The next day even more workers joined in. Unfortunately the general strike was lost because of a repressive backlash after what history has come to call the Haymarket Affair in Chicago.

Chicago had long been one of the most repressive cities in the U.S. when it came to labor struggles. It was very common, back in those days, for the Chicago police to beat peaceful unarmed strikers and marchers, sometimes even shooting down these people in cold blood. The employer's newspapers encouraged these acts by the police against working people. it is inevitable when any group of people are treated in this manner, that someone will strike back in self-defense.

On May 1, 1886 over forty thousand workers in Chicago had joined the general strike. The next two days thousands more were added to the ranks of striking workers. Workers throughout Chicago were holding marches and rallies in support of their demand. One such rally was being held by striking lumber workers on May 3rd. Near where their rally was being held was the McCormick Reaper Works that had locked-out the union workers, and brought in scabs to take their jobs.

When the factory whistle signaled the change of shift, many of the lumber workers went over to the picketline in solidarity. The police and the hated Pinkertons attacked these workers and after beating many of them, the police opened fire with their guns, killing three workers, and wounding many others.

Members of the International Working People's Association were among the speakers at the lumber worker's rally. After they witnessed this bloody affair, they organized a protest meeting that night in a place called the Haymarket Square.

At that meeting many labor activists denounced the murders of working people by the Chicago police. The meeting was almost over when the police showed up to breakup the peaceful gathering. At the police line began to move in on the peaceful working people someone threw a bomb into the ranks of the attacking police. After the bomb went off the police panicked and began to shoot blindly. Contrary to how many history books have recorded this event, the medical reports show that only one of the police died directly from the bomb. The deadly wounds to the other policemen included bullet wounds. And many of those wounds came about because of the panic gun fire of the police.

The media and the employers created a state of hysteria that allowed for much of the labor movement to be suppressed. Eight labor activist of the International Working People's Association and the Central Labor Union, who were also anarchists, were put on trial for murder and conspiracy. There was no evidence connecting these men to the bomb or bomb thrower. However these eight labor activists were found guilty. The unfairness of the trial was even denounced by a number of conservative judges. Four of these men were hanged, August Spies, George Engel, Adolph Fischer and Albert Parsons. One man, Louis Lingg, cheated the executioner by taking his own life the night before the hangings. Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab and Oscar Neebe were sent to prison.

After the country regained a bit of its sanity, working people once again started to demand the eight hour day. The lumberjacks of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), found the most direct means of winning the eight hour day. In the northwest lumber camps, the IWW workers just walked off the job every day after working eight hours.

The eight hour day became the norm throughout industry after long struggles by thousands of working people. Today the eight hour day is being lost because the labor movement has become passive in defending this gain.

The only way that I have found to handle long hours is to keep my mind off the time. I will not even let myself think about what I wish to do after work. I try to keep moving at a steady pace, for if I slow down or stop working weariness will set in. Sometimes I am unable to keep my thoughts from turning to anger over my situation. But there is a good side to such anger, it will gave you an adrenaline rush that will keep you awake.

The politicians will pass many so-called labor laws, but they don't mean a damn thing if they are not enforced. It is a very clear fact that most labor laws (that is those that benefit working people) are not enforced like those laws that benefit the employers. While the police will throw some worker in jail for breaking a law that protects the employers, how often have you heard of an employer being arrested and jailed for breaking a law that protects a worker?

For example; if a worker steals from an employer, that worker can be arrested and jailed. But if an employer withholds money due to a worker, and that is stealing, then the worker must take that employer to court. Or if a worker goes out and kills someone that is called murder, but if an employer knowingly creates a situation that causes the deaths of workers, the most that may happen is that they must pay a fine.

Many labor laws sound nice on paper, but more often than not, their only purpose is to deceive working people into thinking they have something, when in reality they have next to nothing at all. It is the old smoke and mirror trick. The following are some of the ways they keep labor laws impotent:

If the government was serious about their labor laws the formula for enforcement would be something like this. The forfeiting of all profits made while the law was being broken, additional fines and the same type of criminal liability that exists in the rest of society for deaths and injuries from the result of breaking laws.

