The origin of the 40 hour work week.....

[teonanacatl]

I was stumbling around the internet the other night reading about work weeks in other countries and societal structures etc.

To give you an idea hunter-gatherers or foragers spend around 15-20 hours/ week collecting food in order to survive, they spend 40-44 hours/ week when collection, preparation and cooking are all taken into account. Agrarian societies too worked less then 40 hours/ week, and often only half the year, surviving (this link sums it up better than I can):

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html

It wasnt until the industrial revolution that we started working many hours. People flocked to the cities for jobs and would work 10-16hr/day 6-7 days per week in shifts to keep production up.

It was in fact Henry Ford that came up with the 40 hour week. Though it was not decided upon to be healthier for the worker, or to give them more time relaxing or spending time with their family. Ford recognised that in a capitalist society one needs consumers to drive demand, so he gave his workers 2 days off to be good little consumers and workout what you could do with a car/ work out what else their lives were missing.

The notion of 4 days weeks at same pay has been floated a few times with the idea to stimulate economies, more time off = more time to be consumers.

So there you go, your precious days off are nothing more then those who hold your chains letting you put money back into the machine that makes you work.

Marshell Sahlins once described hunter-gatherers as the original affluent societies where people in egalitarian societies achieve affluence by desiring little and meeting those needs simple by the things around them; compare to western man whose wants are great (infinite?) but his means are limited though the gap can be reduced by using industry.

I know which model I prefer, I work random jobs and Im time rich but money poor. Time provides me with many more rewards then money does. Id like a bit more security, my own dependable part time business would be ideal but that is hard to find.

Anyway just thought Id share this as I found it amazing!

Please contribute your thoughts!

Edited January 2, 2015 by teonanacatl

[gtarman]

Cool stuff Teo.

Reminds me of something I saw in the documentary "Stress: Portrait of a Killer", a great watch - you can see it free on youtube, by Robert Sapolsky the stress/primate researcher.

Apparently baboons only need about 3 hours a day of work to get all their caloric needs met. When I heard that I thought, "Gee, here am I working 30+ hours a week to be unhealthy, overstressed, not owning the place I live...and here's this other primate sitting around eating for 3 hours a day with nobody he has to pay rent to, no shitty job, no taxes. Who's more 'highly evolved', really?"

I mean obviously there are a lot of disadvantages to being a baboon as well but it makes you wonder at how "far" we've come.

Edited January 2, 2015 by gtarman

[sascacheuan]

It was in fact Henry Ford that came up with the 40 hour week. Though it was not decided upon to be healthier for the worker, or to give them more time relaxing or spending time with their family. Ford recognised that in a capitalist society one needs consumers to drive demand, so he gave his workers 2 days off to be good little consumers and workout what you could do with a car/ work out what else their lives were missing.

The true origin 40 hour week was this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair

The Haymarket affair was a setback for the American labor movement and its fight for the eight-hour day. Yet it also can be seen as strengthening its resistance, especially in Chicago, where, as historian Nathan Fine points out, trade union activities continued to show signs of growth and vitality, culminating later in 1886 with the establishment of the Labor Party of Chicago.

Henry Ford was only a nazi bastard.

Edited January 2, 2015 by sascacheuan

[teonanacatl]

Haha, yes it does appear that they were pushing for an 8 hour day for a long time and certain trades had managed to achieve it for their workers, the first being Building trades council in 1900. Ford introduced his in 1914 but it was 8 hours x 6 days. In 1922 he introduced 8x 5 days to give a 40 hour week. The first federal law on the issue related to railway workers and was instated in 1919 but it wasnt until 1937 that 40 hours and overtime became a federal law.

So you're right Ford didnt come up with the idea. But I think he was one of the first big businesses to use it, he also doubled wages at the same time. His reasoning was as I stated above. I think it makes a lot of sense too!

[-YT-]

Not sure how much of this is taught in schools these days but is extremely important in understanding the evolution of labor and workers rights etc. Man they had some far out ideas like self organisation ( no bosses ) better conditions & wages/entitlements, for some there was a genuine concern of becoming wage slaves damn socialists although this was without the influence of Marx etc.

