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When the 40 hour workweek was invented, most workers had a wife at home to do chores. Now that women are working, we should all be working 20 hours a week.
That’s absolute bullshit. When the 40 hour workweek was “invented”, men were working 12 hour days in factories and their wives also worked. The wives sometimes worked in factories, often worked as domestic servants for richer people, or did home-based work. Home based work was often laundry or cooking for other people, not just their family. They’d sometimes also finish goods that were produced in a factory. Both partners were working 12+ days. And, while women did most of the home cooking and cleaning, it wasn’t as though that’s all they did.
This system ended because the workers used their power and went on strike. The result was the Haymarket Affair and is the reason that most countries, other than the US, celebrate a worker’s day on May 1st. The striking workers were attacked and beaten by the cops, and then because a bomb was thrown at a cop, the leaders of an anarchist group were rounded up and hanged after show trials.
Eventually the striking workers got what they were working for: an 8 hour day. But, it took decades after the Haymarket Affair for it to happen, and it wasn’t something that happened because everyone agreed it made sense. It was a long and bloody fight where that was the compromise that reduced the bloodshed.
If you want a 20 hour work week, join a union, prepare to go on strike and prepare to be beaten by the cops.
The capitalist economy did fine in the 1950s when the women were so bored they had to put random things in gelatin. Nothing bad would happen if we switched to a 20 hour workweek.
The US’s incredible levels of prosperity back then was essentially a unique period of time created by extremely specific circumstances (i.e. the US was THE superpower, and the primary economic force on the planet for decades). There’s a reason the ‘baby boom’ happened then. It was literally a unique slice of world history.
It is unrealistic to expect to ever return to that level. Comparisons between now and then are all disingenuous for that reason.
Instead of framing the changes we want to make in terms of ‘but we had X back then’, they should simply be framed in terms of what improvements are beneficial, feasible, and sustainable, in the present.
Drag thinks the economy would get more like that if the average person worked less like they did back then.
40 hr work week would be great to be honest.
So how fucked are You? 40h is actually quite a lot for Europe. In Poland I work 40, in Ireland I worked 39 and in Denmark 37.
Canada checking in with 37.5.
But let’s be honest working through lunch eveyday it’s actually 42.5
I work a flat 40 with paid breaks. Canada too, but it’s a union plant.
That’s the trick. Don’t work through lunch. Leave the building if it’s unpaid.
Just some important history, the 40 hour work week was developed as a labor concession in the automotive industry.
Most workers rarely work only 40 hours, especially when you include the on-call time when employees are expected to respond to call messages and emails.
Maybe we need to learn something from our grandparents and have another movement for 40-hour work weeks.
Men were able to work 40 hours back then because women were relegated to unpaid domestic labor and childcare.
When women entered the workforce, these expectations were slow to change. So now, everyone gets to work 40+ hours and a few dozen more at home. And that’s the best case scenario where both partners shared the mental load. Bonus points if they have a kid which is a 24/7 job.
In a sane world, with double the people working you would expect their hours to be halved. But that will never happen so long as corporations continue to disguise the exploitation of workers as ‘feminism’.
Be glad you weren’t born 100 years earlier with a 100 hour work week.
Maybe I am getting old and I read somewhere that as you get older you tend to become more politically conservative or maybe I am a workaholic, but complaining about the 40 hour work week comes off to me as being entitled fucking cunts.
If you don’t want to work 40 hours a week then don’t, give up some stuff in your life and you can do it, or don’t, but then stop whinging.
