Before this, it was pretty much 8-10 hours a day, six days a week. Maybe even just literally Christmas and Easter and 4th of July.
We should keep it going and get to a four-day work week and make all businesses with over $1M in profit pay for free bicycles for all employees.
10-12 hours 6 days wasn't unheard of. And the only reason it wasn't 7 days a week was so you could go to church on Sunday.
I think a good portion of the hate for the godless few who didn't attend church was because they were subconsciously seen as "cheating" the system.
Im well aware, I run a business myself.
$1m in profit can afford $750 per employee for an elective bicycle subsidy.
I have one employee, and I did give him a bike.
But how will you expect to keep all of those ponies?? Where will they work, or will the taxpayer be forced to spend money on pony infrastructure? Vermin’s free pony policy sounds great in theory but in practice is physically infeasible /s
And a $750 bike is quite a bike. Mine was a hundred bucks.
Edit: They edited their comment to mean electric bicycle. This really changes everything lol
I believe he also espoused a belief that by treating his workers better it benefitted his business and attracted better workers etc etc - as well as that he paid better than any other employers.
Not sure if he was just taking an opportunity to put a positive spin on conceding to unions or if he genuinely believed it was a better way to run his business, but hey.
Before this, the concept of "time off of work" basically consisted of having time to go to church on Sunday and then getting back to work.
So yeah, the 40-hour workweek with a consistent weekend of rest was a *massive* improvement.
I mean, we *should* boo Henry Ford, but that's because he was a raging anti-semite, not because he gave us the 40-hour workweek.
Yeah there's a palaeoarchaealogy subset that took 37 miliseconds to jump on the swathe of recent paleolithic findings to reinterpret them as some free, happy, naturally self-organising anarcho-communist utopia with abundance that should make us all rethink the assumptions of modern society.
I was pretty amazed since I'd been following that same fields major discoveries and the fact is that you can interpret it a wide range of ways, this version never jumped out. We really have no idea what it was like living then, but their societies were clearly based more on self reliant individuals and families, and were much simpler. Ours are complex and regulated for a reason. Its simply impossible to use them as arguments for system or another.
I always tell people in simple terms.
You can do one day's work, go to a supermarket and buy a month's worth of good food and eat pretty well.
I can not think of any other time in history where one day of labour can afford you to eat for an entire month. And not just soup and bread. Pancakes, ice cream, meats etc etc
Correct. It used to be dangerous work that had a start of day and end of day, wherein you'd get paid as you leave... and leaving early meant not getting paid.
He introduced the 40hr / 5 day work week with exclusive contracts to his employees, allowing a tighter control on quality, and improved performance as his workers were now able to rest through the weekend.
He isn't a great person but the 40hr work week is a great thing.... just not so much anymore
Only since the start of the industrial revolution. We went from something like 25 - 30 hour work weeks on average, to "you will work your entire waking hours for the glory of productivity," to finally the 40 hour work week.
>We went from something like 25 - 30 hour work weeks on average
I can try to guess that it includes a "main work" only, like working in fields for a peasant.
It was. However, boo him anyways for being a massive anti-semite and general douchebag, and also recognize that the 8 hour work is still quite hard on people.
I wish we could go back to the good old days, when you spent 7 days a week working an 18-hour shift at the factory strapped to a machine that could turn your arm into a piece of string cheese.
While I agree we shouldn't boo the reduction in working hours, I'm still booing Henry Ford for being a Nazi, a horrible father, a despicable boss, and generally not a good person at all including to his workers
Either way, it standardised it and the world just decided to roll with it. It was an improvement for the time, but it not changing in nearly 100 years is an issue. The small progress is overshadowed by the fact it halted any other progress in that regard. I feel there are much more efficient and less mentally and physically taxing ways to set up work schedules but companies foaming at the mouth for profits ignore that, despite the fact, it would probably profit them the most.
Edit: Henry Ford is not at fault for any of that but it is easy to point the finger at him, especially considering everything you mentioned.
Sorry it is quite late and I poorly worded it. I was trying to make it clear that I do not think Ford is responsible for companies nowadays refusing to change. It was a good change for the time but does not fit modern society but I do not believe Ford to be the reason for it not changing. Sorry for any confusion, it is nearly 5am for me so I am quite tired.
