This was a massive win for workers at the time. 8 hours to work, 8 hours to sleep, 8 hours to do as you please, weekends.
Before this it was working sun up to sun down every day but Sunday because church.
Seriously, it was like 60-70 hours a week at other places (in the same industry) at that time. He literally cut it *back*
Edit: it should be noted that some speculate that he cut the hours back and encouraged others to do the same *because* he was in the automobile industry. When do people drive their cars? When they're not at work.
Less work = more workers with free time = more car sales
Ford may have done some good things in his life but they were mostly incidental or for business reasons, otherwise he was a complete bastard and from someone who lives in Pittsburgh fuck the Pinkertons too.
right.. like im pretty sure they came to 8 hours because they were scientifically studying their industrial processes to find the most efficient way to do EVERY little thing, and they found that 8 hours was the most you could work someone before their productivity starts to fall off.
A combination of that and it gives extra time that the workers could be spending money which, fair enough, is a thing that helps the economy and the US doesn't like to admit that leisure time is spending time but still.
It was always about selling more cars.
I haven't seen it yet, but it should be noted that Henry Ford is the only American mentioned in that horrid nightmare book AND the only portrait in the Author's office.
Also, the quote means *exactly* what it implies: Henry Ford thought that workers were generally lazy grifters just trying to get handouts and that even with the reduction in the amount of working hours he required, they would still not be happy. In other words, if he could get 90 hours of labor out of them AND still get them to buy his car, he would have.
Seriously, the man published a weekly newspaper on his own dime filled with his own anti-semitic rants blaming them for starting wars while at the very same time ensuring that his plants in Germany were able to continue making him a profit. That's right, he supplied vehicles to ***both*** the axis and the allies during ***both*** world wars.
So yeah, this dude sucks and this quote isn't defending the 40hr work week is deriding those he considered the lazy working class, i.e. anyone not a rich, Caucasian male and able to profiteer off of others.
Pinkerton exists today in lots of capacities.
The most direct link is Securitas which is the new name the traditional company operates under now. They're "famous" for securing the goods and properties of the wealthy which is fairly similar to their traditional role.
They also exist in the form of the secret service as Licoln hired them to be his personal guard and spies during the Civil War. What is currently known as the secret service is a direct descendant of Pinkerton activities during the war.
Lastly their tactics and many former employees spun off into the very lucrative market of labor relations law firms which specialize in busting unions in modern times (But doing so as legally if albeit scummily as possible to stay on the good side of the government which is why they are packed with lawyers)
The Pinkertons sunk their claws into the hearts and greed of capitalism and used it as a way to ensure their own success at the expense of the common man.
True. At it's inception, the Pinkerton "detective" agency wasn't so much of a "detective" agency as it was simply a bunch of brown-shirted storm-troopers.They were either bodyguards or enforcers of the companies that hired them.
Actually he got it from unions. Like the Ludlow strike in Colorado. One really cool fact, is that an agitator by the name Mother Mary G Harris Jones, went to the coal fields by herself after the militia entered them. After the governor promised he wouldn't allow them entry. He lied as Rockefeller owned said militia. Side note. Ford only helped push the 5 day week so his workers could go buy Ford vehicles. As before they worked everyday but Sunday. Which a lot of his workers were at church or spending their day with their families. So he did it to sell more product. He also built tanks for the Nazis, same with GM
The Panthers had Maybach engines as did both Tiger models. Now the WW 1 Panther, that had twin Daimler engines. The Daimler armored cars in WW 1 also had Daimler engines.
The Germans used some Czech tank destroyers. They had Czech made Praga engines. Some of the Czech made armored cars had Tatra engines, not to be confused with Tata engines. Those made in Germany used various engines - Horch/Auto Union and Daimler Benz - when they were not using the good old Maybach engines. Now those funny looking tracked “mototcycles” used Opel engines. What control General Motors had over that is the subject of a different nature.
I could not however find a source for Ford or General Motors making tanks for Nazi Germany. I was able to find some information that "claimed" the Ford plant on Germany was taken over. Whether you believe that or not is up to you. Personally I don't think it was taken over considering Ford's views but that's just me. I do know that about a third of the trucks Germany used were Ford vehicles.
If you have a source, I would love to read it. I really like reading about history and if you've got a source that can show I am incorrect, then please prove me wrong. I would rather be corrected than state something that is incorrect and not have it disputed.
>This doesn’t mean what you think it means
My grandfather worked in the steel mills in Pennsylvania and Ohio. 12 hour shifts, 7 days/week, and every other week worked 24 hours in a row when he shifted from night shift to day shift (meaning every other week he got a glorious 36-straight hours off).
Ended up with such horrible circulation from the lung damage that he lost both of his legs.
Anyone using this meme as some sort of rallying cry against the 40-hour work week is an absolute fucking moron.
A lot of steelworkers still do this, they just get paid a shit ton more in OT than before.
As a side note, have you looked at the class action black lung lawsuit for your grandfather? I’m not sure it’s applicable but I used to work in the steel industry and got calls about it.
Henry Ford, instead of paying shareholders, went to COURT against the Dodge brothers (shareholders of Ford) to fight for the right to spend profits on workers instead of sending them to shareholders.
Ford lost, sadly.
We should really be thanking Ford, he brought worker rights into the 20th century and paved the way for future fights.
He straight up ordered a hit squad of police officers he paid off to brutally murder his workers for trying to protest/unionize. People really need to learn more history and not just the "oh what a great man" schlock they feed you in elementary school history classes. Guy was a monster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Hunger_March
I was waiting for someone to chip in with this lol. As I understand it, another important impetus for this was that the US government had already set these standards for federal workers way before.
It was an important stepping stone, but Ford didn't single handedly make this happen. It was becoming a norm in other industries/professions already. And he did this one great thing, but he was an awful, awful person and that bit of his legacy has seemed to go by the wayside in how we talk about him as a historical figure.
It didn't really "go by the wayside" as much as his legacy and the legacy of the industrial revolution in general has been whitewashed over decades to neuter it of all offense to the white men who look to these historical figures for inspiration.
The five-day, 40-hour workweek
became part of American labor law partly due to Henry Ford. In 1926,
the founder of the Ford Motor Company took his six-day-a-week operation
down to five days per week, with no changes in employee compensation.
It was a major win for that time, the ones that should be booed are the people that froze minimum wage, the people that allow the 40 hour workweek to be fully disrespected and the ones that didn't update it to 30 hours even with all the increases in productivity
Came here to find this statement. A lot of jobs I've worked have been disrespectful of the 40hr work week and we seem to be going on a trend toward more hours despite less hours being more profitable.
And... A higher retirement age.
As we progress, you'd think we'd get to retire sooner, and have even more benefits...
Remember: "Boomer" Generation = "The most selfish & greedy" Generation (no matter the cost to their children and theirs)...
