26/10/2025
Thank you Samuel Parnell for reminding us that working shouldn’t consume our lives.
There has certainly been many times through the years where the work consumed us as we grew from just one physio to the business we are today. Being a small to medium businesses owners is hard work. You wear many hats until you get to a point that you can afford for someone else to wear that hat for you.
But we have done our best to take time to rest. To be with our kids. They’ve been on this journey with us, spent ours at work with us, learned that owning a business does take time from you all all times of the day and week. But we’ve also done our best to show them that work should be a means to an end not all consuming.
That we still have time to play and make memories and that making those memories doesn’t have to cost the earth. Bush walks, sun rises, time with family, bike rides and camping.
Happy Labour Day everyone.
See some of you tomorrow.
Labour Day - Samuel Parnell says “Yeah Nah” to 14 Hour Work Days
Each October, New Zealanders mark Labour Day with a public holiday. But few may recall the origin of this celebration, a quiet international revolution that began in of Wellington in 1840, thanks to a resolute carpenter named Samuel Parnell.
Parnell arrived in Pōneke aboard a migrant ship from London, where long working hours were standard and few questioned them. On board, he met George Hunter, soon to become the first Mayor of Wellington. Upon arrival, Hunter asked Parnell to construct a store on Lambton Quay. Parnell agreed, but on one very important condition, he would work no more than eight hours a day.
“We have twenty four hours per day given us,” he argued, “eight of these should be for work, eight for sleep, and the remaining eight for recreation and in which for men to do what little things they want for themselves.”
Hunter noted that such an arrangement was unusual, certainly not the practice in London. Parnell replied smiling, “We’re not in London.” Owing to a shortage of skilled tradesmen in the colony, Hunter reluctantly agreed.
Parnell made it his mission to promote the eight hour principle for all newcomers to Aotearoa, greeting arriving ships and urging workers to demand the same. In October 1840, a public meeting of workers in Wellington agreed to standardise the eight hour day. Any deviation, they warned, would be met with collective resistance, including, reportedly, threats of being thrown into the harbour!
The principle was later reinforced by a strike in the Hutt Valley in 1841, when road workers refused to accept longer hours.
Today, Labour Day stands as a testament to a simple but powerful idea, that work should not consume all of life. It is a legacy born not in legislation, but in the conviction of a single man unwilling to give up his evenings.
When Samuel Parnell died in his Cambridge Terrace home in December 1890, thousands of people attended his public funeral. He is buried at Bolton Street Memorial Park, where the man who once defied a 14 hour day now rests in well earned peace.
