Sean Scalmer, "A Fair Day's Work: The Quest to Win Back Time" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)

About this episode

Sean Scalmer discusses the history of Australian worker struggles for a fair working day and the implications for contemporary work-life balance.

Australia has a special place in the history of struggle for a Fair Day's Work. In giving a history of Australian worker struggles over the length of the working day, Sean Scalmer historicises things that might otherwise seem universal and stable, including time, leisure and productivity. Decades before any attempt by Australian timekeepers to standardise time, Scalmer shows that some of the earliest working-class activism in Australia was focused on the nature of time and the meaning of leisure. For what was the movement for the eight hour day, inspired by British activist Robert Owen, except for a battle over the ownership of time and the virtue of recreation? The length of the working day and the challenges of work–life balance are pressing issues for many people, 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. Tracing 150 years of campaigns for rights and for the fair distribution of productivity gains, historian Sean Scalmer shows how these movements successfully reduced the length of the standard working week…

People in this episode

Host: Marshall Poe

Guest: Sean Scalmer

Topics covered

• Australian worker struggles
• history of time
• work-life balance
• eight-hour day
• industrial achievement

Keywords

• Fair Day's Work
• working hours
• leisure
• productivity
• industrial laws

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Simon and Schuster

Places: Australia

More episodes of New Books in Australian and New Zealand Studies

• Tania Sengupta and Stuart King eds., "Reclaiming Colonial Architecture" (Routledge, 2024) · June 9, 2026 · 56 min
• Geraldine Fela, "Critical Care: Nurses on the Frontline of Australia's AIDS Crisis" (UNSW Press, 2024) · June 3, 2026 · 39 min
• Many Cultures, One Hope: Cultural Competence in the Uniting Church with guest Reverend Seforosa Carroll · June 1, 2026
• Cultural Competence Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All: Talking culturally responsive teaching with Dr Remy Low · May 31, 2026
• “You Sound So Australian”: From Being Read to Rewriting the Room with guest Zindzi Okenyo · May 30, 2026
• Mia Martin Hobbs, Carolyn Holbrook⁠, and Joan Beaumont, "Challenging Anzac: Stories That Don't Fit the Legend" (NewSouth, 2026) · April 25, 2026 · 1h 2m