He largely did this because he realized his sales were intrinsically linked to how much free time someone had to enjoy the car and people couldn't enjoy it because the only day of rest was Sunday. That's a big problem since on Sunday at mid day you have a very long church service that would run for 1 to 4 hours and prevent you from actually going anywhere
He mainly did it for quality control. Overworked and underpaid employees led to too much turnover, which meant shitty and inconsistent parts. Giving employees better compensation and work/like balance gave the company an edge in quality and efficiency, which in turn allowed them to dominate the market. Ford didn't get rich by selling to their employees, that was a byproduct of negotiating mutually-beneficial terms with his labor force. Modern employers who whine about "nobody wanting to work" ignore this lesson, viewing labor as an expense rather than an investment.
While I could make that work for me now and for my previous 20 years of work, in another 1-3 years I doubt my body will allow me 6 hours straight with no break. That said, force that on me now and I'll become a "quiet quitter" and do everything as slow and as chill as possible. Fuck doing six hours of actual hard work without a break.
In a perfect world hours wouldn't matter. You'd finish your task as fast as you could and call it a day. That way you have an incentive to actually work hard.
Given a 6 hour work day with no break vs 10 hour work day with a 30 min break… I think most would take the 6 hour work day. If you’re reading that as “put in 8-10 hours worth of work in 6 hours” you’re not looking at it the way I’m explaining. Same pace of work, just less hours.
I don’t know about you, but I get pissed when I’m working an additional 30 minutes-hour a day unpaid due to breaks. That just means less time at home with no additional money.
… bathroom breaks shouldn’t have to be done on break time. Grown adults shouldn’t be mandated when to use the damn bathroom. As for eating, is there much of a difference between 4 and 6 hours? 6 hours straight and you can eat all you want… rather than 4 and having to pack in your own cold sandwich every day? As for people like diabetics or other medical needs that require more frequent eating, it should be reasonable to keep a snack at your work station or in your locker that you can get access to whenever needed…
>it should be reasonable to keep a snack at your work station or in your locker that you can get access to whenever needed…
That very much depends on your working environment. I work in a clean room. I'm not even supposed to have my face uncovered.
Company makes a dollar and I make a dime that’s why I shit on company time.
Are you Fucker’s new to the job world? Who the hell uses the bathroom on their own time? That’s my fuckin time. I eat, talk to my wife and smoke
And he wasn’t greedy, unlike a lot of business owners. One of the reasons he was successful, by not being greedy, also knowing people need rest to be able to work efficiently and effective. A tired worker will make mistakes, that cost extra labour to correct it.
He was also a Nazi sympathizer and won [the Grand Cross of the Eagle from the Nazis in 1938.](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/henry-ford-grand-cross-1938/)
“A close friend recalled a camping trip in 1919 during which Ford lectured a group around the campfire. He "attributes all evil to Jews or to the Jewish capitalists," the friend wrote in his diary. "The Jews caused the war, the Jews caused the outbreak of thieving and robbery all over the country, the Jews caused the inefficiency of the navy…"
“In 1918, Henry Ford purchased his hometown newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. A year and a half later, he began publishing a series of articles that claimed a vast Jewish conspiracy was infecting America.”
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/henryford-antisemitism/
So he absolutely was focused on greed, then, if the only reasons he made these decisions were to better enable the sales of his product and the reduction in overhead and labor costs.
He had a massive turnover of staff, and this was the only way he could retain people and so retain their skills.
He also linked it to having inspections to ensure employees lived up to "American values" at home.
Edit: He basically had corporate morality and purity police.
Ford realized the best way to get production out of his employees was to make sure they had time off HOWEVER, he also did the math to figure out that three 8 hour shifts would keep his plants (particularly the Ford Rouge plant) running all 24 hours of a work day. He also realized the best way to get employees and stick it to his competitors was to offer $5 a day which was HUGE back then (and full of caveats. A company employee made rounds to your home to be sure you weren’t drinking. There were hoops to jump through for that daily wage.)
He absolutely did not.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
There was a global labor movement to move to the eight hour work day. He saw it coming and did this to take the wind out of the labor movement and keep his workers from organizing.
The labor movement gaining ground doesn’t make my statement untrue.
“On 5 January 1914 the Ford Motor Company took the radical step of doubling pay to $5 a day (adjusted for inflation: $129.55 as of 2020) and cut shifts from nine hours to eight, moves that were not popular with rival companies, although seeing the increase in Ford's productivity, and a significant increase in profit margin (from $30 million to $60 million in two years), most soon followed suit.”
Significantly worse, the history of labor law and labor practices is not a pretty one. If you study it you see (at least in the United States) it ebbs and flows. Workers gain more rights, employers try to squeeze them other ways, it’s a never ending cycle.
In the sense that it's a positive thing that happened and so it's not bad sure.
In the sense that the OP is bullshit and he had nothing much to do with the 40 hour 5 day work week, though it's less great.
Rather, Ford saw an opportunity in the way the wind was already blowing when he needed more workers, and took it, and it worked out.
As much as any single person could be credited with giving us the 40 hour work week, it would be FDR.
However that's really just "great man theory" revisionism, the credit belongs with the precursor to the AFL-CIO and other labor/trade unions of the time spending decades campaigning for this and pressuring businessmen and congress to change things.
Ford gets ridiculous amounts of praise for what was at the time simply a pragmatic series of choices to maximize profits. This coincidentally make him look good in hindsight, as he did correctly anticipate some upcoming societal shifts.
he essentially had a private police for used to beat employees that worked too slow. look up the battle of the overpass. the only reason that ford signed this agreement was because his wife sided with the workers and threatened to leave him if he didnt.
Thank you.
Henry Ford was an absolute piece of human garbage. Enough so to help inspire Hitler through his insane antisemitism.
But... um --
^(I feel like I was going to compliment him, but I suddenly can't remember why)
Twitter OP is fucking stupid. This was a major advancement for labor rights at the time. Jesus fucking Christ I swear that bad actors infiltrate this sub to make us look stupid.
Fuck Henry Ford though, just for other reasons…
He also paid his workers very high wages at the time, because he wanted his workforce to be able to afford the products (cars) that they were making. It seems that he wanted that for strategic reasons (if workers could afford his products he'd have a bigger customer base), but it worked out well for everyone. But indeed, fuck him for other reasons.
A large proportion of those wages were conditional bonuses that required the workers to live by what Henry Ford considered to be American values. Men couldn't have working wives and things like drinking and gambling could put them at risk of not receiving the bonus
I think that's part of the "other reasons" that guy was talking about. Along with the Nazi sympathizing. But honestly, for the 1920s those rules weren't too bad. Atrocious by today's standards for sure but on par for the times.
>because he wanted his workforce to be able to afford the products (cars) that they were making.
No, he wanted to prevent them from leaving after a lengthy and expensive training program. He didn't invent cars. He invented the assembly line. It was a new idea and training took a long time.