Many states in the U.S. have overtime laws, and this you will have to research to know if they cover you or not. The federal law covering time worked is called the Fair Labor Standards Act. The agency that has jurisdiction of the law is the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor. Basically what this law says is that any worker (that is those that are covered by the law) that works over 40 hours a week must be paid no less than time and a half for overtime hours. The law does not set any industrial standards that limits the amount hours workers can be forced to work.

To depend upon politicians, laws and bureaucracies to safeguard the interest of working people is foolish. Everything we have gained has come from the direct result of working class economic force or threat of force. And every gain that we will keep will also be the result of the same.

Time starts to drag in the third hour. A numbness sets in and apathy to your situation engulfs you. All there is in life is work. The next piece of pipe to fit, the next flange to tighten. Life is work, and work is life, all else is but a dream created in ones imagination to pass the time.

The employers are working us longer hours because it profits them to do so. More hours means less employees, and less workers means having to pay less benefits (if there are any) and less costs in Workers Compensation Insurance and other such things.

I have seen on many jobs where some workers will even compete with each other to see who can work the most hours. I guess it is some type of macho thing, a real man can work forever. I have often wondered if the definition of a real man is having nothing between their ears. Poor foolish slaves. They don't seem to understand that no matter how much money one can make, you cannot buy back your life. And the boss is laughing at you all the way to the bank. A sucker is born everyday they say.

Some of the union bosses have gotten into this scam. In some of the business unions, you not only pay your dues, but also the union gets a percentage of all your wages. Thus, when you work overtime they get more money. And the union boss is laughing at you all the way to the bank. A sucker is born everyday they say.

This may be the most dangerous hour of the day. It is still too early to think about your lunch break, and the tiredness of your mind and body leaves you vulnerable to the dangers around you. It is hard to explain to someone who has never worked 14 hours a day, 7 days a week the true reality of being tired without end. Things that you would not think were possible, become ordinary. I have fallen asleep with a 10 pound sledgehammer in my hands while slamming steamjoints. If the mind and body are tired enough you can fall asleep doing most anything. Without knowing it you become careless. You may drop a tool or a part while momentarily dosing. Or you may see a danger, but your reaction time is too slow to act. Things around you seem to move in slow motion, but your motion is even slower. Sometimes you are so exhausted that you may see a danger, but you just stand there because you just don't give a damn anymore. I remember once taking a fall and rather than being hit with fear I felt a peaceful feeling of relief as I fell.

The body and mind needs not only sleep, but also rest from work. Long hours do not give you either. Off the job if you intentionally place someone in a situation that could cause injury or death, you would find yourself in a prison cell. But everyday employers place workers in that situation, and if someone is hurt or is killed, they call it just an industrial accident. A dead or injured worker can be replaced.

Now you may say to yourself that you don't work in such places as shipyards, so why should you give a damn about some poor yardbird who you have never met? But think about this, that damn old yardbird ain't the only one not getting the rest that they should. Everyday, on every highway in America, there are truck drivers driving rigs weighing thousands of pounds, who are just as exhausted as that old yardbird. So as you are driving your little car to and from wherever, the driver in that big rig next to you could be driving in a state of great fatigue. This is something that I understand, for I have also been a long haul driver. I can tell you about driving hour after hour, day after day, sometimes up to six months at a time without anything more than time off to sleep, eat and shit every ten hours. Thousands of people die every year from truck car accidents and one of the main causes is the fatigue of the driver.

Have you ever seen what happens when a car and big rig get all tangled up? If you truly understand what I am trying to say to you you will understand why the eight hour day is important to you directly.

Some jobs will give you breaks beyond your lunch break. I have worked thirteen shipyards and the longest I have worked in one day is 23 hours, and only one shipyard gave us any extra breaks. Many employers are so arrogant when it comes to their workers that they will not even do things that will improve production. Taking breaks to get some coffee and a little rest will improve production and cut down on mistakes.