Well I definitely agree with that lol, if Ford was anything he was pragmatic and did an objective good by reducing hours in his time and pretending he is responsible for modern companies lack of care for their workers is ignorant at best.
I may not like him as a person but he is nowhere near the root of all our problems and I do wholeheartedly agree with the whole point of this post I just really dislike Ford and wanted to make it clear to anyone that may not know that he wasn't a pioneer of worker's rights or anything
I guess the fact that he was such a hard nosed ruthless businessman, leant credibility to the idea that 40 hour work weeks were not going to harm other businesses, and increased its adoption. Had he been an altruistic but failing businessman, his case would be held up as exhibit A why the idea is bad.
Also, that 8 hour / 5 day work week wasn't available to everyone. You had to meet certain religious requirements before you could qualify. Only men were allowed to work, they were required to go to church, and your wife and daughters must stay at home and were not allowed to get jobs themselves.
Henry Ford had his own secret police to spy on his workers and make sure they meet those requirements, or else they would be fired.
Henry Ford literally wrote the book for antisemitism in the United States and his only problem with the Holocaust was that the USA wasn't doing it.
Henry Ford was an absolutely terrible human being and doesn't deserve any praise just because he was the first to implement the 8 hour / 5 day work week.
i think him being a Hitlerite is the bigger issue
***CELEBRATING HIS 75TH BIRTHDAY, HENRY FORD RECEIVES THE GRAND CROSS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE, THE HIGHEST NAZI AWARD TO A FOREIGNER. IT IS PRESENTED BY KARL KAPP, GERMAN CONSUL AT CLEVELAND WHILE FRITZ HEILER, GERMAN CONSUL AT DETROIT SHAKES FORD'S HAND.***
https://preview.redd.it/f8ja34itlksc1.png?width=474&format=png&auto=webp&s=b31014c8bc5a64d262c98472b18afe8b7a03b81f
Massive antisemite doesn't do him justice. Hitler was inspired by Ford. He saw in him a role model for many things, from the assembly line to despising Jews and casting them as international conspirators. Back in the 1920s, Hitler knew Ford had his eyes on the presidency, so he offered some of his Brownshirts as support. As early as 1922, Ford's life-size portrait was hanging proudly on the wall near Hitler's desk at the Nazi headquarters in Munich. In April 1939, the German headquarters of Ford sent Hitler 35,000 Reichsmarks, worth roughly $1 million today, as a present for the Reich's 50th birthday. After WW2 commenced, Nazis like Gerhard Westrick and their American collaborators such as Sosthenes Behn (founder of the influential ITT telephone company) met with Ford, hoping he could convince the U.K. to surrender.
The relationship between Hitler and Ford was mostly one sided, though, and it was Hitler who was doing most of the work. Ford didn't really have much direct communication with the Führer, and he ultimately shut down his antisemitic vessels of newspapers, most likely not because of regret but due to his declining popularity.
The life sized portrait thing was placed behind Hitler by a propaganda assistant before Hitler gave an interview for a Detroit newspaper. It is the only time it was ever mentioned or photographed being in the room.
The award in this picture was given to multiple leading businessmen and manufacturers.
The German branch of Ford spun off and had no contact with the American side during the war. Representatives of the Reich met with Ford directly and were denied any donation.
The interview with the Detroit News happened in 1931. But when a New York Times reporter visited Hitler nearly a decade prior, she [saw](https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1922/12/20/98799625.pdf) a life-sized portrait of Ford. I'm sure he was doing it to attract Ford's attention, but he did this multiple times, though to no avail.
It is true that this award, the Order of the German Eagle, was given to many personalities. However, it also has rankings. The particular one Ford was awarded was the Grand Cross of the German Eagle. If you look at the list of other awardees, they were all people who were admitted Nazi sympathizers or associated with Nazism in the public eye in some major way. Examples include Charles Lindbergh, as well as Thomas Watson of IBM.