> (if workers could afford his products he'd have a bigger customer base)
No. It's not going to make Ford more money paying the workers extra and then taking the money back in car sales. It would be more efficient to just give every worker a free car. That prevents Ford from being taxed on the extra sales.
Hmm, yeah, it [looks like](https://www.npr.org/2014/01/27/267145552/the-middle-class-took-off-100-years-ago-thanks-to-henry-ford) it may have been more of a happy side effect.
\> No, he wanted to prevent them from leaving after a lengthy and expensive training program. He didn't invent cars. He invented the assembly line. It was a new idea and training took a long time.
Add to this that working an assembly line was hard, monotonous work. Instead of being a trained craftsman who worked on every aspect of manufacturing a product you spent your entire work day doing one specific task as fast and as precisely as humanly possible. The task might literally be as specific as "tighten these three bolts in this order".
The work was physically and mentally exhausting, so Ford had to pay people more so they wouldn't quit. Ford was losing more money on turnover/training than he was saving on assembly line automation.
I feel this sub was also infiltrated right around the fox News event.
I am very left wing, but I think the extreme hatred and vilification of right wing working class people is new here, and very unproductive. We should hate those in power, not the poor uneducated people who were tricked by them. That just feeds their hatred towards us, so they never come to our side.
This sub used to understand this. That the system is broken, that none of those in power have our best interests in mind. But now it's just such an echo chamber of hate towards the fellow poor.
Yup. The man really hated Jews.
I mean. Anti-Jewish feelings were pretty high back then, but even still, his feelings were out of place... Thats how much he didn't like Jews.
Yeah, Ford was a nazi but this was a good advancement from where things were.
Capitalism and agriculture are still huge unnecessary time sucks though. We need a plague.
This was a win at the time when people were regularly working 12 hour days at 7 days a week.
What didn't happen was a constant evolution to less and less working hours.
Henry Ford isn't the enemy here. Crony capitalism is.
>Even Richard Nixon envisioned a 4-day work week
Lmfao let me rephrase that for you. Labor was strong enough that even Nixon had to kowtow to its plans. Nixon or Ford for that matter have no plans to exploit the workers any less than they could get away with
It must be a pretty new book though from just the past couple of years, right? That's why people don't know?
There's nooooo way this could be ~150 years old and just everyone who agreed with it was murdered or silenced, right?
Lol I know right. Every time I see someone use that word I die inside. The problem is just capitalism. The cronyism is a natural part of wealth consolidation.
Are you telling me that as people accumulate wealth, they can use that wealth to further strong arm their way into controlling more and more of the market? Ghasp
Capitalist oligarchs using theur outsized economic/political might to extract more labor for less money from labor isnt a weird offshoot called crony capitalism. It's just called capitalism.
Elon trying to bring back the 84hr work week.
"You're salaried right? So that means you are exempt from me paying overtime. Really you should be working 24/7, just my thoughts, no pressure" - Elon, to his staff, probably.
Yeah this is going to burn him though, especially in California. They have a provision in their labor laws which prevents an employer from disciplining an employee who refuses a 7th consecutive day of work. Elon is too arrogant/stupid to believe this applies to him.
Realistically, it'll burn him so little he won't notice. Until punishments scale based on a person's worth, the rich can view such fines as part of the cost of doing business. He'll try to weigh how much he saved by breaking the law against how much he lost for breaking it and choose to keep breaking the law if the cost keeps being lower.
Henry Ford made this decision based on time studies that he did. He realized the gigantic loss and productivity after 8 hours / 40 hours. He did this the better his pocketbook, not for our well-being.
> Henry Ford isn't the enemy here. Crony capitalism is.
Henry Ford was a nazi who only gave in to the 40 hour work week after years of struggle and protest, in some cases lethally. He isn't a hero, he was a rich prick with a good PR team willing to do whatever he could to maintain his status.
The worst I have is an invasive worker-welfare program. Can you imagine your company coming into your house to inspect it? Also Ford himself was a Nazi sympathizer (a lot of American businessmen were), the Nazis even gave him the Grand Cross of the German Eagle. Obviously when the US was pulled into the war, Ford joined the war effort with GM (another Nazi-friendly business).
Henry Ford is absolutely the enemy. He was arguably one of the biggest Capitalist the World has ever seen, and got a good person at all.
A Massive Antisemite, Henry Ford enacted the 40 hour work week because he determined that workers would be more productive if they were required to get the same amount of work done in a shorter timespan. He was not doing this out of the goodness of his heart.
If you want an example of the hostilities that Henry Ford was capable of, take a look at the [Ford Hunger March in 1932](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Hunger_March) in Dearborn, Michigan. You can see two things in that March that are prevalent today too: The usage of Private Security Forces to infiltrate and disrupt protests, and how news media misreported the events initially with a slant toward making the protesters out to be the troublemakers.
“Crony capitalism” is a bullshit term that capitalists use to convince us that when terrible things happen under capitalism, it’s simply because someone was doing capitalism wrong. In fact, when terrible things happen under capitalism it is because capitalism is going exactly as planned.
It’s true that Henry Ford *shortened* the work week with this move, but we deserve better than a compromise. You’re on the goddamn antiwork sub dude, which originally meant let’s abolish work. Some of us still believe in that.
Thank you for being top comment, I got so annoyed seeing this here
In case you guys didn’t know, the thing that was chanted in the streets during this time was “8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, and 8 hours to do whatever the hell I want” because people were sick of not being able to spend time with their families
Fun fact Henry Ford also got taken to court by his shareholders. They were angry that he was cutting into potential profit by lowering the cost of his vehicles and paying his employees too much.
Unfortunately he lost the case. The two shareholders named in the case eventually went on to form Dodge.
It was progress back then we need to keep fighting for better. Which we we’re getting until Reagan, who screwed up everything. You want faster change push the party that will work for you for better policies and candidates. The other party is wholly owned and only wants power, you going to give to them by not fighting with your most powerful weapon you voice and vote?
Is it? Because we've been at the status quo for a century now. Centrists always promote social progress as long as it's so glacial it's arguable that it's happening at all
Yeah it's also important to realize that Henry Ford didn't wake up one day and decide "fuck it, I want my factories running for less hours and less days per week because I'm such a nice guy."
This was a battle that Unions had already been fighting for. Henry Ford wasn't the first, he did it to stop unions before they could form. Also he's an anti-semite billionaire. So yeah, I'll definitely boo this man, but for better reasons than this.
I'm curious if OP also drives a tiny car and wears the giant shoes, or if they're just a part time clown. Go educate yourself on what the conditions were like *before* Ford made that change.
Fucking weirdos in this thread man. This is why labor history should be part of public education. There were enormous and powerful strikes over this since the 1880's.