It is not just the worker who suffers from having to work long hours. I believe that the children may suffer the most. In toady's world many of our children are being neglected because both parents must work, or the family has but one parent that must work. If one or both parents are forced to work overtime, then the situation is even worse. Some day care is good, although often the day care that poorer workers can afford is not so good. But regardless of the quality of day care, children need the love and special attention that good parents provide.

It is not the fault of working class parents that they have to work. And when they are forced to work overtime the neglect of their children becomes an added stress upon their lives. You can explain to a child the reasons why you are not there. And the child may understand those reasons, but that will not prevent the feelings of being abandoned that may set into the child.

When I am forced to work long hours, my son would have many difficulties. Often he would ask me, how much longer that this must go on? No matter what I could say or do, I knew that there was no way to regain the lost time. He was growing up and at times

I could not be there for him. Even though I knew that I had to work those hours to keep my job, still I could not prevent myself from feeling guilty.

Children who feel unwanted or that they are a burden will often strike out. They may hurt others around them or they may hurt themselves. In the beginning this may be just a means of getting attention, a statement that they are here too, and don't they count for something? Later on this may turn to anger, for there is nothing more hurtful for a child than feeling abandoned. As they grow older they may try to numb their hurt feels in alcohol or drugs. They may find that missing feeling of belonging in gangs.

The government's solution to young ones striking out is to cause them even more pain by placing them in institutions or prisons. These places only reinforce the child's negative feelings. In time as the young person grows up in those places they become so harden sometimes that they end up doing something terrible and then society wonders why.

The politicians and preachers are such hypocrites with all their talk of family values and the need of children to have good parents there for them, if these concerns were real then they would be passionate advocates for the 8 hour day, good wages and decent working conditions. They are all fast to blame the parents if a child gets into trouble, but not one word is spent about the many things that keep parents from being there for their kids. They would rather send money on institutions and prisons than for good community child care and programs for the young. The reason for this hypocrisy is that if they were to talk about the real causes of the problems, they would be forced to denounce their benefactors. For every super rich parasite, there are thousands of children going without the things they need. In that the politicians and preachers are saying that the need of the rich to get richer is more important than the needs of our children.

So who is really to blame for the troubled youth? The greedy few, that's who!

Often the stress of working long hours and living only to work for some boss will create anger. And anger always seeks an outlet. The longer it grows the greater the outburst will be. The outburst of anger is more often than not, directed at others than at the real cause of the anger. When workers lack the proper rest that they need and anger sets in because of that, arguments over minor things are common on the job.

A stressful society is a violent society. The increase of such things like road rage and domestic violence are signs of an increasingly stressful society. Though stress is no excuse for violence, it is a factor. And to decrease violence we must decrease the factors that contribute to violence. While it is true that we all must learn not to take out our anger on whoever is near by, holding that anger in is no solution either, for it will only build up making the outburst far worse.

When your life is not much more that to eat, sleep and work, the outlet for your anger will be either at work, on the road to or from work, or at home. Every working person needs time off to relieve built up stress. Thus, the 8 hour day is a vital factor in building a non-violent society.

Isn't it amazing how such a small thing like taking a break for lunch can become something so enthusiastically looked forward to? When you are working long hours it becomes even more so. It is in part because there is so little else to look forward to. It is not really the act of eating that you long for, but rather just not having to work that is so desirable. I always seem to notice when it is a hour before lunch. Then begins the daily ritual of checking the time. 45 minutes 'till lunch, 30 minutes 'till lunch, 15 minutes 'till lunch, 5 minutes 'till lunch, one minute 'till lunch. Then when lunch comes you waste the good feeling dreading its conclusion.

