In 1884 trade unions were demanding that work days be reduced from the typical 10-12 hours (6 days a week) down to a maximum of 8 hours. They set a deadline of May 1, 1886. When that deadline wasn't met, they held a peaceful protest in Chicago. On May 3rd, angry striking workers pushed toward some gates to confront strikebreakers / scabs. The police fired on the strikers, killing 6. The next day, there was a rally at Haymarket Square. At night, the police came in force to try to disperse the crowd. Someone threw a bomb at the police, killing one of them and severely wounding others. The police fired on the crowd, and some protesters fired back. At least 4 people were killed and at least 70 injured.
The result of all this, including the unfair trials, executions, pardons, etc. was a lot of attention to the 8-hour workday movement.
In 1890, the unions planned for another strike with the goal being the 8-hour work day. This time, with the help of the second Communist International, it went worldwide. The riot in Haymarket Square in Chicago on May 1 became a rallying cry for workers worldwide, and ever since then that has been the International Workers Day. But, in the US, the fact it was associated with communism was too scary, so the US celebration of Labour was moved to Sept 1st. Instead of International Workers Day, on May 1 the US celebrates (I kid you not) "Loyalty Day" and "Law Day" -- extremely rich given that the thing that kicked it off was a time when there was a bloody confrontation between cops and labour.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
A couple of decades later in the 1910s, as unions continued to push for an 8-hour work day, Henry Ford went with the 8-hour day in his factories, and that was so influential that it eventually became the norm.
The 5 day work week came after the 8 hour day. It was partially the result of Henry Ford deciding that it was more beneficial to give his workers 2 days off. It was also influenced by a cotton mill employing both Jewish and Christian workers arranging work schedules so each group could have its sabbath off. Once Ford made that rule, unions pushed extremely hard to make it a standard thing, but again, it took decades. It wasn't until 1940 that the Fair Labor Standards Act in the US made a 40 hour work week mandatory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend
The point of all this?
The 40-hour work week was never "designed". People fought and died to make it a reality.
People, mostly in unions, frequently communists, fought and died to gradually reduce the number of hours that workers were expected to work. In the mid 1800s the expectation was 6 days a week, 10-12 hours a day. It took decades of fighting to get that down to 6 days of only 8 hours. It took decades more fighting to get it down to 5 days a week rather than 6 or 5.5. It was never something that was "designed". It was something that took decades of battle.
White families in the US after WWII were the first to really benefit from a law which had gone into place just before the US entered the war. Those families benefited from decades of work from labour unions and communists to get the work week down to only 40 hours. Then, the economic boom the US received from being the only major country to come out of WWII with its infrastructure essentially untouched meant that for the first time, maybe ever, working-class families were living relatively comfortable lives. The man in the family went to work for the legal maximum 40 hours, and still earned enough to support a whole family without his wife needing to work outside the home.
What has happened since then isn't that the "designed" system failed. It's that the post-war economic boom ended as other countries recovered. It's that the labour unions got weak, and the capitalists started squeezing again. The 40-hour work week is still theoretically the law of the land. It's just that take-home pay has been stalled for decades as the cost of living has gone up.
Don't get me wrong, workers today still live better than the workers did in the mid 1800s when a work week was something like 60-80 hours. But, because labour unions got weak, and communism was demonized, there was nobody to oppose the owners of capital as they found new ways to squeeze their employees. So, even with a 40 hour week, things have been getting worse.
The history of the 40 hour week is also important because it shows what's going to be needed if people want to work less than 40 hours. People are going to need strong unions. They're going to need to go on strike. They're going to need to get hurt and maybe killed by the cops who will side with the bosses. And, once enough blood has been spilled, maybe there will be reforms. Complaining about it on social media and thinking that we just need to "design" a new mutually beneficial arrangement is missing the whole point.
Very nice write up! Thanks for sharing it and taking the time to write it.
Thank you for continuing this history that the US education system never taught me.
This is a great reminder, thanks for posting.
Thank you putting this together.
I am french and may first is a public holiday, but I'm ashamed that I didn't know from where it came.. Thanks for the write up!
De rien. I knew the Haymarket riots were connected to May Day, but I didn't know the full history until I read a bit more. Apparently a distant relative of mine was one of the anarchists who were blamed for throwing a bomb at the police.
Thanks for writing this out!
This should be it's own post. Thanks!
And even that was a compromise from just working until you drop. People organized and died for the 40-hour workweek.