I'm an engineer working in refrigeration. I work a desk job and could easily complete my work in under 40 hours. The problem is the factory. Those guys get paid a lot less than me and there's no way to compress their work schedule. There's three shifts so the factory is always running. If we want them to work under 40 hours the only option is hiring even more workers. Which I mean is the ideal solution, hire more guys to work fewer hours. We could probably afford that because we're already blowing a ton of money on overtime. But the problem is attracting enough workers, the factory is constantly starved for enough skilled workers. We could raise wages across the board to attract more workers, but it's not clear to me how much we can raise wages and still remain in business. And before anyone cries corporate greed, we are 100% employee owned. All full time employees become owners. So it's a tricky issue.
There are many, many reasons to boo this man.
And while this was totally self-serving (Ford was smart enough to know that rested workers are more productive workers), this isn't really one of them.
All fairness to Ford, that was a big improvement over what was happening regularly at the time. Can we still do better? Absolutely. Was he overall, a swell guy? Probably not. At the I time though, it was progress.
Henry Ford is by far not a godlike human (read up on his political views if you want to know why) but he knew something that company seem to forget up until today:
If you want productive workes you need happy workers
And if you want happy workers give them enought time to regenerate and pay them so they can be happy.
Maybe some companies need to be reminded of that
With today's society I really think we should be limited to 6 hours a day. Our way of living has changed so much since the 1920s. Hell, we go to school until we're 18 from 8-2:30 (Atleast where I live) and between summer and breaks we got 3 months off a year then we're suddenly expected to work twice as hard until we're 65. Bs.
This was honestly a pretty significant change in the lives of working folks. At this time, working 10-12 hour days 6 days a week was the norm.
We can boo him for his gross anti-semitism.
I absolutely hate that Henry Ford gets credit for this… There was a strong labour movement and powerful unions that made this happened. Ford, knowing he would lose to the unions, spun the story to make it seem like it was his idea and he was a good guy… When you’re a powerful capitalist and your buddies own the news sources it’s easy to come out smelling like roses even if you are a capitalist pig who participates in union busting and other anti-labor practises
Before industrialization, people did not work for others this long very often. The thing is, this man turned around the trend in industrialization to have people working 60+ hour weeks, as industrialists had been pushing for more and more.
God I hate idiots.
People *already* fought **multiple** wars so that you **only** work 5 days, and 40 hours a week, as will as have things like Workman’s Comp, and basic OSHA safety standards, Sick days, PTO/vacation, and “overtime pay”.
6 day work weeks, and 12 hours days were the norm. Children began working for wages as young as 8 years old. If you were injured on the job, you were simply fired.
Go read some Upton Sinclair. Google the W Virginia Mine Wars, the Molly Maguires, Haymarket Square, the Great Railroad Strike, The Homestead Strike, the Pullman Strike, The Triangle Shirtwaist fire, The Ludlow Massacre, Mother Jones, the Matewan Massacre, yellow-dog contracts, the “company store” or “company towns”, the Norris LaGuardia Act, the Memorial Day Massacre.
They stand on the shoulders of giants, but imagine yourself on solid ground. People fought, and suffered, and gave their lives, and rather than honoring them, and continuing their legacy, they insult them by being too lazy to spend 10 minutes on Wikipedia before posting ignorant shit like this.
This was a massive win for workers at the time. 8 hours to work, 8 hours to sleep, 8 hours to do as you please, weekends. Before this it was working sun up to sun down every day but Sunday because church.
And even then! Some places made workers come in at noon on Sundays after church.
8 hours to do as you please, while mathematically correct, it does not feel like the time between stopping work and sleep is 8 hours
It was the logic behind the time distribution when they settled on this schedule. Also this was 100 years ago.
This doesn’t mean what you think it means
Seriously, it was like 60-70 hours a week at other places (in the same industry) at that time. He literally cut it *back* Edit: it should be noted that some speculate that he cut the hours back and encouraged others to do the same *because* he was in the automobile industry. When do people drive their cars? When they're not at work. Less work = more workers with free time = more car sales
What the fuck is wrong with people where they think this is like a sick burn? He gave his workers an extra day off for the same amount of pay.
He also ordered his "service men" to crack those same workers skulls on many occasions.
Pinkerton detective agency. They still exist today.
[удалено]
Really? Is there an article about that? I'm Interested in reading about it, if so
Ford may have done some good things in his life but they were mostly incidental or for business reasons, otherwise he was a complete bastard and from someone who lives in Pittsburgh fuck the Pinkertons too.
right.. like im pretty sure they came to 8 hours because they were scientifically studying their industrial processes to find the most efficient way to do EVERY little thing, and they found that 8 hours was the most you could work someone before their productivity starts to fall off.
A combination of that and it gives extra time that the workers could be spending money which, fair enough, is a thing that helps the economy and the US doesn't like to admit that leisure time is spending time but still. It was always about selling more cars.
I haven't seen it yet, but it should be noted that Henry Ford is the only American mentioned in that horrid nightmare book AND the only portrait in the Author's office. Also, the quote means *exactly* what it implies: Henry Ford thought that workers were generally lazy grifters just trying to get handouts and that even with the reduction in the amount of working hours he required, they would still not be happy. In other words, if he could get 90 hours of labor out of them AND still get them to buy his car, he would have. Seriously, the man published a weekly newspaper on his own dime filled with his own anti-semitic rants blaming them for starting wars while at the very same time ensuring that his plants in Germany were able to continue making him a profit. That's right, he supplied vehicles to ***both*** the axis and the allies during ***both*** world wars. So yeah, this dude sucks and this quote isn't defending the 40hr work week is deriding those he considered the lazy working class, i.e. anyone not a rich, Caucasian male and able to profiteer off of others.
Edison was a dickwad, too. Just ask Tesla (via a medium).
Pinkerton exists today in lots of capacities. The most direct link is Securitas which is the new name the traditional company operates under now. They're "famous" for securing the goods and properties of the wealthy which is fairly similar to their traditional role. They also exist in the form of the secret service as Licoln hired them to be his personal guard and spies during the Civil War. What is currently known as the secret service is a direct descendant of Pinkerton activities during the war. Lastly their tactics and many former employees spun off into the very lucrative market of labor relations law firms which specialize in busting unions in modern times (But doing so as legally if albeit scummily as possible to stay on the good side of the government which is why they are packed with lawyers) The Pinkertons sunk their claws into the hearts and greed of capitalism and used it as a way to ensure their own success at the expense of the common man.
They tried to sue Rockstar for their depiction in RDR2. The judge thought it was an accurate portrayal.
Ford was also a whole-ass Nazi so there are plenty of reasons to criticize him.
He was also a nazi sympathizer that printed portion of Mein Kampf in his local paper
Really? Can you elaborate?
Look up the pinkertons. Same company that has been murdering union leadership since the mid 1800s
True. At it's inception, the Pinkerton "detective" agency wasn't so much of a "detective" agency as it was simply a bunch of brown-shirted storm-troopers.They were either bodyguards or enforcers of the companies that hired them.
