The idea came from a British guy called Robert Owen in the 19th century. It was a huge step forward in workers rights seeing as it was fairly normal for factories to work from sunrise to sunset to try and maximise their output.
Typical working hours were 10-18 hrs a day 6 to 7 days a week
I’m not saying I love working 8hrs a day and modern society can definitely do better but this was a positive step forward in history and should be celebrated… celebrated isn’t quite the right word but I hope you get what I mean
Yeah, anyone calling the creator of the 40-hour work week “Satan” is obviously ignorant of the history of labour.
As you said, we can definitely do better, but at the time it was (quite literally) revolutionary.
Yup, we need to get 6 hour 4 days a week now, so people in 2100 can call us satanic for wasting so many hours working.
Appreciated for what it was at the time. I get you.
Reminded me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo
It is more made to debunk the idea that capitalism has given humanity more leisure time. But relevant here too because makes the case that historically people worked even less than the ‘typical’ week we have today.
It makes me wonder if the reason we mostly feel like working 40+ hours is too much is because people really don’t seem to have worked that much until the industrial age.
I really liked that video. I’m always cautious of stuff like this, which can easily become a fallacious appeal to history, but I think this video effectively avoids that territory. Like, it’s useful to consider how things used to be different and how things became this way, without presenting the former as a solution for the latter.
100% agreed - there is a lot of garbage on youtube and it can be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
150 years ago some guy made advances in workers rights, and the best way we can honor him and that accomplishment is by never making another advance in workers rights! /s
I know that isn’t your point, and I agree we shouldn’t demonize him without bothering to know the context, but I couldn’t help thinking this as a response.
Yeah, the tone of this tread is, “everyone needs to be more greatful.”
The cruelty of the 19th century does not cancel out the cruelty of the 21st century.
I absolutely agree we should show gratitude, and I think the best way of showing gratitude is saying “this is no longer enough”
Whoever invented the eight hour five day work week is Satan.
Unions. Unions won the five day eight hour workweek after heavy, sometimes bloody conflicts with employers. Before that it was common for workweek to be 10 or 12 hours.
Too many people are ignorant of the role Unions played in American history. I assume they were brought up in places where the GOP controls the schools.
I was actively taught in high school that “unions were nice, but not necessary any more, they get in the way of all our very cool free trade!”
Obviously, my thinking on that has changed a whole lot, but both my partner and I got fed that kind of rhetoric straight out of text books.
I’m guessing teacher unions weren’t a thing where you were raised.
Before that it was common for workweek to be 10 or 12 hours.
10-12 hours per day*, dangerous typo
Fixed
Technically, if your shift is long enough and timed properly, you can have daytime going in and coming out.
God bless unions. Now can they negotiate a four day work week?
The bad news is their power has been systematically eroded for a long time. The good news is they’ve made a bit of a comeback in the last couple of years. Hopefully this trend continues.
Grieved something recently and won a 3K payout and a workload change. It was great.
And no weekend. Basically almost your entire life would be working
Keep in mind that once upon a time it was 6 days and 14 hours per day.
Keep in mind that before that, people worked much less in winter and still less than today in summer
Admittedly, they were completely at the mercy of disease, herd migration, had no plumbing, buried astounding numbers of their children, were not the apex predator, didn’t have mattresses and when injuries happened they often healed poorly and painfully.
And if I worked less hours in my office job, all that would return?
Your office job is incompatible with the pre-agrarian lifestyle you described earlier.
You don’t get modern luxuries AND the minimal hours required as a hunter gatherer, just as I can’t get the speed of my car AND the cardiovascular benefits of my bike simultaneously.
He’s not talking about “pre-agrarian;” even medieval peasants got more time off than we do today.
That’s mostly a silly meme that’s been seized upon.
When they worked, it was from dawn to dusk doing hard labour. And if the harvest wasn’t good, they died because the Lord took his tithe regardless.
And that’s not to mention the household labour, all of which we take for granted (consider chopping wood every time you wanted heat, mending clothes or the ridiculous process of cleaning them.) Or looking after farm animals etc. The only stuff that’s counted in that 150 days silliness is working the land which was only a portion of their real labour.
Can you provide a citation for that, please?
With an ebike you can! 25mph (more if you jail break it) And all the pedaling your heart desires!
You can have both! Our insane productivity rises in the past century SHOULD have allowed us all modern luxuries and like half the current working hours. Corporate greed has robbed you of that while wages have stagnated
You’re a crab in a bucket and so wrong.
If you need to work to afford to live, you’re being lied to about what’s possible for a healthy and functioning modern society to thrive.
Don’t forget that in order for capitalism to stay alive, it requires poverty, manufactured scarcity and obsolescence.
You should question why billionaires even exist in what you consider to be a just and modern society. You should also look up a visual representation of just how much larger 1 billion is from whatever your gross annual income is if you still think it’s reasonable that they do exist.
You okay? I wrote about pre agrarian societies and you went with a semi hinged rant about capitalism and billionaires?
If you meant to respond to my point though, I’m super curious how you think a society where almost everyone spends their work time getting food ALSO develops the luxuries of modern life, like a washing machine. Everyone work 2 jobs? That seems pretty against the whole free time thing. So, uhhh, help from Aliens or Jesus?
Your post was a view point that we couldn’t work less while maintaining modern conveniences and luxuries, at least that’s how it’s coming across.