Literally got on trains, headed into West Virginia, shot at each other, stormed machine gun pillboxes, and got bombed. If it weren't for those people we'd still be in labor camps
Yeah then women entered the workforce and employers were like, “yayyy! Now we have doubled the labor pool. We can pay people half as much by not increasing real wages for 40 years.”
This is exactly why I liked Elizabeth Warren, she seemed to be the only politician talking about the major issue with tracking "family income" as opposed to individual incomes...
I've been single for the last decade, at this point I know it is permanent. I will never have a second income. I do not enjoy living in someone else's garage as I near 40 years old... Whatever OPs image has to say, I still feel like a complete failure as societal expectations of an "adult" are pretty much everything I don't have.
50 years now. The production/wage split was roughly 1973.
Women fought for their freedom, and the corporations just said fuck it, imprison them all :/
To say nothing of the massively increased productivity of modern workers (who now pay to get "trained" in college, instead of having business train employees on the company's dime).
It's also the death of the Third Places
https://medium.com/illumination/the-death-of-third-places-and-the-evolution-of-communities-5bbffc01c5eI view college as training for dealing with deadlines and some logic practice (e.g. this essay isn't coherent; math exam next Wednesday). I never see people come through the door ready to go... it takes a few weeks before even the most basic tasks can be delegated. Their writing still sucks 90% of the time, and their math is usually shaky (lucky we have automated many steps with computers.)
I agree that the pace at which all this goes is exhausting and more breaks are needed, but the third world is still full of people working overtime to overtake these "professional" jobs that colleges purport to prep workers for. Don't go to an overpriced Ivy League school and take on debt and expect a 20h week... go to a govt sponsored school and be prepared to compete with the remote workers working for the company that is undercutting your employer. Welcome to globalization.
Been saying for a while now, 20hr full time workweek makes a lot more sense.
Since the 1970s productivity has skyrocketed while wages have remained stagnant. If they don’t want to pay us more, fine I guess, but something has to give.
The critical nuance here is that in America, vitally important healthcare services are tied to your full time employment status. Hey, repugnantcons and turbolibs: if you want us to have more babies, might be time to reconsider this policy entirely.
100% agree. One of the best things that we could do for families is to detach healthcare from employment. Employers shouldn't be able to hold that over you.
2 of the 4 guys in my department are only here for the insurance... They suffer with us in the sweltering heat for a job they don't actually need to do just because insurance is so expensive... Another guy is 68 working in the sanding department getting covered in aluminum dust all day just for the insurance...
They make enough for themselves outside of work that they don't even need to be here. It's so disgusting that people are in this position...
This such a huge point that no one in my life besides my fiance and I seem to harp on. Health insurance being tied directly to your employment is fucking dystopian. It absolutely crushes your ability to protest, strike, fight for rights against your employer, etc. because that can jeopardize your access to healthcare. It makes it so you can't even risk leaving a bad situation at work because they give you healthcare and if the grass isn't greener at some new job or a different lifestyle doesn't work out...then there's no guarantee you can get your job back and get healthcare from them.
It's an abusive relationship for them to hold your well-being over your head and restrict what you can do in life so much.
Remember when everyone was getting paid at the start of COVID to not be at work?? Biggest protests in my life happened all over the country for BLM.
Eh, I think 30hr is totally fine. Just make it a 4-day work week and I'll probably get about the same amount of work done.
vitally important healthcare services are tied to your full time employment status
Insurance, yes. And I think that's completely BS, how much or where you work should have zero impact on your health insurance. Your employer shouldn't get to pick it, you should get to pick it. If we can separate insurance from employment, I think workers will be a lot less hesitant to leave crappy jobs...
I used to work 3 12s. Basically open to close 3 days a week at the store I worked at. I miss it so much. I don't care if I have to work long days if it means I get more days off. I had so much more time to work on personal projects due thanks to all the flexibility that provided.
Let's just not have babies. That'll teach em!
We have to be in the office 5 days a week. My boss who is a boomer/late gen X gets annoyed when people aren’t “butts in their seats 9-5”. I’m a Xellenial and really don’t care when my guys are in as long as they get things done. I keep telling him the more rigid he is with time, the more likely we are to lose good people. We’re already on thin ice with 5 days in office and have been losing people. It’s a constant fight that I have to shield them as much as possible from.