When you are working long hours, this over enthusiastic feeling for such small things as lunchbreak, represents the dullness of your life. When you are this weary there is but one dominating thought in your existence, and that is the little time that you have for the pursuit of not working. Nearly everything else we either have no time for, or we are just too damn tired to do it. Life itself becomes dull, meaningless and our spirit fades. We spend so many hours of the day hoping for time to pass by quickly, bring us in fact closer to our death. Time that we can never get back.

Overtime is a theft of our lives. And the robber is but a greedy parasite that cares nothing for our existence but for the wealth we produce for them. Damn I wish it were quitting time and not just lunch time!

Going back to work after lunch is always a great let down. Its like only taking one bite of your favorite food, it sure does taste good, but you are left with a longing for more. Like the beginning of the shift, for me, it is important to get a fast start after lunch. It is hard to explain how time slows down when you are tired. But when that fatigue sets in, and the monotony of continuous work drags upon the spirit, everything seems to be happening in super slow motion. So getting active as much as possible puts off the slow down feeling.

Stress and fatigue produces apathy and carelessness. Things that we normally are concerned about become a burden. One of the things that suffers when we are in this state of being is the environment. You tend to do what ever is the easiest. And that may mean dumping something, rather than disposing of it properly. You may see a problem developing, but your reaction time is too slow because you are too tired to prevent it. Or you are just too tired to gave a damn.

To many of us fail to understand that the environment is not something that we live apart from. Rather it is something that we live in and are a part of . And within this ecological system all things are connected. Thus, what we do that affects one part of the ecological system, has effects throughout the ecological system, far greater than many of us image. Often things work in a cycle, or as some may put it, the cause and effect cycle. For every action there is a reaction. When we are abused, and being forced to work long hours, then we pass along that abuse. And when we abuse the environment, that abuse will return to us in countless ways.

The suit and tie middle class environmentalists, for the most part, do not understand that the human environment has a direct relationship to the overall environment. You cannot change how we treat the over all environment without also changing how humans treat each other. Thus, human abuse is a part of the environmental cycle of abuse. And that makes the eight hour day an environmental issue.

The employer's machines have a valve that we working people do not. For the most part the machines are not abused, and if a worker uses a machine in a manner that may damage it the employer will get more than a bit upset. The machine is a capital investment, the worker, beyond possible training, is not. The worker can be abused and damaged, for they can be replaced easily. But some times when working long hours you begin to feel like a machine with the only purpose of existing is that of working.

Within each person there is a creative spirit. Something that drives us to do things creatively that we enjoy. We like to create things, many times just for the act of creating alone. To draw, paint, write, make music, to make things out of wood or stone, or to grow a garden. Each person is different in their creativeness, likes and dislikes. Alone with our relationships, our creative spirit is what makes life worth living. When we work long hours our creative spirit becomes unfulfilled. We start to lose our individuality and self-worth. We become like ants in a mass of production. Work to live, live to work.

Our creative spirit can do many amazing things. And we need to turn that spirit into a struggle to reclaim our lives back from those who believe that they own us.

Have you ever seen a zombie movie where the zombies are moving around and performing physical functions, but you look into their eyes and you know something is missing? A soul or spirit or something. Round about the tenth hour I begin to feel like that.

Yes, I'm still functioning but something is missing. If it were not for the fact of all the small pains in my body, I may even question if I were still living.

When we sleep, eat and exist all for just one purpose, that being to work, we are nothing more than a 24 hour slave. We are robbed of all else that should be a part of living. The boss is the slave master who drives us to toil. And to the master, the slave should not think beyond work, should not care about anything beyond the job, should not have desires more than producing profits, they should only perform their required tasks. Those functions off the job exist only for the slave to replenish themselves for more work. The slave must eat, sleep and reproduce new slaves.

For payment for being a slave we are given wages. But we turn around and give our wages right back to the class that we received them from to pay for those things that we need to continue to produce for our masters, a place to sleep, food to eat, transportation to and from work.