If your point was simply that in pre-modern times they didn’t have what we have today and that it was due to working too much for sustaining life to develop, then ok I guess. Maybe I misread the thread. The main post was about the fact we’re working too many hours in our current society though so… yeah.
That’s much debated, actually.
Labor unions are the Satan to which you are referring. Labor unions brought you many infernal things: the weekend, lunch breaks, paid vacation, social security, minimum wage, FMLA, 8-hour work days, OSHA, sick leave, child labor laws, etc.
Satan indeed!
They originally wanted a 4/4 work week.
“They”? Which shop? When? Was that part of contract negotiation/positioning or an actual demand?
Under my last labor union we had mandatory 10 hours days so yeah unions are so great
Yeah you’re right, I guess all the gains they’ve made don’t matter because of your shitty experience. Thanks for your wisdom.
You’re 23 and live with your dad. What shop are you a member of that was enforcing 10-hour work days?
Yeah whatever bro, my dad IS a labor union so you don’t know what you are talking about
🤣
The guy who made the 8hr/day 5day/week schedule was a saint
That’s was unions
Call me a devil’s advocate, but Satan was pretty based in this case. Also have you seen the advocates for God? They kinda suck
You’re not wrong. Isn’t Satan’s whole schtick questioning the authority? Asking what could be different? Sounds pretty based
What a shitty take. Go learn what the normal conditions were BEFORE the 8/day 5/week standard.
Just because things were worse in the past doesn’t mean they can’t be better in the future.
You are very right, it’s just that saying “whoever invented the thing that’s better than what was before is Satan” is kinda unfair to be people who fought for the 8/8/8 system. The focus should be onto whom hinder or even regress progress
Yeah, a better sentiment would be “whoever is still demanding that we work the 8/8/8 system in the current economy is Satan. Our forefathers fought to improve working conditions, we should fight too”
But the text specifically says the person who made the last big improvement is bad for having done it.
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The title does, but yeah technically it isn’t in the post.
“what a shitty take, dont you know that before when i was being trafficked for labor i was physically abused DAILY?”
this u rn.
Is anyone going to tell them what it was before?
Greetings from Scotland, I’d gladly take a 40 minute workday 🤣
I waltz in one minute before my shift every day. Not working for free.
I had to bitch slap my ostensible boss with this when I first started my current job. He tried to tell me that he thought it would really be “best” if I showed up approximately 30 minutes before my scheduled start time. I responded him flat out that if he wanted me there half an hour earlier, he should schedule me to be there half an hour earlier. Alternatively, you could try biting my feathered ass. I know which one is bound to get you better results.
I clock in when I get here, I get paid for the time I’m here. This ain’t no charity.
I am now VP of the company. Make of that what you will.
… Feathered?
Are you really? How marvelous for you, and good for you for not putting up with it!
My CW shows up 1-2 HOURS early for NO reason at all as hers is a registration job and there is nobody there to register at 630 am. Drives me around the bend. She gets paid nothing for it and acts like a big martyr but how is that my problem? I show up, do my job and leave on time every day.
I have a coworker that always says she ‘feels bad’ when it’s slow and there’s no work to do. I straight up told her we also get paid to be available just in case there’s work to do, not just to do it. I’ve also caught her clocking out and just sitting there waiting when it was the worst of covid a couple years ago and there was nothing to do for like 3 hours. We work in an office, it’s how the job goes sometimes.
She’s older and a propagandized republican corporate shill. It’s unfortunate really.
That’s a bit similar to mine. During COVID lockdown she had very little to do and yet she still came in 2 hours early. I think some people have no life but work, but it reflects badly on us who just want to do our shift and go home.
I’ve also caught her clocking out and just sitting there waiting when it was the worst of covid a couple years ago and there was nothing to do for like 3 hours.
Should’ve reported the violation to the Department of Labor so that HR would be forced to chew her out for being too much of a corporate whore.
What? Here in India it’s 12 hrs a day 7 days a week. One paid holiday per year, For the new year
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/07/india-debate-on-70-hour-workweek-illegal-or-road-to-greatness.html
Indians currently work an average of 47.7 hours a week — higher than the U.S. (36.4), the UK (35.9), and Germany (34.4), according to the International Labour Organization.
Infosys founder Narayana Murthy recently sparked a controversy on social media when he said young people should be working 70 hours a week to boost India’s economy.
Perhaps it’s common for the workweek to be that long in the informal economy, but the official data at least doesn’t reflect that.
Is it really? By God.
In factories at least
2 shifts of 12 hours each.
People working 12 hours earn about 24k INR per month
Working 8hr /day earn about 12k INR per month but the work is unskilled. ( Cleaning and stuff )
That’s unreal.
I live above the arctic circle, please don’t make me work 24/7 during the summer since the sun is always out.
I’d love the part where I wouldn’t have to work November through January though.
I don’t do it anymore, but I used to LOVE working overnight. No one around, I could get everything done, and I still had time for errands.
I wouldn’t want to work straight from Nov to Jan though
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No wonder more people went to church back then
I don’t want my work day tied to length of sunlight in either direction. But I do want a four day work week!
And in 50-70 years someone can make an internet post about how people wanting a 4 day work week were satan
Rather, “whoever invented weekends was a genius.”
Yeah, I try to be grateful for the progress we have made, given that labor used to be even more exploitative than it is now. Still, we have miles to go.
I am not a religious person, but I’m sure that 40 working hours per week is not even close to what is attributed to Satan.
