Bains commented on the song and the labor movement it is based on:
"In all the discussion around the cost of living and economic realities the last few years, I've kept hearing "40 hours a week" in public discourse, particularly from people in power, and have thought how out of step that is - how difficult, if not impossible, it is for so many of us to make it on only 40 hours a week of work. That ideal of the eight-hour day and two-day weekend was fought for and won by working-class people around the turn of the last century against all odds and the powers that be - bosses, politicians, talking heads.
And now, over 100 years after that battle was won, and almost 40 years after country songs like Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" and Alabama's "40-Hour Week (For a Livin')" were seen as celebrations of hardworking Americans, we are living in a time where 40 hours' worth of wages is woefully insufficient to get by in this country for the average person, and where the powerful tell us that working only 40 hours a week is slacking off (while their average employee's work ethic puts theirs to shame, no less).
These are the exact same conditions that our ancestors faced over 100 years ago. This song is a celebration of those heroic movements of working people coming together to demand their fair share, from coalmines to warehouses, from textile mills to offices, from farms to restaurants. Angela Davis says freedom is a constant struggle, and this is a hymn to those whose spirits and bodies remain in that struggle."
Listen below:
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