And it took a bunch of labor strikes with brutal crack downs on them to even get to this point.
What are the chances
Submitted 1 month ago by Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/5d479bd7-d3bf-4369-888c-cd325238b3d3.jpeg
Comments
bricklove@midwest.social 1 month ago
Darleys_Brew@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Henry Ford implemented the 40 hour week cause it made people more productive. Not cause he was a nice guy.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Minimum wage too. “Wait a minute, consumers and employees are the same people. If they’re broke how are they going to buy my stuff?”
dragonfucker@lemmy.nz 1 month ago
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.
merc@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
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.
dragonfucker@lemmy.nz 1 month ago
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.
Blooper@lemmynsfw.com 1 month ago
Nope. 40 each minimum to pay the mortgage.
Fucking kill me.
Snowclone@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Go read about the whites first contact with Polynesians, they literally stumbled on utopia and HATED it. They were FURIOUS these naked people surfed and sang and danced all day and farmed for about 15 seconds and had more food then they ever needed. They literally never heard about work, they had dance crew battles and picked their leaders by if they could do any cool tricks on the waves.
tomfoolagain@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
You sparked my interest, so I did go read about it. I didn’t find anything like what you explained though. Do you have any sources?
Snowclone@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Idk, you might need a library, or a Somoan over 40 to get the info.
absquatulate@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Weren’t polynesians a bunch of warrior tribes that pretty much hunted some pacific birds down to extinction and when they got their hands on gunpowder weapons one tribe pretty much obliterated every other tribe?
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Pretty sure it was the surf utopia thing.
Snowclone@lemmy.world 1 month ago
You can’t lump them all together there were very different outcomes of multiple islands and cultures.
BootyEnthusiast@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
This didn’t happen
gofsckyourself@lemmy.world 1 month ago
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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.
Rachelhazideas@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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’.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
feminism: how women can get exploited too
iglou@programming.dev 1 month ago
Plenty of countries where 35-40h/week, or even less, is the norm
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Be glad you weren’t born 100 years earlier with a 100 hour work week.
Olgratin_Magmatoe@startrek.website 1 month ago
myrmidex@belgae.social 1 month ago
Or be sad you weren’t born 10.000 years earlier with a 15 hour work week.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Personally I’d prefer to not get eaten by a cave bear.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
be glad you weren’t born on a desolate island surrounded only by sharks and inhabited only by poisonous food
point is, don’t compqre yourself to the worst alternative. labor hours spiked around 1800-1900, but were significantly lower before and after that.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’m aware of that. I read referring to this particular period. Earlier times may have had fewer working hours but had their own drawbacks, not just cave bears.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Coulda been born on a planet of ants that just work until they die.
Darleys_Brew@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Ants are working together for the same goal though. Fuck this “can’t complain cause others have it worse” attitude.
MangoCats@feddit.it 1 month ago
See: AntZ by/with Woody Allen.
AlexLost@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Ants get shit done. Humans can barely function when you get more than 2 dozen of us together.
buttnugget@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Why is this sub committed to undoing all of the good work that was done on reddit? This should not be a screenshot.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 1 month ago
buttnugget@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Even though you gave me reddit lowbar, I’ll reply in earnest. Some of the great progress that was made on reddit was things like banning images of text, banning shower thoughts like “this water is warm”, and greatly limiting low effort garbage commenting and bot spam.
LambdaRX@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
You didn’t end up here, but you are a product of this environment, and “you” couldn’t be born anywhere else.
witchybitchy@lemmy.world 1 month ago
anthropic principle go brrrr
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
exactly this. i suspect that in any parallel universe with god, there comes a time of enormous stress right before the eternal paradise that awaits behind it. that is because we have to be waken up, and that can only be done through a rough time.
so, in a certain sense, the current circumstances of long work hours aren’t so much avoidable as it is an unavoidable part of history that we have to go through. As such, “we” are the consciousness that carries us through these difficult times.
cosmOS@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Alan Watts go brrr
LeTak@feddit.org 1 month ago
I hate the random black pixel in the down left corner. Go away, leave me alone!!!11!
