Sewer Workers Strike for Eight-Hour Day
Laborers on a Twenty-ninth Avenue sewer project successfully force a return to the eight-hour workday against contractor pressure.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The first move in the campaign which the local labor unions have been planning to fight for the observance of the eight-hour law on public works was made yesterday. Nearly 100 men employed on Contractor Riley's sewer contract on Twenty-ninth Avenue and Madison Street struck through the manipulation of the local Federal union for an eight-hour day and won. Riley had tried to go back to the nine-hour day again. Members of the Federal union, employed on the job, succeeded in getting the rest of the crew to quit work. Riley found that he could not procure men to take their places at this busy season of the year and decided in the morning to once more install the eight-hour day. Riley has been paying his men from $1.75 to $2.25 a day. The men struck yesterday, however, not for wages, but for shorter days. The Federal union is figuring on leasing 100 tents with cooking utensils and sending the strikers on this sort of work to the hop fields to make a living until the local contractors decide to be good.
“The men struck yesterday, however, not for wages, but for shorter days.”
The struggle for the eight-hour workday was a massive labor issue in the early 1900s. Today, these same streets see different labor disputes, but the fundamental friction between contractor profit and worker health remains constant.
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