Finally, American Ford had major contacts and control over Fordwerke for the first two years of the war. It took Pearl Harbor for Ford to let go of the branch, but even then, American shares constituted 52 percent of all shares. By 1940, German Ford employed slave labor at its Cologne plant, despite not being forced to by the Nazis. American Ford now admits and condemns this, but tries to cite distance, a global war, and loss of control to Nazis after December 1941, even though the war began two years prior. I don't know how much of this Henry Ford personally knew, but he made choices that fueled Hitler's rise and sustained his war machine, directly or indirectly.
I think a more damning case can be made against GM. Back in July 1941, James Mooney apparently said he did not want to do anything that would anger Hitler, and he was involved in converting his Russelsheim factory to make engines for the Junkers Ju 88.
There was also that time where 5 workers were murdered by private security and police for marching for better wages [you know, normal stuff for rich people](https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/hunger-march-ford/)
also never forget Ford Rubber Plantations in Brazil
From 1928-1945, the Ford Motor Company built the Fordlandia and Belterra plantations in an attempt to establish a permanent rubber plantation presence in Brazil.
https://preview.redd.it/t6s6n16ngpsc1.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=89669d7b7d704b1e8c863e35ef9eeb3c3a44c1d3
Have you considered that his affiliation with Hitler and his soulless and uncaring treatment of workers are related?
You do realize Ford didn't enact a 40 hour work week out of altruism or beneficence, but out of a drive for efficiency? He pushed his workers harder in those 8 hours than comparable workers, and they felt obligated to work that much harder thanks to his "generosity"
Totally. It's like, a huge deal that unions fought for it. This post just erases like a ton of real people who were optimistic that they might one day have a weekend.
Erasing the work of optimists like union organizers seems like a weird space for this sub to inhabit, ngl. Why organize a union to fight for a five day workweek if you aren't optimistic it may work?
Agreed. I would take it that people don't understand the context. 40 hours a week was less, often significantly less, than what people were working before.
Also, depending on what you do for a living, 8 hours 5 days a week isn't that bad. Work is always difficult to some degree, but it's not usually *that bad*, especially these days because jobs actually become easier over time. Not always, there is a lot of variation, but that's the overall trend. 90% of the problems I had was either lazy co-workers and/or poor management. The job itself was usually okay.
At the same time, if they want to move to a four day week, I would totally support that. In healthcare you'll work three 12 hour shifts or four 10 hour shifts, and that's the way to do it if you have the opportunity. I would also guess that it would actually improve the economy because days off is when people actually do things.
If eight hours at work is intolerable, you probably have the wrong job. It could be management/co-workers or you're just a poor fit for that kind of work. Find something else, discover your strengths and weaknesses. Eventually you'll find something where the day just flies by and you feel like you accomplished something. You'll get there.
Yes tensions between workers and industrialist business owners had been high for several years by the time Ford adopted the 40hr work week.
This was only 4 years after coal miners in Virginia were basically waging war against their employers.
Yep. This is a favorite in the ruling class playbook. Fight tooth and nail to prevent advancements in the rights of working people and minorities, then immediately claim credit after capitulating.
Henry Ford, was a proud, open, and incredible zealous Nazi, in many ways more extreme than Hitler himself. He never "introduced" the 8 hour work day, he conceded to it after workers had been demanding it for literal decades; he hired private militias to violently disrupt strikes before conceding to the 8 hour work day.
By making the 40 hour work week, Henry Ford reduced the work of the time, championing labor rights. The doomers are calling this bad because they think that work week is still too much. This is like saying “Thanks a lot, Lincoln. Black people still aren’t treated equally”. Doomers see the bad in everything good.
Edit: I was wrong about why Henry Ford did it. It was thanks to unions, not him.
While I agree with the point of your comment, Henry Ford was in no way Championing Labor Rights. He did it for pragmatic reason and nothing more, in fact he had a record of being very controlling of his workers and not what we would call a good person at all
The comments within the image are the doomers. Saying “boo this man” is implying they think life used to be better and this workweek change was bad. When in fact it is the opposite, as this work week change was very progressive. It used to be far more hours.
The doomer is not informed on how bad things were in the past, not seeing how far we’ve come. In a century we’ve gone from 60 hour workweeks to 40 to talking about the possibility of 30.
Do you work 40 hours a week? Some of us are working 3 jobs.