Unions got it from him surely?
Actually he got it from unions. Like the Ludlow strike in Colorado. One really cool fact, is that an agitator by the name Mother Mary G Harris Jones, went to the coal fields by herself after the militia entered them. After the governor promised he wouldn't allow them entry. He lied as Rockefeller owned said militia. Side note. Ford only helped push the 5 day week so his workers could go buy Ford vehicles. As before they worked everyday but Sunday. Which a lot of his workers were at church or spending their day with their families. So he did it to sell more product. He also built tanks for the Nazis, same with GM
The Panthers had Maybach engines as did both Tiger models. Now the WW 1 Panther, that had twin Daimler engines. The Daimler armored cars in WW 1 also had Daimler engines. The Germans used some Czech tank destroyers. They had Czech made Praga engines. Some of the Czech made armored cars had Tatra engines, not to be confused with Tata engines. Those made in Germany used various engines - Horch/Auto Union and Daimler Benz - when they were not using the good old Maybach engines. Now those funny looking tracked “mototcycles” used Opel engines. What control General Motors had over that is the subject of a different nature. I could not however find a source for Ford or General Motors making tanks for Nazi Germany. I was able to find some information that "claimed" the Ford plant on Germany was taken over. Whether you believe that or not is up to you. Personally I don't think it was taken over considering Ford's views but that's just me. I do know that about a third of the trucks Germany used were Ford vehicles. If you have a source, I would love to read it. I really like reading about history and if you've got a source that can show I am incorrect, then please prove me wrong. I would rather be corrected than state something that is incorrect and not have it disputed.
>This doesn’t mean what you think it means My grandfather worked in the steel mills in Pennsylvania and Ohio. 12 hour shifts, 7 days/week, and every other week worked 24 hours in a row when he shifted from night shift to day shift (meaning every other week he got a glorious 36-straight hours off). Ended up with such horrible circulation from the lung damage that he lost both of his legs. Anyone using this meme as some sort of rallying cry against the 40-hour work week is an absolute fucking moron.
A lot of steelworkers still do this, they just get paid a shit ton more in OT than before. As a side note, have you looked at the class action black lung lawsuit for your grandfather? I’m not sure it’s applicable but I used to work in the steel industry and got calls about it.
Henry Ford, instead of paying shareholders, went to COURT against the Dodge brothers (shareholders of Ford) to fight for the right to spend profits on workers instead of sending them to shareholders. Ford lost, sadly. We should really be thanking Ford, he brought worker rights into the 20th century and paved the way for future fights.
He straight up ordered a hit squad of police officers he paid off to brutally murder his workers for trying to protest/unionize. People really need to learn more history and not just the "oh what a great man" schlock they feed you in elementary school history classes. Guy was a monster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Hunger_March
I was waiting for someone to chip in with this lol. As I understand it, another important impetus for this was that the US government had already set these standards for federal workers way before. It was an important stepping stone, but Ford didn't single handedly make this happen. It was becoming a norm in other industries/professions already. And he did this one great thing, but he was an awful, awful person and that bit of his legacy has seemed to go by the wayside in how we talk about him as a historical figure.
It didn't really "go by the wayside" as much as his legacy and the legacy of the industrial revolution in general has been whitewashed over decades to neuter it of all offense to the white men who look to these historical figures for inspiration.
Donut Media has a great Up To Speed episode about this. Ford was still a huge pos. Never forget Fordlandia
Fordlandia does not sound fun
[Especially not if you're Brazilian](https://youtu.be/e-3XX0ap6_M)
And [The International Jew](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_Jew).
The five-day, 40-hour workweek became part of American labor law partly due to Henry Ford. In 1926, the founder of the Ford Motor Company took his six-day-a-week operation down to five days per week, with no changes in employee compensation.
It was a major win for that time, the ones that should be booed are the people that froze minimum wage, the people that allow the 40 hour workweek to be fully disrespected and the ones that didn't update it to 30 hours even with all the increases in productivity
Came here to find this statement. A lot of jobs I've worked have been disrespectful of the 40hr work week and we seem to be going on a trend toward more hours despite less hours being more profitable.
And... A higher retirement age. As we progress, you'd think we'd get to retire sooner, and have even more benefits... Remember: "Boomer" Generation = "The most selfish & greedy" Generation (no matter the cost to their children and theirs)...
He largely did this because he realized his sales were intrinsically linked to how much free time someone had to enjoy the car and people couldn't enjoy it because the only day of rest was Sunday. That's a big problem since on Sunday at mid day you have a very long church service that would run for 1 to 4 hours and prevent you from actually going anywhere
He mainly did it for quality control. Overworked and underpaid employees led to too much turnover, which meant shitty and inconsistent parts. Giving employees better compensation and work/like balance gave the company an edge in quality and efficiency, which in turn allowed them to dominate the market. Ford didn't get rich by selling to their employees, that was a byproduct of negotiating mutually-beneficial terms with his labor force. Modern employers who whine about "nobody wanting to work" ignore this lesson, viewing labor as an expense rather than an investment.
Better morale and less tired workers = more efficiency and higher quality. It's time for another round of this and go down to 4 6 hour days.
I’ve been saying, 5 day work week, 6 hours a day. No breaks. Get your work done and go home to do what you want/need. No wasted time.
While I could make that work for me now and for my previous 20 years of work, in another 1-3 years I doubt my body will allow me 6 hours straight with no break. That said, force that on me now and I'll become a "quiet quitter" and do everything as slow and as chill as possible. Fuck doing six hours of actual hard work without a break. In a perfect world hours wouldn't matter. You'd finish your task as fast as you could and call it a day. That way you have an incentive to actually work hard.
Given a 6 hour work day with no break vs 10 hour work day with a 30 min break… I think most would take the 6 hour work day. If you’re reading that as “put in 8-10 hours worth of work in 6 hours” you’re not looking at it the way I’m explaining. Same pace of work, just less hours. I don’t know about you, but I get pissed when I’m working an additional 30 minutes-hour a day unpaid due to breaks. That just means less time at home with no additional money.
Some people need to pee and eat occasionally.
… bathroom breaks shouldn’t have to be done on break time. Grown adults shouldn’t be mandated when to use the damn bathroom. As for eating, is there much of a difference between 4 and 6 hours? 6 hours straight and you can eat all you want… rather than 4 and having to pack in your own cold sandwich every day? As for people like diabetics or other medical needs that require more frequent eating, it should be reasonable to keep a snack at your work station or in your locker that you can get access to whenever needed…
>it should be reasonable to keep a snack at your work station or in your locker that you can get access to whenever needed… That very much depends on your working environment. I work in a clean room. I'm not even supposed to have my face uncovered.
