Labor Day 2025 message from IRLE Director Toby Higbie

September 1, 2025

Dear IRLE Community,

With the rallying cry, “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will,” the labor movement of the late 19th century inspired the Labor Day holiday and sparked a strike wave that shook the factories all across North America. The demand to affirm the eight hour working day became a core demand in union negotiations, but it would take more than 50 years to write it into federal law.

“Eight hours for what we will” doesn’t sound very radical. But to enact this demand, working people moved mountains because time is the most precious resource we have in this life. For too many workers today, the 8-Hour Day and the 5-day working week are quaint throwbacks, or cruel jokes. Scheduling software and 24/7 access to email allow employers to make unpaid claims on workers’ free time, a phenomenon researchers aptly call time theft. 

When you don’t love your job–and even if you do–the length of the working day can create a stark trade-off. With just this one life to live, how much time will we give to work, and how much will we keep for family, community, art, learning, democracy, and everything else? That question animated the movement for the 8-hour day in the 19th century, just as it animates union campaigns today that declare “one job should be enough!” That might explain why there was a union election in California almost every working day in 2024, according to our new report on the State of California Unions. 

So, if you get a paid Labor Day holiday, you can thank the labor movement. Whether you use your day off to march with the County Federation of Labor in Wilmington (like me), relax on the beach, or just zone out, claim your time as your own. You deserve it.

In solidarity,

Toby Higbie

Director, UCLA IRLE

Professor of History and Labor Studies

Tobias Higbie is a labor historian, professor of history and labor studies and directs UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, a multi unit research center that advances labor research and education for workplace justice through the work of its subunits — the UCLA Labor Center, Labor Studies, the Labor Occupational Safety (LOSH) and Health Program and the Human Resources Round Table (HARRT).