The Nine-Hour Day: Seattle Carpenters Win Shorter Hours and Wage Hike
After months of negotiation, the city's carpenters have secured a landmark agreement reducing the workday from ten to nine hours while maintaining pay rates, signaling a shift in labor power during Seattle’s boom years.
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.
That Is All the Carpenters Will Toll After April 1.
The carpenters of this city have heretofore worked 10 hours a day. Over two months since at a meeting of the Carpenters' and Contractors' Union it was resolved that on and after April 1, 1893, nine hours should constitute a day's work for carpenters.
In conversation with a journeyman carpenter yesterday it was learned that the wages are to be 40 cents per hour for nine hours and 50 cents per hour for all overtime. It was also learned that nearly all the contractors had agreed to the nine-hour proposition and that its adoption on the 1st of April was practically unanimous.
It was further reported that the carpenter business has been unusually good all winter and that scarcely a week was lost during the wet weather by those who desired to work. In fact, the carpenter business could not be better than it has been in this city for the past year and a half.
This 1893 agreement is a striking precursor to modern labor debates over the four-day workweek and wage stagnation. While today’s workers fight for flexibility and living wages amidst housing crises, these Seattle carpenters achieved a tangible victory in working conditions during an economic depression, proving that collective bargaining could yield immediate improvements even when the broader economy was shaky.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.