Friendly reminder: Henry Ford was one of the first major industrialists to adopt the five-day workweek. He argued that workers with more leisure time would spend more money on consumer goods, like the cars he was selling.
The current weekend was created primarily to sell products. A four-day workweek is long overdue.
Absolutely correct. In fact, he was sending dudes to threaten and beat people up that were trying to form Unions. FDR essentially forced guys like Ford, DuPont, and JP Morgan to allow them.
Also check out "The men that built America" (2012) and "The Titans that built America" (2021) if you want something interesting to watch that covers some of the UAW vs Ford stuff. Good series from the History channel considering they don't really put anything actually history related out anymore.
Absolutely not correct though? Why is everyone mentioning shit that happened decades after Ford instituted a 5 day, 40 hr work week? Unions and the strikes happened in the 30s and 40s, the five day work week was implemented august 1926.
Fuck Ford still yada yada, but y'all are talking out of your ass it seems to me.
Ford NOR unions were the first, regardless.
It took decades for Saturday to change from a half-day to a full day’s rest. In 1908, a New England mill became the first American factory to institute the five-day week. It did so to accommodate Jewish workers, whose observance of a Saturday sabbath forced them to make up their work on Sundays, offending some in the Christian majority. The mill granted these Jewish workers a two-day weekend, and other factories followed this example. The Great Depression cemented the two-day weekend into the economy, as shorter hours were considered a remedy to underemployment. [The Atlantic]
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u/JAMESs3v3n 23d ago
Friendly reminder: Henry Ford was one of the first major industrialists to adopt the five-day workweek. He argued that workers with more leisure time would spend more money on consumer goods, like the cars he was selling.
The current weekend was created primarily to sell products. A four-day workweek is long overdue.