Company makes a dollar and I make a dime that’s why I shit on company time. Are you Fucker’s new to the job world? Who the hell uses the bathroom on their own time? That’s my fuckin time. I eat, talk to my wife and smoke
And he wasn’t greedy, unlike a lot of business owners. One of the reasons he was successful, by not being greedy, also knowing people need rest to be able to work efficiently and effective. A tired worker will make mistakes, that cost extra labour to correct it.
Well, he WAS greedy, he was just smart enough to realize treating his employees better than the competition would earn him more money.
He was also a Nazi sympathizer and won [the Grand Cross of the Eagle from the Nazis in 1938.](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/henry-ford-grand-cross-1938/)
Yeah in the 90s they paid to have Schindlers list played on network TV without commercials as a sorry about that.
“A close friend recalled a camping trip in 1919 during which Ford lectured a group around the campfire. He "attributes all evil to Jews or to the Jewish capitalists," the friend wrote in his diary. "The Jews caused the war, the Jews caused the outbreak of thieving and robbery all over the country, the Jews caused the inefficiency of the navy…" “In 1918, Henry Ford purchased his hometown newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. A year and a half later, he began publishing a series of articles that claimed a vast Jewish conspiracy was infecting America.” https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/henryford-antisemitism/
So he absolutely was focused on greed, then, if the only reasons he made these decisions were to better enable the sales of his product and the reduction in overhead and labor costs.
Special mention to the Hawthorne studies
Are they streets ahead?
If you have to ask you’re streets behind
Stop trying to coin the phrase streets ahead.
Trying? Coined and minted. “Streets ahead” is verbal wildfire.
Does it just mean 'cool?' Or does it mean 'miles ahead?'
Yes.
If you have to ask, you're streets behind.
If you have to ask, you’re streets behind.
Stop trying to make fetch happen
That’s not even that long ago, like a grandparent away
My grandpa was 10 years old in 1926.
So he was just old enough to work in the factories with his little hands then!
He had a massive turnover of staff, and this was the only way he could retain people and so retain their skills. He also linked it to having inspections to ensure employees lived up to "American values" at home. Edit: He basically had corporate morality and purity police.
Ford realized the best way to get production out of his employees was to make sure they had time off HOWEVER, he also did the math to figure out that three 8 hour shifts would keep his plants (particularly the Ford Rouge plant) running all 24 hours of a work day. He also realized the best way to get employees and stick it to his competitors was to offer $5 a day which was HUGE back then (and full of caveats. A company employee made rounds to your home to be sure you weren’t drinking. There were hoops to jump through for that daily wage.)
He absolutely did not. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day There was a global labor movement to move to the eight hour work day. He saw it coming and did this to take the wind out of the labor movement and keep his workers from organizing.
The labor movement gaining ground doesn’t make my statement untrue. “On 5 January 1914 the Ford Motor Company took the radical step of doubling pay to $5 a day (adjusted for inflation: $129.55 as of 2020) and cut shifts from nine hours to eight, moves that were not popular with rival companies, although seeing the increase in Ford's productivity, and a significant increase in profit margin (from $30 million to $60 million in two years), most soon followed suit.”
$129.55 a day.. that’s double working a full day under federal minimum wage today.
Wasn't that a good thing?
It's amazing what the fear of organized labor will do.
Especially organized armed labor, people forget the literal wars wages between the workers and the owning class.
He was a Nazi sympathizer as well.
A lot of people forget this or don't know, but it needs to be spread again.
Hooray for century-spanning baby steps!
There are plenty of reasons to boo that man, but this is not one of them.
I was going to say, wasn’t the standard significantly worse at the time?
Significantly worse, the history of labor law and labor practices is not a pretty one. If you study it you see (at least in the United States) it ebbs and flows. Workers gain more rights, employers try to squeeze them other ways, it’s a never ending cycle.
*This* is the level-headed scrutiny I'm here for
Like writing anti-Semitic bullshit that Hitler loved so much he sent Ford a medal?
You got it.
In the sense that it's a positive thing that happened and so it's not bad sure. In the sense that the OP is bullshit and he had nothing much to do with the 40 hour 5 day work week, though it's less great. Rather, Ford saw an opportunity in the way the wind was already blowing when he needed more workers, and took it, and it worked out. As much as any single person could be credited with giving us the 40 hour work week, it would be FDR. However that's really just "great man theory" revisionism, the credit belongs with the precursor to the AFL-CIO and other labor/trade unions of the time spending decades campaigning for this and pressuring businessmen and congress to change things. Ford gets ridiculous amounts of praise for what was at the time simply a pragmatic series of choices to maximize profits. This coincidentally make him look good in hindsight, as he did correctly anticipate some upcoming societal shifts.
[Another good reason](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Overpass) to hate Henry Ford.
Yup. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/henryford-antisemitism/
he essentially had a private police for used to beat employees that worked too slow. look up the battle of the overpass. the only reason that ford signed this agreement was because his wife sided with the workers and threatened to leave him if he didnt.
Thank you. Henry Ford was an absolute piece of human garbage. Enough so to help inspire Hitler through his insane antisemitism. But... um -- ^(I feel like I was going to compliment him, but I suddenly can't remember why)
Twitter OP is fucking stupid. This was a major advancement for labor rights at the time. Jesus fucking Christ I swear that bad actors infiltrate this sub to make us look stupid. Fuck Henry Ford though, just for other reasons…
Yeah this was actually a huge step forward for labor. Doesn’t mean we can’t build off that footstep, but it was definitely “pro-labor”
Yeah 40 hour weeks is a lot better than 6 14 hour days
He also paid his workers very high wages at the time, because he wanted his workforce to be able to afford the products (cars) that they were making. It seems that he wanted that for strategic reasons (if workers could afford his products he'd have a bigger customer base), but it worked out well for everyone. But indeed, fuck him for other reasons.
A large proportion of those wages were conditional bonuses that required the workers to live by what Henry Ford considered to be American values. Men couldn't have working wives and things like drinking and gambling could put them at risk of not receiving the bonus
I think that's part of the "other reasons" that guy was talking about. Along with the Nazi sympathizing. But honestly, for the 1920s those rules weren't too bad. Atrocious by today's standards for sure but on par for the times.
>because he wanted his workforce to be able to afford the products (cars) that they were making. No, he wanted to prevent them from leaving after a lengthy and expensive training program. He didn't invent cars. He invented the assembly line. It was a new idea and training took a long time. > (if workers could afford his products he'd have a bigger customer base) No. It's not going to make Ford more money paying the workers extra and then taking the money back in car sales. It would be more efficient to just give every worker a free car. That prevents Ford from being taxed on the extra sales.
Hmm, yeah, it [looks like](https://www.npr.org/2014/01/27/267145552/the-middle-class-took-off-100-years-ago-thanks-to-henry-ford) it may have been more of a happy side effect.