In a team meeting I had a while back my lead was talking about making sure we don't get burnout. I asked if our department could trial run a 4 day work week. Their answer was "company won't allow that but if you get all your work done by Friday I won't ask questions if you're not online". Productivity and morale immediately went up. Good leads shield their team from the bullshit thank you
As a software deceloper I struggle to understand that phrase "if you get all work done". That will never be the case for me, because (1) there is always more work and (2) we usually plan in more into a sprint than one can muster. That means we are always moving work from one into the next sprint. You are never done early enough to quit even a quarter of a day early.
My current mid-manager has the same attitude that gets them our respect back, but as long as it's not codified, it's one single useful piece of corruption that'd be taken away if that gets noticed or they'd get replaced. Better to have legit short hours than cuts entirely dependent on someone's will, but we are frustratingly happy eating what occasionly falls from the table. It causes a lot of mixed feelings to say the least.
Xellenial - I like that. I'm also an in-betweener - Boomer and X. It's also called Generation Jones.
Do you feel part of either, part of both, or completely not fitting in with either?
Part of both. My work ethic is closer to that of X, but I very much understand the millennial approach to things. They way I’ve heard that sub-generation defined is “analog childhood, digital adulthood”
Are you me? This fits almost 100% my curent "setup"... Insane.
I really needed this. I live alone and work full time and have chronic illnesses. I struggle to keep up with everything and it drives me absolutely crazy. Idk how people can keep their homes so clean and still have time for themselves.
hey, married people without chronic illnesses can barely manage as two people and sometimes with outside help. idk where you get the idea people have time for themselves. pretty much no one i know does.
you have a lot to sort through and you shouldn't be hindering yourself by being hard on yourself or comparing yourself to some imagined perfection outside.
small chunks, one thing at a time. if you don't have time for something don't worry about it. work on your peace of mind and wellbeing first. getting rid of some dust bunnies won't do much good if it costs you your mental health.
Thank you for the encouraging words. It means a lot. My very messy home is a source of distress in regards to my mental health, unfortunately. I managed to get a couple tasks done yesterday and feel a little better about it. I still have so much to do. It also doesn't help that my pets love to tear things out as soon as I put them away. Little shits are so sneaky.
That sounds exhausting - I’m sorry, I hope you’ll somehow be able to have an easier time at some point.
I'll add to this: it was also from an age where necessities were fairly readily available at basic income levels (in most cities) and through a lifetime you could get ahead and upgrade your house along the way while supporting a family on a single person's income.
Now you can have two people making a decent income and still have issues affording rent/mortgage. Necessities have gone up significantly while stuff like TVs have become cheaper but also shorter-lived.
It comes from a very particular age.
It was after WWII when the US was one of the few countries that hadn't had its infrastructure destroyed by the war. It was also the late 1940s. In the 1930s the New Deal had shifted a lot of power from the rich capital owners to workers, but because of the waning years of the depression and then WWII, nobody had really seen the fruits of that work. Suddenly in the late 40s, the war ended, the US economy was in a huge boom because it was the only place in the world that could still make things, and workers had all kinds of hard-won protections.
This was never going to be sustainable. Eventually the rest of the world was going to rebuild, which was going to result in more competition, and a relative weakening of the US economy. But, the post-war years also saw union power getting weaker and weaker. A significant part of that was that organized labour smelled a lot like communism, which was the scary enemy from the end of WWII to the 90s. So... no communism, no organized labour, nobody to push back on the rich as they consolidated power.
Also, inflation isn't really the issue, it's that workers don't have the power to demand that their wages go up as well. And, of course, with so many workers supporting an anti-union, pro-business party like the GOP, worker power is going to stay near zero.
Are TVs and things really shorter lived? I remember my parents having theirs forever, but I was like 8 years old. Everything felt like forever. That 21" TV that lasted most of my childhood was probably only about six or seven years old when they swapped it out for a bigger one.
Meanwhile as an adult my TV still feels new because I remember paying for it, but it is already 7 years old. And I'm not thinking of replacing it yet.
For computers I had a Spectrum +3 which felt like I had it for a lifetime, but looking at release dates for that and what I replaced it with, I must have used it for 5 years tops, and the same for the Amiga 1200 I replaced it with. Modern consoles have about a 7 year lifespan. They're cheaper too, when you take inflation into account.
Housing is fucked. Although I do think too many people have this weird idea that they need to live in big cities or popular areas. You can live in a smaller place. They have electricity, internet and food. You'll survive.
Having seen a lot of failed tv/monitors I'd say they fail easier since we went lcd. The polarizing films get vinegar syndrome, and the LED lens start popping off from aging adhesive at around 10 years.