For all that is meaningful and sacred, the earth was not created for a few to plunder, and the many were not created to be slaves for those few. The slaves can resist; the slaves can rebel; the slaves can take back that which is rightful theirs. The slaves can do away with all masters and slaves and replace them with free people acting for the well-being of all.

This is the hour that your body finally goes into 'automatic pilot'. It is too early to start thinking about quitting time, so you just function. The pusherman comes by and voices his verbal whipping; "work harder, don't you care about your job?" You would like to strangle the bastard just to see him die. But you don't, you just keep toiling away, mentally cursing life itself.

That ever important machine, the employer will pay for all its upkeep. If the machine needs some form of energy to power it, that also the employer will pay for. The employer will pay to shelter the machine from the weather. But working people must pay the employing class for these necessities that are needed for us to continue to produce for them. Why do we do this? Why are we such accepting slaves? Because we are conditioned to believe that this is the best of all possible systems. That the freedom to be a slave is what freedom means.

Freedom has come to mean two different things. There is the freedom of the employers and the freedom of the workers. For the employers there is freedom to exploit, the freedom to abuse working people, the freedom to plunder the earth, the freedom to become rich off the labor of others. To protect that freedom there are governments, laws police and the military. For the workers there is freedom to be exploited, freedom to be abused by the bosses, the freedom to chose their abusers, the freedom to buy our needs from the owning class, and the freedom to be homeless, hungry and die if we freely chose not to be freely exploited. These great freedoms are protected by the government, laws, the police and military. We are truly blessed to live with such great freedoms, are we not?

After a while working every day drags on you and it becomes harder to talk yourself into coming in every day. People start to take weekends off. On the job that I have based this writing on, so many people were taking weekends off that the employer posted signs that read "If you don't work the weekend, you will be laid off on Monday." The idea was to get rid of the bad slaves and replace them with new good slaves.

Pipefitting on a ship takes a lot of thought and imagination. You cannot just fit two lengths of pipe together, for on a ship there are many obstacles and other considerations. You have to be able to see angles in your mind. Every offset is a degrees that is an interception of two lines on a circular arc. On a ship most pipes square to forward and aft or port and starboard. This means that when you make an offset, at any degrees, most of the time you must return to square of any of those directions. Thus, to get around an obstacle it often requires two offsets. You may find that it is not possible to run your pipe at the same elevation as where your first offset is. Then you must figure the point to begin your offset, the degrees of your offset, how long your offset will be, and if you must raise or lower your pipe, every amount that it moves will add length to your pipe getting from point A to point B, then you may find that you are able to only run a short ways before you must offset out of the way of something else. This means that one piece of pipe could have a number of offsets in it. Then sometimes you are running two pipes together which means you have to figure parallel offsets.

Making mistakes in your figuring could cause bad results. If you are off in your figuring and you are too tired to give a damn about what you are doing, you may force two pipes together rather than refitting them. When you do that you have created stress in the pipe. When there is stress in a pipe there is a point where the stress is the greatest. This is called a stress point. If that stress point is where two pipes are joined together that could produce a leak over time. At sea everything on a ship stretches. If that stress point is on a fuel system or seawater intake a leak can cause you real trouble.

There are many other mistakes that can be made, like welding or burning next to fuel lines , ventilation uptakes, or foam initiation. It is hard enough to get everything done right and watch out for dangers when working an eight hour day, but when you are working more hours than that, with each additional hour you work mistakes increase.

You may think "well so what? I don't ride ships". And maybe you don't care about possible ecological damage. But think about this; forced overtime is common in most construction, including such things as nuclear power plants and airplanes. And no amount of inspectors can catch every mistake. The next time you are up there thousands of feet in the air in a plane, think about what I have said about forced overtime. Consider that the plane could have been built by tired workers. Then ask yourself if the eight hour day is also your issue.

This is the hour where you cannot keep from thinking about how long it is until the working day is over. I find myself trying hard not to think about it, but regardless how hard I try, I cannot keep those thoughts out of my mind. Thus, within this hour time slows down. The same question enters my mental being every day around this time; "will this damn day never end?"

