I have become a zombie.

This semester, I am teaching eight classes for four colleges at all hours, 8 a.m. till whenever the hell I get home on Friday nights, and Monday through Saturday. Then I have the kids to tend to ? five of them (and even when they are grown I still have to do their taxes or rescue them from broken-down cars), the dog to walk, the cats to spray with water so they don?t run out the door, and when it?s all done, to talk about ?The Trek Within? when there?s nothing left within but a screaming need to sleep! I am the walking dead.

This is an issue that really never seems to have been addressed on any version of ?Star Trek.? Whenever there is discussion about the shifts people work on the Enterprise or Deep Space Nine, the thinking is in the 20th-century terms of people working shifts of eight hours or longer.

I have always wondered why, in 300 or 400 years, human society wouldn?t progress to demand less work time out of people and to allow more leisure time. Presumably, with more time and labor-saving technology, people would have more leisure time to pursue other interests, relationships, spend time with families, sleep, and play.

The eight-hour work day, and the five-day work week, both of which are in danger of being lost in the United States and other industrial or post-industrial societies, and still not achieved in many other countries, were hard-won changes in working conditions that people literally died fighting for. The movement for the eight-hour work day had its roots in the Industrial Revolution, spurred on by horrid working conditions for men, women and children in virtually every industry.

The average work day for industrial workers ranged from 10 to 16 hours per day, and workers were generally expected to work seven days a week. We still see this in third world countries. Hell. We?re seeing it make a comeback in the United States.

In the 1880s in the United States, the movement for the eight-hour day took hold, leading to massive strikes and demonstrations nationwide. At the 1884 convention of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, The Federation (the predecessor to the American Federation of Labor) called for a movement to win the eight-hour workday, which would culminate with a nationwide general strike on May 1, 1886.

On that day, workers all over the United States struck and demonstrated. The largest demonstrations took place in Chicago, where 80,000 workers took to the streets. The rallies and strikes continued, and on May 4, 1886, during a rally in Chicago?s Haymarket Square, a bomb was thrown into a crowd of police closing in on the demonstrators, killing a police officer, and others died in the pandemonium that followed.

Seven strike leaders, Including Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer and George Engels, were arrested and put on trial for the bombing, even though there was no shred of evidence connecting any of them to it. It was even admitted by the prosecution that they knew Parsons et al had nothing to do with the bombing, but had to be executed to make an example of those who would dare challenge the system and the people in power.

Three of those arrested spent time in prison, while Parson, Spies, Fischer, and Engels were all hanged on Nov. 11, 1889. Eventually, all the Haymarket martyrs were pardoned by Gov. John Peter Altgeld, who also spent much of his life trying to clear the names of these men.

The Haymarket martyrs, among many others, died to win an eight-hour workday.

Since then, there has periodically been movement by unions to shorten the workday and workweek. In some workplaces, the workday is seven hours, five days a week, while there is movement to have a six-hour workday or a four-day workweek without cuts in pay.

In some instances where we have seven-hour workdays, the workday is still longer, because lunchtime occurs, unpaid, for anywhere between thirty and sixty minutes in the middle of those hours. That is time most people can?t use to go home, take care of family, or do much else in, lengthening the workday.

A shorter workday and workweek is still a goal for most unions and worker organizations. It?s been part of a continuing effort of working people to be able to support themselves and raise families at the same time, because even when we have an eight-hour workday, once commuting and lunchtime and sleep are accounted for, it leaves scant time for doing things with our children, doing laundry, preparing meals, going to the bank, the doctor, the supermarket, or a thousand other things we?ve got to do.

Considering how over-extended so many people are in the early 21st century, I find it disturbing that in a future so full of positive changes, we would still be working the same godawful eight-hour day or longer.

Don?t even get me started on the Enterprise officers being physicians or engineers while commanding the ship at the same time. It?s time for me to call it a night and leave my fifth job behind for now so I can prepare for my first job. Or the second one ?

You can?t really feel it if you?re a zombie.

Robin Brownfield is a staff writer for Airlock Alpha writing out of New Jersey. She can be reached at rbrownfield@airlockalpha.com.