Eight-hour work days and 40-hour weeks are the standard working duration that employees are supposed to put in today, though reports suggest that a significant percentage works overtime to a great extent. However, this structure is relatively modern as in the 1890s, the manufacturing employees worked as much as 100 hours a week!

Right from our childhood, we are modeled in the job industry pattern with the 8-hour school duration that gets us accustomed to working eight set hours a day. The primary reason behind this is to use the natural rising and falling body energy patterns in such a way that we could be our most productive while keeping in sync with our body clock. Moreover, working for a long time without adequate breaks reduces one's productivity and increases stress.

This kind of a pattern that bases part or all of the salary on the number of hours an employee works rather than how much he works, makes us focus more on the total time denoted to the work rather than noticing how productive we are during that time.

How Henry Ford helped change our work hours

At the time of the Industrial Revolution, eight-hour work days were not heard of as the factories needed to be tended to all the time. So, employees worked around 10-16 hours a day. On September 25, 1926, Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford made a groundbreaking change by being one of the first significant companies to change his work policy to 40-hour weeks with five working days, with no change in wages.

However, the industrialist did not do it for his employee's comfort or to safeguard their health. His concerns were more capital oriented. He realized that if companies were to make a profit, customers needed to buy things; and in order to want to go shopping, customers needed to relax and enjoy themselves. For this, they needed more time off work.

In a 1926 interview to a magazine, World's Work, Ford said: "Leisure is an indispensable ingredient in a growing consumer market because working people need to have enough free time to find uses for consumer products, including automobiles."

"It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either 'lost time' or a class privilege," Ford stated.

In early 1914 as well, with increasing unrest and unemployment, Ford announced his male workers a payment of 5 dollars for every 8-hour work day when earlier, the rate was set at 2.34 dollars for a nine-hour work day. More than doubling the employee salary shocked the other industrialist but made production boom and instilled a sense of company pride in the Ford employees.

The decision to reduce the number of working days in a week from six to five had originally been taken in 1922.

Edsel Ford, Henry's son and the president of the company was noted by the New York Times as saying: "Every man needs more than one day a week for rest and recreation...The Ford Company always has sought to promote [an] ideal home life for its employees. We believe that in order to live properly every man should have more time to spend with his family."

So, Henry Ford implemented this move not for any scientific reason, but rather to increase consumption. His step, however, inspired many across the world and soon almost all manufacturers adopted the Monday-Friday workweek.

History of standardized work hours

The US government started to track workers' hours in 1890 and were shocked to find the average employee functioning in 100-hour workweeks. Various labour unions were already trying to get the government to pass a law that would mandate a work day of eight hours

'May Day' was in fact the result of a massive strike that took place in Chicago when on May 1, 1867, the Illinois Legislature mandated the eight-hour work day through a bill, which many employers refused to follow

On May 19, 1869, President Ulysses S Grant proclaimed standard eight-hour workdays, but only for government employees. This upped the hope for private employees as well and the fight raged on, with demonstrations continuing on every May Day to bring awareness to the problem

The Haymarket Affair took place on May Day, 1886, when 300,000 workers turned up for a national strike which resulted in altercations between the police and protesters. Many were wounded or killed

Two major printing firms implemented the eight-hour workday in 1906

The Congress passed the Adamson Act on September 3, 1916, which established eight-hour workdays for interstate railroad workers

In 1926, Ford Motor Companies adopted a five-day, 40-hour workweek for its factory workers, and later, its office workers as well

The Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act for a 44-hour workweek in 1938, following it with an amendment two years later, where the duration was shortened to 40 hours

On October 24, 1940, the eight-hour day and 40-hour workweek finally became a standard practice in various industries across the world

Main image: fineartamerica.com

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