{"id":341693,"date":"2017-12-30T13:35:47","date_gmt":"2017-12-30T12:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/what-happened-to-the-40-hour-workweek\/"},"modified":"2017-12-30T13:35:47","modified_gmt":"2017-12-30T12:35:47","slug":"what-happened-to-the-40-hour-workweek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/what-happened-to-the-40-hour-workweek\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happened to the 40-Hour Workweek?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_98615\" style=\"max-width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-98615\" src=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/12\/Screen-Shot-2017-12-28-at-10.10.51-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"344\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Adam Rubock | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>As 2017 winds down, it\u2019s important to remember that this year marks the 200<sup>th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary for the call for a 40-hr workweek for laboring people.\u00a0 The\u00a08-hour day movement involves not only\u00a0changes in the workweek, but the struggle over class power. \u00a0Turning points in this history of the workweek outline the reconfiguration of modern capitalism:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>1817 \u2013\u00a0Robert Owen, a successful Welsh manufacturer, labor-rights activist and founder of the utopian community of New Harmony, believed in dividing the day into three, equal 8-hr parts \u2014 \u201cEight hours labor, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>1869 \u2013\u00a0At a time when workers put in 12 to 14 hrs a day of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org\/pages\/1381.html\">work<\/a>, 6 days a week, Pres. Ulysses Grant issues a proclamation\u00a0guaranteeing an 8-hr workday without a decrease in pay, but it only applied to government workers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>1926 \u2014\u00a0Henry Ford implemented a 5-day, 40-hr workweek for workers at his auto manufacturing company; he reminded his fellow robber-barons, \u201cIt is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either lost time or a class privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>1930 \u2014 As the Great Depression was raging, the cornflake magnate W. K. Kellogg introduced the 6-hour workday at his factory in Battle Creek, MI.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>1940 \u2014\u00a0Congress amended the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act that limited the workweek to 44 hrs, or 8.8 hrs per day, to 40 hrs, 8 hrs per day.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>1970 \u2013 Minneapolis Federal Reserve reports the average workweek was&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2017\/12\/29\/what-happened-to-the-40-hour-workweek\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by Adam Rubock | CC BY 2.0 As 2017 winds down, it\u2019s important to remember that this year marks the 200th\u00a0anniversary for the call for a 40-hr workweek for laboring people.\u00a0 The\u00a08-hour day movement involves not only\u00a0changes in the workweek, but the struggle over class power. \u00a0Turning points in this history of the workweek [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-341693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}