From The Point: IEU member’s link to the fight for the eight-hour work day

On this day, 21 April, in 1856, stonemasons in Melbourne downed tools and walked off the job in protest over their employers’ refusal to accept their demands for reduced working hours.

This brought the employers to the negotiating table and led to an agreement whereby stonemasons worked no more than an eight-hour day.

It was the first of a long, hard-fought series of union victories that led to Australia having some of the best working conditions in the world by the early 20th century. The following article was published recently in The Point to celebrate Labour Day in March.

IEU member’s link to the fight for the eight-hour work day

Instrumental teacher Fiona Jenkins has a reason to take a keen interest in the Labour Day holiday in March which celebrates Melbourne Stonemasons winning the eight-hour working day in 1856.

Her great-grandfather, Augustus Julius Freinick, played a key role in the ongoing union push to extend the eight-hour day beyond the building trades. Though the landmark 1856 win is rightly remembered, initially only a minority of workers won the entitlement, and the fight went on for decades.

As the National Museum of Australia states, “Most workers, including women and children, generally worked longer hours for less pay”.

“The fight for working conditions continued throughout the 19th century. It was not until 1916 that the Eight Hours Act was passed in Victoria and New South Wales.

“It would not be until January 1948 that the Commonwealth Arbitration Court approved a 40-hour, five-day working week for all Australians.”

Augustus Freinick, far left, in 1901.

Augustus was one of the workers who kept up the fight, being awarded a gold medal at the 47th Eight-Hour Day Convention in 1903 to mark his contribution to the movement.

It was a brave and significant stance considering the exclusion and prejudice he faced.

Augustus was born in 1863 in Osterode, then a small town on the south-western edge of what is now northern Poland.

When Augustus was three years old, Osterode was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia.

Augustus' parents, Johann Freinick and Wilhelmine Teichert, spoke German, but had Eastern European parentage.

“The fervent nationalism that followed Napoleon the Third's defeat in 1871 meant that Augustus grew up in a society that viewed his family as outsiders,” says Fiona.

“Augustus decided to leave what was now Germany in the hope of building a life in a new country where his Eastern European name wouldn't be a hindrance. He had visited Australia as an able seaman in 1883 aboard the Fawn and must have decided that this country was the right place to start a new life.”

Augustus migrated to Australia in January 1886.

He married Annie Furneaux Pople, a girl from the Bellarine Peninsula, in 1891 and they lived in South Melbourne, raising two sons and two daughters.

Augustus became a cable-tram driver and was “keenly aware of the class divide that was then apparent in Melbourne society”.

“He wanted to improve the lives of his fellow workers and joined the eight-hour day movement, giving many hours to the cause.”

The couple brought their four children up in a worker's cottage at 459 Coventry Street, South Melbourne.

The Freinick family, circa 1907.

Unfortunately, Augustus suffered discrimination at the outbreak of war in 1914 due to his German accent and Germanic-sounding name. 

Despite this hardship, Augustus' son Ernest Garland Freinick enlisted in the Australian army in 1916 at the age of 18. 

Fiona says Augustus’ children were proud of their father's commitment to improving the lives of workers in Australia and her grandmother, Dorothea Freinick, kept an archive of photographs and documents relating to her father's life. 

“Grandma always remembered the eight-hour day poem:

‘Eight hours to work,

Eight hours to play,

Eight hours to sleep,

Eight bob a day.

A fair day’s work,

For a fair day’s pay.’”

Augustus’s naturalisation paper, 1891.