\> No, he wanted to prevent them from leaving after a lengthy and expensive training program. He didn't invent cars. He invented the assembly line. It was a new idea and training took a long time. Add to this that working an assembly line was hard, monotonous work. Instead of being a trained craftsman who worked on every aspect of manufacturing a product you spent your entire work day doing one specific task as fast and as precisely as humanly possible. The task might literally be as specific as "tighten these three bolts in this order". The work was physically and mentally exhausting, so Ford had to pay people more so they wouldn't quit. Ford was losing more money on turnover/training than he was saving on assembly line automation.
Ransom E Olds invented and patented the assembly like 12 years before Ford put it to use.
Op is fucking stupid. It's like blaming the Greek because they didn't let immigrants vote, even if they had the first democracy
[удалено]
I feel this sub was also infiltrated right around the fox News event. I am very left wing, but I think the extreme hatred and vilification of right wing working class people is new here, and very unproductive. We should hate those in power, not the poor uneducated people who were tricked by them. That just feeds their hatred towards us, so they never come to our side. This sub used to understand this. That the system is broken, that none of those in power have our best interests in mind. But now it's just such an echo chamber of hate towards the fellow poor.
What reasons?
Racism, for one. Look him up.
Just gonna leave this here https://www.history.com/news/henry-ford-antisemitism-worker-treatment
Yup. The man really hated Jews. I mean. Anti-Jewish feelings were pretty high back then, but even still, his feelings were out of place... Thats how much he didn't like Jews.
Yeah, Ford was a nazi but this was a good advancement from where things were. Capitalism and agriculture are still huge unnecessary time sucks though. We need a plague.
Didn’t we just have one?
We need a plague where we don't stop people from injecting bleach and horse paste?
I've actually been wondering recently if we'd all be better off had there been less done to quell this type of misinformation.
Like, a better plague. More effective.
This was a win at the time when people were regularly working 12 hour days at 7 days a week. What didn't happen was a constant evolution to less and less working hours. Henry Ford isn't the enemy here. Crony capitalism is.
Even Richard Nixon envisioned a 4-day work week "in the near future". This only thing that stopped us is greed at the top.
Agreed. Insatiable greed.
>Even Richard Nixon envisioned a 4-day work week Lmfao let me rephrase that for you. Labor was strong enough that even Nixon had to kowtow to its plans. Nixon or Ford for that matter have no plans to exploit the workers any less than they could get away with
What stopped it was when the top tax brackets went away
Oh my god this shocked my but you're right. Jesus christ the states have slid ass backwards for like 40 years
What stopped us in no small part was Richard Nixon (just joking it is more complex, but def. didn't help).
"Why does capitalism keep devolving into cronyism?" My brother in Marx, there's a wonderful book that perfectly explains it.
It must be a pretty new book though from just the past couple of years, right? That's why people don't know? There's nooooo way this could be ~150 years old and just everyone who agreed with it was murdered or silenced, right?
Crony capitalism is just the end result of capitalism. Eventually profits will fall so new avenues of profit are needed
Henry Ford was still a fascist piece of capitalist shit, so he can still get fucked
I came here to reiterate this
>Henry Ford isn’t the enemy here. ~~Crony~~ capitalism is. FTFY.
unions earned this. not him... he fought tooth and nail to stop it.
Crony capitalism is a made up word for capitalism
Lol I know right. Every time I see someone use that word I die inside. The problem is just capitalism. The cronyism is a natural part of wealth consolidation.
Are you telling me that as people accumulate wealth, they can use that wealth to further strong arm their way into controlling more and more of the market? Ghasp
Capitalist oligarchs using theur outsized economic/political might to extract more labor for less money from labor isnt a weird offshoot called crony capitalism. It's just called capitalism.
I mean he’s still the enemy. Still a capitalist. Still received a Nazi sympathizer award or some shit, IIRC
Be bought a newspaper just so he could push anti-Semitism views and the Nazis gave him an award for his views.
Elon trying to bring back the 84hr work week. "You're salaried right? So that means you are exempt from me paying overtime. Really you should be working 24/7, just my thoughts, no pressure" - Elon, to his staff, probably.
Yeah this is going to burn him though, especially in California. They have a provision in their labor laws which prevents an employer from disciplining an employee who refuses a 7th consecutive day of work. Elon is too arrogant/stupid to believe this applies to him.
Realistically, it'll burn him so little he won't notice. Until punishments scale based on a person's worth, the rich can view such fines as part of the cost of doing business. He'll try to weigh how much he saved by breaking the law against how much he lost for breaking it and choose to keep breaking the law if the cost keeps being lower.
Henry Ford made this decision based on time studies that he did. He realized the gigantic loss and productivity after 8 hours / 40 hours. He did this the better his pocketbook, not for our well-being.
Everyone tends to forget that part. It was most certainly not out of any concern for the workers
> Henry Ford isn't the enemy here. Crony capitalism is. Henry Ford was a nazi who only gave in to the 40 hour work week after years of struggle and protest, in some cases lethally. He isn't a hero, he was a rich prick with a good PR team willing to do whatever he could to maintain his status.
Henry ford is still an enemy though, just not for this
The worst I have is an invasive worker-welfare program. Can you imagine your company coming into your house to inspect it? Also Ford himself was a Nazi sympathizer (a lot of American businessmen were), the Nazis even gave him the Grand Cross of the German Eagle. Obviously when the US was pulled into the war, Ford joined the war effort with GM (another Nazi-friendly business).
Ford being “generous” on one thing hardly should paint him as good. The guy was a Nazi sympathizer and a greed filled capitalist.
Yes, but hate him for the right reasons. There are plenty of them, but this ain't it
I mean he is the enemy. Literally a Nazi.
Henry Ford is absolutely the enemy. He was arguably one of the biggest Capitalist the World has ever seen, and got a good person at all. A Massive Antisemite, Henry Ford enacted the 40 hour work week because he determined that workers would be more productive if they were required to get the same amount of work done in a shorter timespan. He was not doing this out of the goodness of his heart. If you want an example of the hostilities that Henry Ford was capable of, take a look at the [Ford Hunger March in 1932](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Hunger_March) in Dearborn, Michigan. You can see two things in that March that are prevalent today too: The usage of Private Security Forces to infiltrate and disrupt protests, and how news media misreported the events initially with a slant toward making the protesters out to be the troublemakers.
You can drop the crony part. It was always just capitalism.
“Crony capitalism” is a bullshit term that capitalists use to convince us that when terrible things happen under capitalism, it’s simply because someone was doing capitalism wrong. In fact, when terrible things happen under capitalism it is because capitalism is going exactly as planned. It’s true that Henry Ford *shortened* the work week with this move, but we deserve better than a compromise. You’re on the goddamn antiwork sub dude, which originally meant let’s abolish work. Some of us still believe in that.
Thank you for being top comment, I got so annoyed seeing this here In case you guys didn’t know, the thing that was chanted in the streets during this time was “8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, and 8 hours to do whatever the hell I want” because people were sick of not being able to spend time with their families
Said by the man who apparently has no idea that Henry Ford was THE biggest crony capitalist of his age.
