[pwinnski]

Most advances in labor rights came about as a result of hard work: blood, sweat, and tears. Not, it turns out, this particular one!

The five-day work-week came about because Henry Ford declared it to be so in 1926, and wasn't made any sort of law until 1939.

Ultimately, the decision to move to four-day work weeks can only be made by CEOs or equivalents, and while some have, most haven't. At my previous company, the head of HR proposed it, the CTO agreed, and it went to the CEO, who said no. He didn't want the CTO org to have benefits the rest of the company didn't have, and didn't want to extend a four-day work week to all departments.

When they continue to have trouble filling open job positions because they aren't competing will in the market, perhaps he'll change his mind.

https://www.4dayweek.com

[slively]

Attributing the 5 day work week to Henry Ford is not placing the credit correctly. He may have been the first big CEO, but it was the work of labor rights activists and unions. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-imag...

[pwinnski]

The trade unionists had been pushing for eight-hour days, not five-day weeks. The thing Ford did largely unprompted was switch from six days to five days. Even your own link seems to confuse the two, but is focused on the eight-hour day part of the original false image.

[slively]

> Ford’s initiative was not widely copied overnight. In 1916, the federal government passed an act to require an eight-hour day and overtime pay for railroad workers, but most workers still didn’t have those protections, and working hours remained a hotly contested issue. "Demands for the five-day week began to proliferate in 1919, a year in which 4 million American workers went out on strike,"

[ghaff]

And that CEO is not necessarily wrong. Even if you posit that certain types of creative problem solving might be as productive with a 32 hour work week as a 40 hour one, I'd also posit that there are a lot of jobs within companies that really do mostly map to hours in seats. And granting, say, engineering only a special privilege like that seems like it would be terrible for morale--especially given that there are doubtless other jobs at a company that could in principle also be equally productive with 4-day weeks.

And it probably goes without saying that most people would not be OK with a pay cut--which might have to actually be more than 20% given the cost of benefits is fairly fixed.

[pwinnski]

To add insult to injury in this case, all departments were completely on board other than sales, and this was an engineering-driven SaaS company. Sales people at that company are paid commission, and most of them outearn all software developers at the company, and even the C-suite. Still, it was in deference to them that the initiative was squashed.

On paper, it may have seemed like the right move, but it was huge demoralizing to the engineering org to be told, essentially: we will neither pay enough to be competitive, nor offer any other compensatory advantages, primarily in deference to this other department that we do pay well.

The morale question was apparently only considered in one direction.

[ghaff]

I actually find that a bit surprising. I would assume a lot of sales comp was commission driven so presumably reps could just have kept on working however many days they wanted to. Of course, they presumably wouldn't have had the support they wanted for one day a week so there's that.

[_flat20]

> Ultimately, the decision to move to four-day work weeks can only be made by CEOs or equivalents, and while some have, most haven't.

Not how it happened when going 6 to 5 days. People made it happen. And OP is one of them.

[pwinnski]

This is widely believed, at least the first part, but not true.

People (trade unionists) made eight-hour workdays happen, but Henry Ford made a five-day workday happen[0]. As I stated, most labor rights came about because of blood, sweat, and tears. Just... not that particular one, oddly enough.

The fact that Ford's five-day work weeks were made up of eight-hour days, for that you can think unions and the hard work of many people! But the shift from six days to five, not so much.

P.S. OP was probably not working age in 1926, as they would need to be to have made the shift happen originally.

0. https://www.truthorfiction.com/henry-ford-invented-the-5-day...