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The Working Life Collection

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Trade Union Banners
Early in 1856, Melbourne stonemasons won their campaign to have their working day reduced from ten to eight hours, on the grounds of the intensity of the Australian heat, and their need for time to improve their 'social and moral condition'. On 12 May, other skilled building workers joined them to celebrate the 'eight-hours' gain' by marching south through central Melbourne behind a banner declaring 'Eight Hours' Work, Eight Hours' Rest, Eight Hours' Recreation'.

The gain of the eight-hour day was an astounding international precedent, contributing to Australia's emerging reputation as a 'workingman's paradise'. The Eight-hour Day processions, subsequently held on 21 April, became an annual ritual and soon colonial Melbourne's biggest annual procession. It reached its peak just before World War I, when tens of thousands of spectators watched 13,000 'eight-hour men' march.

Large trade union banners provided the major spectacle in these processions. Mounted and carried behind horse-drawn carriages, they offered visual lessons in contemporary industry and union history. One side of each banner usually depicted the elements and conditions of the trade, including the materials, tools and skills required to carry it out, while the other side was symbolic, recalling the ancient lineage and ideals of the trade. The Argus report of the procession in 1915 brings the occasion to life:

Eight Hours Day dawned with a raw wind and a threat of rain. The faint booming of drums from the Trades Hall kept the waiting people happy and hopeful, looking down the street whence swept majestically the first banner, its colours subdued by the distance, and led by the professional musicians. The first notable banner was that of the timber-workers, drawn by white horses, gaily decked, followed by a good muster of workmen. The coopers and furniture trade unions followed, and then came the carters and drivers, with banners of a very handsome design, upon which the chief device was a golden horseshoe on a silver background. The banner of the painters and decorators was in a florid style, one of the best designs in the procession. Leading the tinsmiths were two knights in shining armour, they gleamed like animated tinware booths. [Argus, 27 April 1915]

During the 1910s an especially large number of Victorian unions commissioned banners, and the Museum holds most of those which survive from the period.

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