3 ms·

We went from "six days thou shalt labour" to the 5-day week for a number of reasons. Unions were one reason, Henry Ford was another [1][2]. His original argumen

We went from "six days thou shalt labour" to the 5-day week for a number of reasons. Unions were one reason, Henry Ford was another [1][2]. His original argument was that if we give workers an extra day of leisure time, there'll be more demand for leisure products to consume - like, you know, Model T cars. Then, Ford noticed that his new 5-day workers were so much more productive per hour than before, that it more than made up the difference for the extra hours not worked. So I'd have two criticisms of your "X-20%" figure. The first is that just because individual workers are only in 4 days a week, doesn't have to mean the factory only operates 4 days a week; indeed a lot of steel factories do some kind of shift work anyway because firing up a furnace from cold is hugely inefficient. Sure, that means more heads total and so more HR expenses than if everyone worked 5 days, but I don't think it adds up to the 20% you quoted. Secondly, as in Ford's case, the extra productivity you get this way might be enough to more than offset the losses, and even increase your profits. [1] https://www.morningbrew.com/sidekick/stories/history-five-day-work-week https://www.morningbrew.com/sidekick/stories/history-five-da... [2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/american-workweek-history-explained https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/american-... (But note, the claim that moving to a 5-day week was a pay cut needs some context. The 5-day week started in 1926. But in 1914, Ford already doubled his workers' wages from $2.50/day (which was already not bad by the standards of the time) to $5/day, almost unheard of at the time - though initially with strings attached [3] which were later removed. So working 5 days a week at Ford's factory could well have still brought in more net pay a week than 6 days a week at a competitor in 1926. [3] https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/henry-ford-implements-5-per-day-wage-this-day-in-history https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/henry-ford-implements-5...

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>Secondly, as in Ford's case, the extra productivity you get this way might be enough to more than offset the losses, and even increase your profits. Henry Ford's revenue boost firstly came from his improvements to automation and innovative highly optimized production line assembly processes, not because le let his workers work 5 days a week instead of 6. It was those innovations that allowed him to reduce the numbers of worker hours needed while get same productivity levels or higher, not vice versa as they didn't just magically come from working his workers less but from innovations to production lines efficiency. Workers working less was a consequence of that, not the cause.
- esafak 3y ago
  And while productivity has steadily risen since then, we still work five days/week.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Shareholder returns have also never been higher. Coincidence?
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Why should shareholder returns be so high when we could all work less? That is where the productivity wage delta is going: shareholder returns.
- red_admiral 3y ago
  I think we're agreeing more than we disagree, but I'd point out some sections from the 2005 IGDA post on work in the games industry a.k.a. "reaction to ea_spouse" at https://igda.org/resources-archive/why-crunch-mode-doesnt-work-six-lessons-2005/ https://igda.org/resources-archive/why-crunch-mode-doesnt-wo...: > Ernst Abbe, the head of one of the greatest German factories, wrote many years ago that the shortening from nine to eight hours, that is, a cutting-down of more than 10 per cent, did not involve a reduction of the day’s product, but an increase, and that this increase did not result from any supplementary efforts by which the intensity of the work would be reinforced in an unhygienic way. This conviction of Abbe still seems to hold true after millions of experiments over the whole globe. This was written 1913, about the time when Ford's automation was just getting going - the "many years ago" and the fact that Abbe died 1905, shows his studies were referring to a time before Ford's production lines and efficiency gains. > That output does not rise or fall in direct proportion to the number of hours worked is a lesson that seemingly has to be relearned each generation. In 1848, the English parliament passed the ten-hours law and total output per-worker, per-day increased. In the 1890s employers experimented widely with the eight hour day and repeatedly found that total output per-worker increased. In the first decades of the 20th century, Frederick W. Taylor, the originator of “scientific management” prescribed reduced work times and attained remarkable increases in per-worker output. This too is from a pre-Ford time. So I would reply that while Ford's innovations might have compounded any gains from shorter working hours, such gains have been found in many other places and times. indeed, the IGDA summarises their evidence by saying "five-day weeks of eight-hour days maximize long-term output in every industry that has been studied over the past century".

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

>Secondly, as in Ford's case, the extra productivity you get this way might be enough to more than offset the losses, and even increase your profits. Henry Ford's revenue boost firstly came from his improvements to automation and innovative highly optimized production line assembly processes, not because le let his workers work 5 days a week instead of 6. It was those innovations that allowed him to reduce the numbers of worker hours needed while get same productivity levels or higher, not vice versa as they didn't just magically come from working his workers less but from innovations to production lines efficiency. Workers working less was a consequence of that, not the cause.

esafak 3y ago
And while productivity has steadily risen since then, we still work five days/week.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Shareholder returns have also never been higher. Coincidence?
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Why should shareholder returns be so high when we could all work less? That is where the productivity wage delta is going: shareholder returns.
red_admiral 3y ago
I think we're agreeing more than we disagree, but I'd point out some sections from the 2005 IGDA post on work in the games industry a.k.a. "reaction to ea_spouse" at https://igda.org/resources-archive/why-crunch-mode-doesnt-work-six-lessons-2005/ https://igda.org/resources-archive/why-crunch-mode-doesnt-wo...: > Ernst Abbe, the head of one of the greatest German factories, wrote many years ago that the shortening from nine to eight hours, that is, a cutting-down of more than 10 per cent, did not involve a reduction of the day’s product, but an increase, and that this increase did not result from any supplementary efforts by which the intensity of the work would be reinforced in an unhygienic way. This conviction of Abbe still seems to hold true after millions of experiments over the whole globe. This was written 1913, about the time when Ford's automation was just getting going - the "many years ago" and the fact that Abbe died 1905, shows his studies were referring to a time before Ford's production lines and efficiency gains. > That output does not rise or fall in direct proportion to the number of hours worked is a lesson that seemingly has to be relearned each generation. In 1848, the English parliament passed the ten-hours law and total output per-worker, per-day increased. In the 1890s employers experimented widely with the eight hour day and repeatedly found that total output per-worker increased. In the first decades of the 20th century, Frederick W. Taylor, the originator of “scientific management” prescribed reduced work times and attained remarkable increases in per-worker output. This too is from a pre-Ford time. So I would reply that while Ford's innovations might have compounded any gains from shorter working hours, such gains have been found in many other places and times. indeed, the IGDA summarises their evidence by saying "five-day weeks of eight-hour days maximize long-term output in every industry that has been studied over the past century".