Unions WA presents: From the 8 Hour Day to the 4 Day Week - An evening with Sean Scalmer
Event Details
March 19, 2026 at 5:30pm - 7:30pm
Level 6, CSA Centre, 445 Hay St Perth 6000
Join us for a special evening with Author and Historian Sean Scalmer, hosted by our friends Unions WA!
The length of the working day and the challenges of work-life balance are pressing issues for many Australians, as well as lively matters of public controversy. While the winning of the eight-hour day is celebrated as a past industrial achievement, contemporary discussions of working hours often overlook its rich history.
Sean Scalmer’s important book, A Fair Day’s Work: The Quest to Win Back Time, traces 150 years of campaigns for rights and for the fair distribution of productivity gains, shows how these movements successfully reduced the length of the standard working week from 60 to 38 hours per week, and how economic, social and political shifts since the early 1980s have stalled this long-term progress.
Today, industrial laws provide inadequate protection for excessive hours, and Australian women increasingly shoulder long hours of paid work with the bulk of unpaid domestic labour. This has produced a social crisis for all Australians, but is yet to inspire adequate political action.
As debate over our working lives intensifies amid ongoing political, economic and technological challenges, Scalmer’s critical and timely book on the history of work and play affords us a way to understand the past so we can win back our time – collectively.
As ACTU President Michele O’Neil puts it:
‘Sean Scalmer has done the movement a great service with this book. It is an invaluable contribution to the struggle of working people to reclaim their own lives from the incessant demands of those employers who would claim more and more of our time for their own.’
We invite you to join UnionsWA, CPSU/CSA members and peers from across our movement, as Sean and others discuss strategies around the campaign to limit labour time and win family and leisure time for Australian workers at this free event.
Copies of A Fair Day’s Work: The Quest to Win Back Time will be available for sale at the event.
About Sean Scalmer
Sean Scalmer is a professor of history at the University of Melbourne and a fellow of the Academy of Social Science in Australia.
He researches the history of social movements and democracy, considering both the national history of Australia and transnational and comparative histories.
He has written seven books, including the prize-winning On the Stump (2017), Gandhi in the West (2011), Dissent Events (2002) and The Little History of Australian Unionism (2006).
Register to attend by clicking the button below!
Event Contact
UnionsWA
e:
ph: (08) 6313 6000
