cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12307563
A UK study shows work intensity remains lower and job satisfaction is higher during a four-day workweek.
The majority of companies in the United Kingdom that took part in the world’s largest study trialling a four-day workweek have made the policy permanent, with 100 per cent of managers and CEOs saying it had a “positive” impact on the organisation.
Some 61 organisations took part in the six-month pilot in 2022. The trial results were announced on Thursday with 89 per cent of companies still using the four-day workweek a year later and over half of the firms making the change permanent.
The study also showed that work intensity remains lower and job satisfaction is higher than before the pilot began with almost all the employees (96 per cent) saying their personal life had benefited, and 86 per cent said they felt they performed better at work.
They said a 5 day work week was a pipe dream but strong unions and literal lives were lost to bring that about 100 years ago.
If we did it once we can do it again. Lasting change is slow but if we keep pushing change can happen. On a long enough timeline we win.
I’m fairly certain the uprising and purge of the royal family in Russia had more to do with our current work week than any union did.
Violence and bloodshed won us our (non permanent) rights.
The history of the forty hour week stretches back a lot further than WWI and unions are a lot more powerful than you’re giving them credit for. Now, unions have a good portion of that power because violence is never fully off the table - but the blood spilled for American labor rights was mostly spilled by Americans at the hands of Pinkertons. A lot of other countries saw the writing on the wall and adopted those rights peacefully, but there are a lot of famous labor actions that happened in places other than Russia. The toppling of the Tzar certainly helped, but I think you’re giving it too much credit.
I may be off the mark here, but did Ford not cite what happened over there as the reason he adopted the 5 day work week, thus making it mainstream in America?
Ford wasn’t responsible for the forty hour week - the modern equivalent would be describing the fight for fifteen as an initiative pushed by Amazon. Amazon only raised warehouse pay because they saw the writing on the wall.
Politifact seems to think this attribution of the forty hour week is a conservative meme https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-image/does-8-hour-day-and-40-hour-come-henry-ford-or-lab/ but it doesn’t really reflect the truth. Ford’s policy change also only happened two years after Woodrow Wilson was elected and a big policy debate in that election had been Teddy Roosevelt’s endorsement of a 40 hour week.
Wikipedia has a pretty solid breakdown of the history of the 40 hour week and the foundations for the change were laid decades to a century earlier by various labor movements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day