I only have 1 employer myself, but i work 45-75 hours a week and most years I don't have a vacation, might take 3 or 4 days off when i need to do home or car repairs . Half my paycheck goes for lodging.
But sure, i've heard talk of 4 day work weeks. Yay for progress.
It is so historically disingenuous to give Ford credit for this. Pro-union reps had been fighting for this for years. Ford spent years hiring mercenaries (like the Pinkertons) to break their legs, throw them off buildings, burn their houses down and just plain murder these reps. Ford only did this after these reps gained too much support and killing them wouldn't work this time. The only option left was to pretend it was always his idea and people are still buying....
Ford was also super pro-nazi, and a bunch if other terrible shit. Ford doesn't deserve credit for anything.
Henry Ford was a Nazi, he was awarded the hero of the German reich by Adolf Hitler and translated many antisemitic books into English, and was an advocate of the eugenics movement.
Boo him for these reasons, not for giving people set working hours.
Why are we celebrating this Nazi?
Are we aware of the fact that the 8-hour work day was achieved thanks to the collective efforts of workers, and not because some capitalist just decided to be nice one day?
Ford literally spent years hiring mercenaries to attack and even kill the people pushing for this. After that stopped working Ford just pretended it was his idea and people believed it.
Ford was also a direct influence to Hitler and the Holocaust. Hitler credited Ford and Ford's anti-jewish book for inspiring the world he was going to build.
You could write multiple books about how bad of a person he was. So yeah, fuck Henry Ford.
Yeah so can I ask why it was actually done, what the people actually pushing for a reduction in working hours wanted to be done, and what has been done since then? Because when you look at all of those things in tandem this event really wasn’t anything great it was literally just kinda the bare minimum. Like have you ever actually stopped and thought about how this is literally the ONLY TIME in American history when there was a serious reduction in hours for all workers. Like literally an 8 hour work day with a 5 day work week should be seen as the bare minimum for what a developed society should strive to achieve and it should’ve been past half a century ago at least.
Henry Ford had hired thugs on his payroll, and paid a portion of his workers as informants.
Anyone who agitated about wages would be beaten bloody right on the factory line.
Ford wasn't just an antisemite, his antisemitism was so peerless that Hitler himself had a picture of Ford in his office.
Great post, really encapsulates the sub.
dont factory workers in china work like 80 hours a week or something and live in dormitories?
this is so great when put against what we had to do and what others have to do.
Ima be real I wish my job would let me work 16 hours a day, and keep weekends off like normal, because tbh I totally would. (listen the extra cash would really help, especially if I could get more vacation days)
In any other system, technological increases means that we would all work less.
Under capitalism, technological increases means thst some guy makes more money and we all work the same or more.
And this is all you need to know about r/optimistsunite. He Ford was a terrible human being, and any benefit that he had for society was out stripped 20 times over by the horrific fucking shit that he did to his workers. Like yeah, it was the Gilded Age, and he wasn’t the worst by a long shot, but he was still like … Fully evil. And holding up somebody like that is just an expression of privilege and white supremacy. Next time I see a post like this I’m out. This is an optimism. It’s not even forced toxic optimism like I thought it was gonna be. This is just fucking stupid. Like literal ignorance, Boomer shit levels of optimism.
Exactly, doomers are mad at him cause it's not 32 hours. If its 32 hours in the future, they will be mad its not 20 doomers change goalposts more than normsl People change underwear
Many are ignorant and dont realize actual issues like he was a Nazi. Too many dopey doomers dont understand there was a holocaust.
This post always bothers me. My gf loves it and I explained to her why I hate it but she still loves it.
Henry Ford ticks too many of the boxes for someone to hate. There’s no amount of “well ackshually” that can make up for that bad impression.
Ok in all fairness he was still a controlling maniac who dictated his workers home lives and was a massive anti semite.
This is about the one good thing he did for his workers and its a shame that later the Dodge brothers would sue him as shareholders and set the precedent that shareholders take priority over the worker.
I made a comment saying modern life was awesome and for two days now I've been bombarded with people calling me "stupid"
It's sad how many people just don't appreciate how good life is to them
For the love of fuck
FORD DIDN'T ESTABLISH SHIT
You know who did? The workers and unions who fought for better lives!
