In 1886 Chicago, workers who had been working an average of 60 hour work weeks united to hold rallies and strikes known as the Haymarket Affair to get an 8 hour work day instated. These rallies were broken up by police, who shot and killed one of the demonstrators. The workers returned the next day to continue the strikes, and when the police arrived to disperse the crowd again, a bomb was thrown at the police, killing one and mortally wounding six officers. Gunfire was then exchanged, killing four workers, and by the end wounding at least 70 people. 

130+ years ago these were the measures taken by our ancestors to fight for a 40 hour work week. This was the response from workers who were forced to work 60 hours a week. That's how important it was. 52 years later, in 1938, congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, forcing employers to pay workers overtime pay for work over 44 hours, and later over 40 hours in 1940. It took at least 52 years to even get our employers to pay us more for overtime. But even now, 80 years after the FLSA, although we get paid overtime, your employer can still force you to work a 60 hour week, and if you refuse they can simply fire you. Today we do nothing. We simply accept that "this is the way it is, employers have all the power". Even during a global pandemic, when we should all be doing our best to limit interactions, our employers call for mandatory overtime, and we simply accept it. 

It's time to stop accepting it. We believe mandatory overtime should be abolished. Voluntary overtime is not only acceptable, it's gratefully welcomed. For those workers who desire, we should have the opportunity to work as many hours as we wish, as long as we get paid overtime pay and we're working safely. But for many workers, the schedule we choose is the schedule we want to work, nothing more, nothing less. If an employer finds the need for more workers, they should call for voluntary overtime, hire more workers, have temporary workers on standby, offer more incentives for voluntary overtime such as double pay rather than time-and-a-half, or simply tell their customers that due to increased demand their orders will temporarily take a bit longer to fill. Figure something out, but whatever the circumstance, workers who signed up to work a 36 hour week should not be forced to work 60 hour weeks with the threat of losing their job otherwise. 

I work at an Amazon in Ohio, so that's where I'm starting. I hope if I can get enough of our workers to sign onto this cause we can abolish mandatory overtime at our facility first. But Amazon is a huge company with huge reach, so if it starts here with one facility, I'm sure it'll spread. My hope is that we can make this a national law. My hope is that we can achieve a huge win for workers worldwide that we've been fighting for since the industrial revolution.