Beyond that LEDs start failing because of excessive heat depending on the backlight settings in the same timeframe and when one or two have problems it usually cascades into full failure - or trips a check in the TVs software to turn off the backlight making the TV unusable anyway.
Newer TVs usually have even more complexity and will likely fail quicker IMO.
Capitalism in action, wages will rise to meet bare necessities plus replacement, and fall to that level as well, regardless of productivity levels.
So true. People seem to have convinced themselves that 35/40 hour weeks was some kind of ideal or agreed amount of hours we all found to be the best balance of all things.
Nope, it used to be 60, until people fought back and made them reduce the hours they're forced to work for other people's profit.
The problem is, we stopped fighting back.
It was a measure enacted during wartimes to increase productivity, or at least that's what they said, because it was never rolled back to pre-war even after the US was no longer engaged.
Always beware what they try to slip through under the guise of patriotism and "unity."
40 hour week is a loss for both sides anyway. 32 hour week has superior results.
One thing I like about WFH is that I can do the chores and stuff during the day. Take a break every hour or two is healthy, and using that time to do laundry or dishes or a quick errand means I have a lot more time in the evening and on weekends
Even worse, the entire concept of clocking in and out for ~8-hour shifts comes from factory jobs during the Industrial Revolution. Missing time meant that your station on the line wasn't being manned and was holding up production. While obviously some fields still operate like that, many modern professions are task-oriented and being forced to be physically present for an entire shift is entirely unnecessary.
Super insightful, I needed this today
Ok but how does this improve anyone’s situation?
.
I always wondered what would happen if we had a family wage, instead of a minimum wage. The social and economic implications are an interesting thought experiment.
I've had thoughts along those lines. Like how everything I buy is just something my employer technically spent money on with the indirect expectation I am making purchases to keep myself relatively fit for work. But atomization is capitalism's greatest strength, this economy runs on scapegoats and finger wagging.
Friendly reminder you work more now than your ancestors did before all the innovations we have now, and you get a much smaller slice of the pie for it.
I'm working on downsizing a lot. I have so much bullshit. And people just keep getting me more. Like pls stop. I can't handle it lol
In Capitalism, wages are tied to subsistance plus replacement. This problem can only really be solved via Socialism.
Meanwhile, in Argentina, legislators granted special powers to the president, and now he's proposing extending the work day to 12 hours.
As true ancap would do
You're right, of course, but 🤮
We're seeing the race to the bottom that is inevitable under capitalism, unless there's some form of outside intervention.
When it was the norm for a single person in a household to work, wages had to be sufficient to support a household with a single source of income. Men almost always earned significantly more than women; it was assumed that a working woman was either supplementing income, or not taking care of a household, and it was assumed that a working man needed to care for a household. As women started to enter the workforce in greater numbers in the 50s and 60s, you see household incomes start inching higher; as incomes increase, prices increase to meet the available income. Rising prices leads to more women entering the workforce, because a single income is no longer sufficient to meet the requirements for a household. By the time you get to the late 80s, it's nearly impossible to have a family on a single income. Now a two income household can barely afford to even have an apartment, much less have a family.
Now you have people working a day job, and working gig jobs for secondary income, to 'get ahead'. Eventually that will be the new normal, just what is necessary to keep up with prices.
Without putting capitalism on a very short leash, this is only going to get worse.
What if I have been having an hard time for years
It didn't just happen with COVID... Or are you taking about the last few decades?
But at least I can watch YouTube at work.
At this point you should be watching YouTube at work. Reclaim the time lost at work by any means necessary!
This is why working from home needs to be more normalized. The corporations have made the market impossible to bear unless you have more than one income. Without the ability to work from home (ideally flex hours), then basically your house goes to shit. You don't have any free time if it doesn't.
Your "choice" after putting in a full day of work for enough money to buy a portion of your groceries, is to come home and do everything that your stay at home partner (now, working a full time job), would have otherwise done (basically speed running burnout, any%), or actually relax and accept that your house will always be somewhat messy.
Preach it!
Our company forced us to take 8 hours off every week for the past couple of months. It has been fantastic 😊. Why not make it permanent? C'mon!
Which 8 hours?
I think she could be right...
Bougie psychic, eh?
Weirdly progressive for someone bougie
But the 40 hours work week is already a progressive measure to reduce the weekly amount of work?
If anything, it's the consistent nature of 40 hours for almost the entire year that's the problem. We need actual vacations and periods of rest and time off for other responsibilities.