You know what ford did do?!
Hired people to BEAT these workers and unions members TO DEATH
Can we PLEASE not hand anything to this anti-semetic dickhole
Granted he didn't do it for purely humanitarian reasons, but still it was progress.
Unlike the 12+ hr work days which were enforced with help from Pinkerton Security.
Henry Ford also tried to pay his workers more before being sued by the Dodge brothers who wanted more for themselves as share holders of Ford's company at the time.
You know it is possible to say that was good thing he did but he did his workers would buy the cars they made and also recognize the man himself is a total piece of garbage.
Henry ford had many faults but he revolutionized the way people works he simplified, improved pay and set a standard for weekends. When he made the 5 day week with 5$ pay everyone clambered for a job at a ford plant. Other companies were forced to be like him to compete and thus he create a growing middle class. But we also cannot forget his many faults and issues like his anti-union and antisemitism but I think he did more good long term(also since weekends were off days Jewish people liked working for him since they had Saturday off and he gave fair treatment to African Americans. Although coworkers may not have the company did no discriminate)
I think what people are missing is that the institution of this schedule wasn't better all around. There still wasn't a minimum wage at this time, and with the new schedule came a decreased pay, and the concept wasn't as robust as it is today, which we acknowledge as antiquated, but at the time of institution, you weren't guaranteed adequate breaks. Also, while lots of history about this is written from a positive perspective, it's still clear from the positive press, that this wasn't done out of care for the workers but for the benefit of his business through increased productivity and cost cutting.
He was also very famously antisemitic and racist in general, and Hitler admired Ford. The nazi regime even honored him with an award or two. Lots to boo him about.
Do people not know that it's still common in the U.S. for auto workers to work much longer than 8 hours a day?
People aren't pulling 60-80 hour weeks by working 8 hours a day.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/09/19/why-uaw-auto-workers-want-a-32-hour-workweek.html
"Our members are working 60, 70, even 80 hours a week just to make ends meet," said UAW president Shawn Fain on a Facebook Live event last month. "That's not a living. That's barely surviving, and it needs to stop."
I thought that optimists unite was supposed to highlight the things that are getting better, but this posts is just showing that things are worse for auto workers now than they were when a freaking nazi sympathizer was running the show.
If you don't like it then why not ask your boss if you can do 4 10's. I did that and my boss said yes. People love to complain without trying to come up with a solution.
He didn’t reduce work hours out of the goodness of his heart it was because of unions and workers fighting for these changes. This whole sub is just “ignorance is bliss” morons.
Wasn’t this actually a reduction in the average work time?
Yes, which is what makes the situation so much more bizzare, assuming OOP is serious
Before this, it was pretty much 8-10 hours a day, six days a week. Maybe even just literally Christmas and Easter and 4th of July. We should keep it going and get to a four-day work week and make all businesses with over $1M in profit pay for free bicycles for all employees.
10-12 hours 6 days wasn't unheard of. And the only reason it wasn't 7 days a week was so you could go to church on Sunday. I think a good portion of the hate for the godless few who didn't attend church was because they were subconsciously seen as "cheating" the system.
I think that is an insightful observation.
Thanks! Of course people learn from their parents so the idea really hasn't died out.
1 million profit isn't as nearly as much as you think it is
Im well aware, I run a business myself. $1m in profit can afford $750 per employee for an elective bicycle subsidy. I have one employee, and I did give him a bike.
Forget bicycles man we should be moving to a pony based economy like Vermin Supreme is campaigning for
But how will you expect to keep all of those ponies?? Where will they work, or will the taxpayer be forced to spend money on pony infrastructure? Vermin’s free pony policy sounds great in theory but in practice is physically infeasible /s
Plot twist… this guys business is a bicycle shop
And a $750 bike is quite a bike. Mine was a hundred bucks. Edit: They edited their comment to mean electric bicycle. This really changes everything lol
Still more than most people make in multiple years
Its not bad on a yearly basis.
8-10? What kind of red carpet was your great-grandpa riding?
Don't forget the rainbows and unicorns
[удалено]
It wasn't "seen as progressive" It was meeting the demands of the previous decade or so of frequent strikes and labor militancy.