The conditions, we working people, find ourselves in today are the direct result of a number of factors:

The employers are stronger than ever, because they have organized in their class interest. Their industrial lobbyists are able to get nearly anything they want out of the politicians. The international organization of regional trading blocks, allows the employers to control social and economic conditions and the governments within those regions. All the so-called "free trade agreements" which benefit the employers at the expense of working people and the environment are but one good example of the growing power of the employing class. These things are coming about, not because of any natural law that governs human activity, but rather from the organization of class interests.

The business unions are unable to counter the class based organization of the employers, because they have all but lost their original purpose. The purpose of labor unions was to organize the interests of working people. But in the process they became infested with a professional class of union officials, who had their own interests. These union bosses viewed their self-interests as different than the rank and file union members. Their interests lie in gaining, holding onto and consolidating personal power and wealth. In fact they have more in common with the employing class than they do with the working class. Because of the void left in the organized interests of working people, the government, in doing the bidding of the employers, was able to pass many anti-labor laws that strengthened the power of the employers over the workers. These anti-labor laws stripped organized labor of their most effective weapons. In toady's industrial world these business unions are, at best, only able to have minor effects on wages and conditions. These unions lose more strikes than they win. One of the direct results of this weakness and corruption is the steady loss of the eight hour day.

One may ask; if the employers have so much power today, then why do they not have an all out assault on the past labor gains? The answer to this is the same reason why the business unions must produce some form of direct gains. The answer is fear. Working people possess far greater power than all the employers, governments and union bosses put together. And that power is the power of production. And these other classes of people know that if working people are pushed too far that they may use their power.

There is one organization that did, and still does, seek to organize the interests of working people into a powerful organization, without a professional class of union bosses. That organization is the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.). Though the labor fakers and so-called labor historians would have you believe that the IWW was just a labor rebellion years ago that became out-dated, the fact is the IWW is still here today organizing working people.

The ideas of the IWW of international industrial unionism is even more relevant than they were years ago. While the employers have organized their self-interests internationally, the idea of the IWW is that working people should do the same. The IWW seeks to organize working people into the most effective possible industrial organization. This industrial organization would use the power of production through the solidarity of working people in the direct interests of all working people wherever they maybe. Among the demands that the IWW has always made is the reduction of hours worked without the reduction of pay.

There is no hope in resisting forced overtime work and the dreadful effects that it has, if, we working people are unwilling to act directly ourselves. The eight hour day was not given to us in the past out of the kindness of the bosses' hearts! We won it through our struggles and we must struggle again to regain it. We cannot sit around hoping that the other worker will do that which we all must do. True social and economic movements are built one person at a time. And that means you, dear reader.

This hour is like the hour right before lunch. The time goes slowly by as the countdown begins to the end of the working day. One hour to go, 45 minutes to go, 30 minutes to go, 15 minutes to go, 5 minutes to go, 1 minute to go, then the loud shrill of the quitting time horn is heard. Then the walking dead come back to life. Off we each go to our little homes to shower, eat and sleep. Only to be awaked the next morning to begin another long working day of the overtime slave.

Where is it written in the laws of creation that commands us to work as we do? Does it really make sense that but a few parasites control industrial production and the conditions of that production? It is but a piece of paper that allows a few to own most everything while the many suffer and do without. It is we who grant those special rights to a few to live by owning and having to do no useful work. All that they have we have given them. All that we do not have we have let slip away.

So, what ever happened to the eight hour day? We surrendered it. But the employers need not have the last word on this issue. We can talk to our sisters and fellow workers on and off the job. We can educate and organize and rebuild the Wobblies, the Industrial Workers of the World. We have that power if will are only willing to use it. And with that power we can recreate the eight hour day movement and finish the work started so long ago. And never again surrendering our demand, "eight hours for work, eight hours to rest, eight for what we will." And when working people have once again won the eight hour day we can then begin to demand the six hour day.