Featured photo: Underwood Archives // Getty Images
This story was originally published by Stacker, story by Leesa Davis
It’s hard to imagine a world where Fridays don’t start the weekend, but the two-day weekend only rose to popularity in the 20th century.
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. He believed doing so would make his workers more productive — and more inclined to spend money during their downtime. With days off, people would have more time for leisure activities and shopping, spending their earnings, perhaps, on vehicles. This landmark change made Ford one of the first companies in the nation to set the standard of a five-day workweek.
When the 1929 stock market crash crippled the world economy, the resulting Great Depression led to mass strikes in response to rising unemployment and poverty, among other troubles. Backed by lawmakers within the federal government who realized labor laws needed to change, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act into law in 1938. This set specific restrictions and bylaws regarding labor, including the right to a minimum wage and “time-and-a-half” overtime pay for any time one worked in excess of 44 hours each week.
After this landmark labor law, policies would continue to change. In 1940, when the...
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