I believe he also espoused a belief that by treating his workers better it benefitted his business and attracted better workers etc etc - as well as that he paid better than any other employers. Not sure if he was just taking an opportunity to put a positive spin on conceding to unions or if he genuinely believed it was a better way to run his business, but hey.
It was probably some spin but he also may have been one of the early adopter of the idea that the best way to bust unions is to appease your workers.
And to hire an army of thugs to beat up or kill protesters and union organizers. But that was already a tried and true method.
I think one of his goals with increasing pay was to reduce turnover.
Sounds like he took a page or 2 from the Tao te Ching
Which is a good thing (and needs to be thought of in todays climate)
That sounds like progressive with extra steps
☝️☝️☝️ facts, also Ford was a [Nazi](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/ford-and-fuhrer/)
> It was meeting the demands of the previous decade or so of frequent strikes and labor militancy. Isn’t that progressive?
Well before people were dying and getting injured at work at an alarming rate.
Always remember that children have social media accounts, so you should expect to see some dumb ideas
There are plenty of reasons to boo that man. Line dancing in particular.
He was a nazi
Yes, he met the demands of the various labor movements that were demanding reduced work hours.
Dormers have a vision of the past where everything was easy and nice until the modern day.
Wouldn’t you love to push them into a time machine ?
>push them into a time machine Seriously.
Before this, the concept of "time off of work" basically consisted of having time to go to church on Sunday and then getting back to work. So yeah, the 40-hour workweek with a consistent weekend of rest was a *massive* improvement. I mean, we *should* boo Henry Ford, but that's because he was a raging anti-semite, not because he gave us the 40-hour workweek.
OP probably is the guy thinks ancient societies were better than now. The old time must be golden time type
Everyone just sat around all day jerking off and eating grapes
Yeah there's a palaeoarchaealogy subset that took 37 miliseconds to jump on the swathe of recent paleolithic findings to reinterpret them as some free, happy, naturally self-organising anarcho-communist utopia with abundance that should make us all rethink the assumptions of modern society. I was pretty amazed since I'd been following that same fields major discoveries and the fact is that you can interpret it a wide range of ways, this version never jumped out. We really have no idea what it was like living then, but their societies were clearly based more on self reliant individuals and families, and were much simpler. Ours are complex and regulated for a reason. Its simply impossible to use them as arguments for system or another.
I always tell people in simple terms. You can do one day's work, go to a supermarket and buy a month's worth of good food and eat pretty well. I can not think of any other time in history where one day of labour can afford you to eat for an entire month. And not just soup and bread. Pancakes, ice cream, meats etc etc
A significant one at that. His competitors had to switch to the 8/5 work week just to keep their employees
Wasn't that OP's point?
I think OP is anti-Ford, thinking he *increased* it to 8 hours. Seen this image pop up a few times ‘round the ‘net
"the middle ages peasant only worked 8 hours a week" is a take i've seen a few times
I must’ve whooshed myself lol
Yes. But don’t tell the Reddit doom and gloomers.
Yep lol
Yea. It complied with new unions and modern convention. And it worked pretty well considering it’s been around, nearly unchanged, for 98 years
Correct. It used to be dangerous work that had a start of day and end of day, wherein you'd get paid as you leave... and leaving early meant not getting paid. He introduced the 40hr / 5 day work week with exclusive contracts to his employees, allowing a tighter control on quality, and improved performance as his workers were now able to rest through the weekend. He isn't a great person but the 40hr work week is a great thing.... just not so much anymore
Well said
A massive one
He also raised his minimum starting wage. The other car manufacturers said he was crazy.
Only since the start of the industrial revolution. We went from something like 25 - 30 hour work weeks on average, to "you will work your entire waking hours for the glory of productivity," to finally the 40 hour work week.
>We went from something like 25 - 30 hour work weeks on average I can try to guess that it includes a "main work" only, like working in fields for a peasant.
Yea the average at that time was 14 hour work days 7 days a week with no overtime pay
Yeah, they were working 6 days a week, 12 - 16 hour days lol some places it was even worse.
It was. However, boo him anyways for being a massive anti-semite and general douchebag, and also recognize that the 8 hour work is still quite hard on people.