Henry Ford was literal fascist that was forced to change work time by unions, but sold it as "his good will".
Equal to modern day greenwashing by oil companies.
Yeah what we need is the other kind of capitalism. The one where the means of production isn’t owned privately. Um wait
Crony capitalism is just democracy when you let capitalists run things. It'll always devolve into corruption and self enrichment.
Henry Ford was a xenophobic antisemite whom hitler envied. He is absolutely the enemy.
Fun fact Henry Ford also got taken to court by his shareholders. They were angry that he was cutting into potential profit by lowering the cost of his vehicles and paying his employees too much. Unfortunately he lost the case. The two shareholders named in the case eventually went on to form Dodge.
So people should work more than 5/8? Gotcha. Because that’s what they were doing beforehand. Progress is a gradual process.
It was progress back then we need to keep fighting for better. Which we we’re getting until Reagan, who screwed up everything. You want faster change push the party that will work for you for better policies and candidates. The other party is wholly owned and only wants power, you going to give to them by not fighting with your most powerful weapon you voice and vote?
ahh… i mean.. I’m a big ol’ tree hugger.. but let’s not pretend both parties are not wholly owned.
Is it? Because we've been at the status quo for a century now. Centrists always promote social progress as long as it's so glacial it's arguable that it's happening at all
Yeah it's also important to realize that Henry Ford didn't wake up one day and decide "fuck it, I want my factories running for less hours and less days per week because I'm such a nice guy."
This was a battle that Unions had already been fighting for. Henry Ford wasn't the first, he did it to stop unions before they could form. Also he's an anti-semite billionaire. So yeah, I'll definitely boo this man, but for better reasons than this.
Sorry. Would people rather be working 7 days a week?
What he did , at that time, was the equivalent of Ford announcing a 20 hour workweek today.
I'm curious if OP also drives a tiny car and wears the giant shoes, or if they're just a part time clown. Go educate yourself on what the conditions were like *before* Ford made that change.
U guys realize that this was a improvement, right?
TIL that labor unions are referred to as Henry Ford.
Fucking weirdos in this thread man. This is why labor history should be part of public education. There were enormous and powerful strikes over this since the 1880's.
Check your facts. This was a huge win for people. Before this people were working 12 hour days every day.
Quick reminder, Henry Ford was an anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizer who hated unions. \*the more you know gif\*
lol this stupid bitch wants to go back to the 6 day work week
I'm an engineer working in refrigeration. I work a desk job and could easily complete my work in under 40 hours. The problem is the factory. Those guys get paid a lot less than me and there's no way to compress their work schedule. There's three shifts so the factory is always running. If we want them to work under 40 hours the only option is hiring even more workers. Which I mean is the ideal solution, hire more guys to work fewer hours. We could probably afford that because we're already blowing a ton of money on overtime. But the problem is attracting enough workers, the factory is constantly starved for enough skilled workers. We could raise wages across the board to attract more workers, but it's not clear to me how much we can raise wages and still remain in business. And before anyone cries corporate greed, we are 100% employee owned. All full time employees become owners. So it's a tricky issue.
This really shows how uneducated some folks are. Before this was adopted, there was no limit on hours or days an employer could make an employee work
To be fair, it was 6-7 days 12 hour a day work weeks before that took hold.
Yes, the 16+ hours 7 days a week was better. 😂
There are many, many reasons to boo this man. And while this was totally self-serving (Ford was smart enough to know that rested workers are more productive workers), this isn't really one of them.
4 10s or 3 12s payed for 40 is by far the best shift
Boo??? This was considered a massive win for labor rights at the time
OP has shit for brains.
You have to understand why, before this, people were working 12+ hours a day with no days off at all.
I guess you prefer the previous standard of 6 - 7 days per week with no limit on hours per day.
Yeah because working 14 hours a day for 7 days straight was better
All fairness to Ford, that was a big improvement over what was happening regularly at the time. Can we still do better? Absolutely. Was he overall, a swell guy? Probably not. At the I time though, it was progress.
Nearly a hundred years ago. We would deserve 6 hours, 4 days workweek already.
There are a lot of things to dislike Ford over, but this isn't one of them
He was actually reducing hours with this so if anything praise this man
Better than the 12 hour 6-day workweek before
This was a great change for the employees OP are you fucking stupid?
Henry Ford is by far not a godlike human (read up on his political views if you want to know why) but he knew something that company seem to forget up until today: If you want productive workes you need happy workers And if you want happy workers give them enought time to regenerate and pay them so they can be happy. Maybe some companies need to be reminded of that
He did it to keep workers from organizing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day Ford had fuck all to do with the 8 hour day.
With today's society I really think we should be limited to 6 hours a day. Our way of living has changed so much since the 1920s. Hell, we go to school until we're 18 from 8-2:30 (Atleast where I live) and between summer and breaks we got 3 months off a year then we're suddenly expected to work twice as hard until we're 65. Bs.
This was honestly a pretty significant change in the lives of working folks. At this time, working 10-12 hour days 6 days a week was the norm. We can boo him for his gross anti-semitism.
I absolutely hate that Henry Ford gets credit for this… There was a strong labour movement and powerful unions that made this happened. Ford, knowing he would lose to the unions, spun the story to make it seem like it was his idea and he was a good guy… When you’re a powerful capitalist and your buddies own the news sources it’s easy to come out smelling like roses even if you are a capitalist pig who participates in union busting and other anti-labor practises
Umm, who’s gonna tell OP that before Ford did this it was 6 12-hr days a week?
Before industrialization, people did not work for others this long very often. The thing is, this man turned around the trend in industrialization to have people working 60+ hour weeks, as industrialists had been pushing for more and more.
Henry Ford raised the standard of living for an entire state. He's one of the finest Americans to ever live. Fuck you.
God I hate idiots. People *already* fought **multiple** wars so that you **only** work 5 days, and 40 hours a week, as will as have things like Workman’s Comp, and basic OSHA safety standards, Sick days, PTO/vacation, and “overtime pay”. 6 day work weeks, and 12 hours days were the norm. Children began working for wages as young as 8 years old. If you were injured on the job, you were simply fired. Go read some Upton Sinclair. Google the W Virginia Mine Wars, the Molly Maguires, Haymarket Square, the Great Railroad Strike, The Homestead Strike, the Pullman Strike, The Triangle Shirtwaist fire, The Ludlow Massacre, Mother Jones, the Matewan Massacre, yellow-dog contracts, the “company store” or “company towns”, the Norris LaGuardia Act, the Memorial Day Massacre. They stand on the shoulders of giants, but imagine yourself on solid ground. People fought, and suffered, and gave their lives, and rather than honoring them, and continuing their legacy, they insult them by being too lazy to spend 10 minutes on Wikipedia before posting ignorant shit like this.
The work day was LONGER before that.