Eight-hour day

The eight-hour day is a labor standard limiting ordinary paid work to eight hours per day. It became a central demand of the labor movement and a basis for legal working-time limits.

Robert Owen: A Welsh social reformer and industrialist who advocated shorter working hours and improved factory conditions. Owen popularized the slogan dividing the day into eight hours each for work, recreation, and rest.
Working time: Time spent at an employer’s disposal or performing work, as defined by law or agreement. The eight-hour day is one way of setting a normal limit on working time.
Labor movement: Collective organizations and campaigns through which workers seek improved wages, conditions, and rights. The eight-hour demand helped unite workers across trades and countries.
Ten-hour workday: A schedule in which a normal workday lasts ten hours. It represents the longer daily limit that earlier reform campaigns sought to reduce.
Ten-hour movement: A nineteenth-century campaign to limit the working day to ten hours, especially in Britain and the United States. It pursued a shorter day before eight hours became the movement’s defining demand.
Overtime: Work performed beyond a defined normal schedule, often subject to additional pay or restrictions. Overtime rules determine what happens when work exceeds the eight-hour standard.
Trade union: An organization of workers formed to represent their shared interests in employment. Unions organized strikes and negotiations that made shorter working days attainable.
Six-hour workday: A work schedule that limits ordinary paid work to six hours per day. It pushes the same daily-hours principle beyond the eight-hour standard.
Haymarket affair: A violent 1886 labor protest in Chicago followed by a bombing, deaths, and controversial trials. The events became closely associated with the campaign for an eight-hour workday.
Forty-hour workweek: A standard full-time schedule consisting of forty working hours across a five-day week. It commonly translates an eight-hour day into a weekly norm.

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