Thursday, April 20, 2006

Eight Hour Day: ABC Radio 2 part program

When stonemasons walked off the job on the site of Melbourne University on 21 April 1856, they were among the first in the world to achieve the 8 hour working day.

Others before them – in Sydney and New Zealand – had paved the way, but it was in Melbourne, then a boom city fuelled by the Gold Rush, that the idea really took off and quickly spread across Australia, laying the foundations for what was to become one of the strongest trade union movements in the world.

Stonemason’s prize winning float

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