hakunawazo@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Treczoks@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Hey, it could be worse, we could have landed on Carboby-16, which has an 80h workweek.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Yeah but we didn’t end up on the one with giant alien spiders, thank god
Fleur_@aussie.zone 1 month ago
Could’ve lived in the galaxy where this meme was white text on a black background
saltesc@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Mine’s 35. 40 is illegal unless you’re a medical doctor. And legally I have to be paid overtime for every minute over but it’s my choice.
jaybone@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
That’s bizarro world. Here doctors work like 6 hours a week. Unless golf counts as work. Which it might now, there’s probably an executive order about that somewhere.
Mac@mander.xyz 1 month ago
Make no mistake: This planet did not have a 40hr work week until we brought it here. We only have ourselves to blame.
On top of that, as another comment points out, the 40hr work week is the improvement on the system.
We really fucked itspunow@lemmy.myserv.one 1 month ago
Damn bro just solved the Fermi Paradox with a Dilbert punchline
kameecoding@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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.
DiskCrasher@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It’s the best our stupid species could come up with after 200,000 years.
AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world 1 month ago
To be fair it used to be 60
LodeMike@lemmy.today 1 month ago
100% actually.
queermunist@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Imagine living in a world without being voluntold to do overtime every week.
LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Welllll the 40 hr work week is based off our 24 hour days and some planets have much longer than 24 hours in their day. So realistically some planets could have 60 hr work weeks. Plus we have no idea the governmental structure and ideology of other worlds and if they even allow you to stop working at all/you’re worked to death or if they have such an advanced society that you don’t even really have to work much at all.
Basically, this is kinda dumb.
my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 1 month ago
Sort of, but but really. You’re right that historically the daylight hours set an upper limit on the amount of work that can be done per week for most types of work, but that limit is far higher than 8 hours over 5 days. The 40 hour work week is based on unions fighting for a 40 hour work week. If it wasn’t for the unions you’d be working all day every day except Sunday, for religious reasons.
That might change over the next few decades too, the current fight is for a 4 day work week and studies are showing promising results there.
LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Unions are absolutely why we have 40 hour work weeks I wasn’t saying otherwise. Just that because of how our day works 8 hours of work was what people fought for. If we had days that were 48 hours things could be different and people could have fought for 10 hours days.
The point isn’t about how our work week works though, it’s about how dumb it is to assume that other planets wouldn’t have possibly longer work weeks.
umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
[deleted]griff@lemmings.world 1 month ago
spare the change you wanna have in your pocket
jaybone@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
spare the tire you want to change in this world
Anamnesis@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I have a 40 hour work week. And two more jobs than are ten hours work per week. And I need to do these, or I don’t have health insurance and can’t afford my rent.
tio_bira@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I wish it was only 40 hours
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
Daaaaaaamn this is fire. Rhetorically.
the_q@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
It’s a simulation. The nothingness of space is used as an isolation barrier to keep us feeling important. Just another guard rail to keep the experiment going.
smol_beans@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Since when do we have a 40 hour work week? I don’t know anyone who works only 40 hours
Sauerkraut@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
Some European countries have a 40 hour work week maximum (volunteered overtime is allowed).
The US is still living in the 1800s when it comes to labor rights so we don’t have the freedom of a living wage for 40 hours of work.
Etterra@discuss.online 1 month ago
Well given the low likelihood that any of them have intelligent life the fact that you’re able to ask means the chances are probably 100%
eezeebee@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Image
Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
Lol. I had these guys beat in terms of hours, and their job was no wear near as physical as mine was.
Now I get to be a desk jockey, and it’s fucking sweet. Gonna milk it, because I put my hours in.
Mac@mander.xyz 1 month ago
Milking the fuck out of mine. It’s not quite a usual “desk job” but i spend a lot of time sitting at a desk.
eezeebee@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Thanks for having a sense of humour about the meme. I’m also a desk jockey. Be sure to stretch frequently and take care of your back! The tension has a way of sneaking up.
cRazi_man@europe.pub 1 month ago
40 hr work week would be great to be honest.
hOrni@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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.