May 1st reminds us - working hours are too long

May 1st is a Workers’ Holiday in many countries. It began as a harvest holiday. It became formal after tough strikes in 1886 in Chicago, for the 8 hour day. May Day should give us pause for thought about how long our working hours are. Between them, Kiwi men and women spend an average 62 hours a week at work. There is no legal limit on weekly working hours in New Zealand. Only four other developed countries have no limits.
The deep recession should also give us pause. There is much less work around. To preserve existing jobs, the National Government has extended the nine day fortnight scheme to firms with 50 or more employees, taking it down from the 100 minimum before. Well done. Shorter working hours would also share work around.
Long hours have a huge impact on family life, separating men, especially, from their children. Kiwi men work the second longest average weekly hours in the developed world, after the UK. Many women are working to boost family income because they have no choice, when their kids are young. These days we have many kids who are often ‘home alone’. Throw temporary, agency and migrant work into the mix and we can see social problems being created daily. Families are under pressure and the loss of income in the recession hits hard as well. Decent pay is essential, too.
Long working hours are damaging to health as well as to family life. May 1st makes us reflect and so, too, does our own Labour Day. It also commemorates the struggle for an eight-hour working day. New Zealand workers were among the first in the world to claim this right when, in 1840, the carpenter Samuel Parnell led the fight for the eight-hour day in Wellington. Labour Day was first celebrated in New Zealand on 28 October 1890.
Another milestone in the fight for shorter hours came with the Blackball miners’ strike in 1908. Blackball was the birthplace of the New Zealand Labour Party. Its foundation followed the 1908 miners’ strike to reduce hours of work. If we are to have a healthy society and families which spend time together, then working hours must be reduced. There needs to be much better social support provided for working families with young children. Otherwise we will reap an even worse whirlwind of social problems.