It takes exactly 365.256 days for the earth to orbit the sun.
That's science.
But you know what's not science?
The 8-hour workday, the 40-hour workweek-- those are policies.
And especially because of the last few years,
they're starting to change.
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In 2021, a California congressman
introduced legislation that would
reduce the standard workweek from 40 hours to 32.
No, it's not a new law.
But this isn't a new idea.
It actually goes all the way back to at least
September 1956.
That's when Richard Nixon told a Colorado audience
that a 4-day workweek was in the not-too-distant future.
No surprise here.
Most US employees are into the idea
of working fewer days a week, though three out of four
do say they need to work longer hours to get everything done.
But some research shows that cramming more hours
into fewer days can actually accelerate employee burnout.
The 8-hour day has a pretty incredible history.
As you probably know, people used to work more--
a whole lot more.
But starting in the United States, that began to change.
Here's sociologist Juliet Schor.
If you look historically at trends in work time,
the US led the way in work time reduction
among all other countries throughout the 20th century
and actually even a little bit earlier.
But we were the first to get a 6-day week.
We were the first to get a 5-day week.
If you worked in a factory in the US in 1890, on average,
you worked 100 hours a week.
That's over 14 hours a day.
The work?
Grueling.
Tuberculosis?
Everywhere.
In 1847, New Hampshire adopted a 10-hour workday law.
Pennsylvania followed in 1848.
In May of 1867, Illinois tried to move to an 8-hour day.
They passed a new law, but it was pretty much ignored.
By the way, the anniversary for that 1867 law
is commemorated every year as May Day, also known
as Labor Day, celebrated every September across the US.
But then, in 1914, Henry Ford announced two things--
that he would double workers' wages to $5 a, day
and that he would cap that workday at eight hours
as long as you met certain guidelines.
Those were the rules.
Even so, the impact was huge.
I mean, this was Ford.
Other companies soon began to follow Ford's example,
and then the whole country got the 8-hour day in 1938
when President Roosevelt signed the Fair Standards Labor Act.
That's the law that would change if HR 4728 ever
gets enough support to come up for a vote.
Trials of 4-day workweeks over the past few years
have been happening around the world,
and they've yielded some interesting results.
For example, in Iceland, researchers
noted that some men participating
in the 4-day workweek trials were more likely to start
taking on household chores.
What about the other tens of thousands
of workers who've been taking part in these 4-day workweek
trials?
It turns out that a lot of them are sleeping more-- a lot more.
In one of the recent pilot programs,
workers who dropped down to 32-hour workweeks
started sleeping, on average, a full extra hour every night.
Yup, they worked eight hours less
and spent seven of those hours asleep.
And as you can imagine, the number
of employees who are technically sleep-deprived
dropped nearly 30%.
This is good news for everyone on the job
because sleep is good for productivity.
Sleep-deprived workers are less cooperative, less effective,
and less likely to be able to resist temptation
or to even focus.
People can exercise more, less work-family conflict,
better physical health, better mental health, better mood,
better satisfaction--
I mean, pretty much a wide range of well-being outcomes.
Today, 4-day workweeks are the exception to the rule.
But as we've seen, rules and policies
have a way of changing.
If you thought this was interesting,
like and subscribe.
The work?
Grueling.
Tuberculosis?
Everywhere.
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