cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12307563
A UK study shows work intensity remains lower and job satisfaction is higher during a four-day workweek.
The majority of companies in the United Kingdom that took part in the world’s largest study trialling a four-day workweek have made the policy permanent, with 100 per cent of managers and CEOs saying it had a “positive” impact on the organisation.
Some 61 organisations took part in the six-month pilot in 2022. The trial results were announced on Thursday with 89 per cent of companies still using the four-day workweek a year later and over half of the firms making the change permanent.
The study also showed that work intensity remains lower and job satisfaction is higher than before the pilot began with almost all the employees (96 per cent) saying their personal life had benefited, and 86 per cent said they felt they performed better at work.
Ford wasn’t responsible for the forty hour week - the modern equivalent would be describing the fight for fifteen as an initiative pushed by Amazon. Amazon only raised warehouse pay because they saw the writing on the wall.
Politifact seems to think this attribution of the forty hour week is a conservative meme https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-image/does-8-hour-day-and-40-hour-come-henry-ford-or-lab/ but it doesn’t really reflect the truth. Ford’s policy change also only happened two years after Woodrow Wilson was elected and a big policy debate in that election had been Teddy Roosevelt’s endorsement of a 40 hour week.
Wikipedia has a pretty solid breakdown of the history of the 40 hour week and the foundations for the change were laid decades to a century earlier by various labor movements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day