Can you cite that first claim? I've frequently seen leftist labour activists claim unions are responsible for the concept of a weekend. But that's not true, an

Can you cite that first claim? I've frequently seen leftist labour activists claim unions are responsible for the concept of a weekend. But that's not true, and it makes me doubtful about all claims of supposed union "wins". Wikipedia talks about the history of the weekend. It starts by observing that a day of rest is a feature of society for millenia and has religious roots. Then it says: The present-day concept of the relatively longer 'week-end' first arose in the industrial north of Britain in the early part of the nineteenth century[1] and was originally a voluntary arrangement between factory owners and workers allowing Saturday afternoon off from 2pm in agreement that staff would be available for work sober and refreshed on Monday morning.[7] The Oxford English Dictionary traces the first use of the term weekend to the British magazine Notes and Queries in 1879. A voluntary arrangement between factory owners and workers? Doesn't sound like unions. In America: In 1908, the first five-day workweek in the United States was instituted by a New England cotton mill so that Jewish workers would not have to work on the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.[9] In 1926, Henry Ford began shutting down his automotive factories for all of Saturday and Sunday. Unions only appear on the scene after this point. In 1929, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America Union was the first union to demand and receive a five-day workweek. The rest of the United States slowly followed. There's no mention of workers being murdered anywhere in this history, and in fact it's pretty clear that weekends were happening even without unions. If left to their own devices, companies will exploit workers. Google is a classic counterexample. It has been left entirely to its own devices and has spoiled its workforce rotten. Now it's in such a state it can barely fire people who aren't even working at all. This is the least exploited workforce in history. If anything from the outside, it looks like the workforce are busy exploiting the management.