How the 40-Hour Workweek Dies
The 8-hour workday is a gray-haired remnant of the past
The 40-hour workweek is a gray-haired remnant that has overstayed its welcome. Even though people are more productive than ever before, we still spend a ludicrous amount of our lives working.
Yes, sometimes credited to Henry Ford, who streamlined the 40-hour workweek in the USA by dividing his factory workers into three 8-hour shifts, the concept of an 8-hour workday is significantly younger than him.
The first person to establish a 40-hour workweek was likely king Philip II of Spain, who passed into law an 8-hour workday for factory workers back in 1593. Yet, it wasn’t until the industrial revolution of the 1800s that social reformers and protesting workers started actively demanding human working conditions. As the 1900s greeted us good morning, many countries began to establish laws for 8-hour workdays.
Revolutionary at the time, no doubt, as many people would spend virtually every waking hour working before these reforms came. However, since the early 1900s, the world has changed considerably, yet the hours we work haven’t.
We are more efficient than ever before
The UK Office for National Statistics has collected data on worker productivity since…