The righteous fury with which the unions and labor movement was attacked and ultimately weakend is fairly savage for a "civilized society" strike breakers, state sanctioned violence, agent provocateurs , bias media etc. Still hear fair bit of demonizing oft he unions these days although most aggregates of power can be said to have a percentage of corruption human nature at its best lol. For the most part it would seem in most respects the unions have lost the power they once had, and especially the numbers of members anyway has declined.

It is weird as hell gtarman haha of the two primates it would seem we tend to be more easily manipulated by social mores and language and it is interesting the mechanism within which we have or rather our masters have used to reinforce the new work ethic like religion, status/ wealth etc. Life sure would be different if we were all working half of what we do.

[Slocombe]

40 hours per-week is too much. Two 8 hour days per week per-person (including women), but shorter retirements, is what we should aim for.

Edit: 8 hours not days

Edited January 4, 2015 by BeerAlternative

[etherealdrifter]

balance work and life. let your work be your passion and surely you will succeed because you are working hard at what you love to do instead of some brain dead automatron link in a meat chain hieracchy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGsQUMtq1dQ

^if i could live in perfection, i'd be then zen when hen cluck cluck;/

really awesome freeballing teo. gotta say sassy you have awesome power for art representing life depictions pictures. thank you.

agreed teo. you show us pics of you tinkering at your desk with the wild blue yonder in the background playing with rocks m..."Oooh no, i found a dead critter in my water, why am i sick"....i fully understand that one.

work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work.......ah i'm tired.....work eork eork eork eork eork eork eork eork eork eork eork eork eork eork eork eork eork eork eork.

great topic i'm thuinking like mad over here but i still have no neork response.

[-YT-]

It is interesting and teo did mention agrarian cultures and the medieval ages spring to my mind in terms of the societal outlay, for even those poorly serfs at the bottom where bound to their parcel of land by law and usually the only real way to remove then was with death. Another aspect is the level of artisanship employed has seen a steady decline and along with it the meaning behind it. A good example is weaving thread/fabric & pattern design once held a certain amount of inherent meaning the patterns and designs themselves and the skill of remembering and employing such designs were extremely valuable. Now certainly a large amount of cultural reinforcement is involved here albeit and again this is largely dependent of the society this may not necessarily be a negative connotation if the reinforcement involves the true cost/impact/value of the product/procedure being utilized.

40hrs does seem kinda breezy compared to the 12/14hr day in day out work we have lumped onto the developing nations

[-YT-]

Quite an interesting and deep history to consider. In regards to the loss of artisanship and the rise of industrialization along with the progressing automation/large scale production - compartmentalization and divison of labor were seen as key behavioral aspects which increase productivity whilst weakening the workers, especially in terms of bargaining power. Skilled workers could unite and demand improved conditions or strike and cost the business even more in lost profits, dividing the labor into smaller specialized roles lessening the overall skill level needed and placed most in precarious positions of employment where basically anyone could twist a nut onto a bolt or whatever. In todays world we basically have the evolved form of thus where extremely low skilled jobs in production and factory line are usually low cost, low wage, poor condition type scenarios and more often then not these are filled by the lower stratum of society in the developing nations mostly regional farmer family's.

During and after the Second great migration of African Americans from the south to the northern citys and towns around 1940 to the 70s most men were working in manufacturing and production type jobs which were well payed and afforded good lives and prospects for familys relative to the climate of the still freshly remembered history of treatment in the south. When the manufacturing sector started to move offshore and many jobs where lost there occur interesting correlations, obviously poverty & crime increased significantly but especially around the time that liberation movements were gaining momentum (60s) heroin flooded the ghettos and again crack in the 80s decimating communities till this day but also it involves another labor control mechanism in prison labor and the probationary controls upon release extremely curtail many employment opportunities. The initial loss of economic self determination/gainful employ for whole sectors of communities along with education and other factors & continuation of such really doesnt bode well for the want of a healthily functioning society.

Power dynamics in regards to the managerial class, cultural reinforcement i did mention think protestant work ethic or status via commodity & education/propaganda, Nonemployment as in bullshit jobs/unjobs where they are kinda basically meaningless outside the cultural paradigm and the personal and cultural effect these have are all worth further thought

Edited January 9, 2015 by -YT-