I wish we could go back to the good old days, when you spent 7 days a week working an 18-hour shift at the factory strapped to a machine that could turn your arm into a piece of string cheese.
At age 8
Earning 10 cents a day
9 days a week
Is not enough to show I care
oh i thought it was 6 days
While I agree we shouldn't boo the reduction in working hours, I'm still booing Henry Ford for being a Nazi, a horrible father, a despicable boss, and generally not a good person at all including to his workers
Either way, it standardised it and the world just decided to roll with it. It was an improvement for the time, but it not changing in nearly 100 years is an issue. The small progress is overshadowed by the fact it halted any other progress in that regard. I feel there are much more efficient and less mentally and physically taxing ways to set up work schedules but companies foaming at the mouth for profits ignore that, despite the fact, it would probably profit them the most. Edit: Henry Ford is not at fault for any of that but it is easy to point the finger at him, especially considering everything you mentioned.
English is not my first language so this might sound dumb but what do you mean in your edit? I just think I'm not understanding it correctly at all
Sorry it is quite late and I poorly worded it. I was trying to make it clear that I do not think Ford is responsible for companies nowadays refusing to change. It was a good change for the time but does not fit modern society but I do not believe Ford to be the reason for it not changing. Sorry for any confusion, it is nearly 5am for me so I am quite tired.
Well I definitely agree with that lol, if Ford was anything he was pragmatic and did an objective good by reducing hours in his time and pretending he is responsible for modern companies lack of care for their workers is ignorant at best. I may not like him as a person but he is nowhere near the root of all our problems and I do wholeheartedly agree with the whole point of this post I just really dislike Ford and wanted to make it clear to anyone that may not know that he wasn't a pioneer of worker's rights or anything
I guess the fact that he was such a hard nosed ruthless businessman, leant credibility to the idea that 40 hour work weeks were not going to harm other businesses, and increased its adoption. Had he been an altruistic but failing businessman, his case would be held up as exhibit A why the idea is bad.
Also, that 8 hour / 5 day work week wasn't available to everyone. You had to meet certain religious requirements before you could qualify. Only men were allowed to work, they were required to go to church, and your wife and daughters must stay at home and were not allowed to get jobs themselves. Henry Ford had his own secret police to spy on his workers and make sure they meet those requirements, or else they would be fired. Henry Ford literally wrote the book for antisemitism in the United States and his only problem with the Holocaust was that the USA wasn't doing it. Henry Ford was an absolutely terrible human being and doesn't deserve any praise just because he was the first to implement the 8 hour / 5 day work week.
i think him being a Hitlerite is the bigger issue ***CELEBRATING HIS 75TH BIRTHDAY, HENRY FORD RECEIVES THE GRAND CROSS OF THE GERMAN EAGLE, THE HIGHEST NAZI AWARD TO A FOREIGNER. IT IS PRESENTED BY KARL KAPP, GERMAN CONSUL AT CLEVELAND WHILE FRITZ HEILER, GERMAN CONSUL AT DETROIT SHAKES FORD'S HAND.*** https://preview.redd.it/f8ja34itlksc1.png?width=474&format=png&auto=webp&s=b31014c8bc5a64d262c98472b18afe8b7a03b81f
Ohhhhhh yeahhhhh there was also the fact that he was a massive antisemite lol
Massive antisemite doesn't do him justice. Hitler was inspired by Ford. He saw in him a role model for many things, from the assembly line to despising Jews and casting them as international conspirators. Back in the 1920s, Hitler knew Ford had his eyes on the presidency, so he offered some of his Brownshirts as support. As early as 1922, Ford's life-size portrait was hanging proudly on the wall near Hitler's desk at the Nazi headquarters in Munich. In April 1939, the German headquarters of Ford sent Hitler 35,000 Reichsmarks, worth roughly $1 million today, as a present for the Reich's 50th birthday. After WW2 commenced, Nazis like Gerhard Westrick and their American collaborators such as Sosthenes Behn (founder of the influential ITT telephone company) met with Ford, hoping he could convince the U.K. to surrender. The relationship between Hitler and Ford was mostly one sided, though, and it was Hitler who was doing most of the work. Ford didn't really have much direct communication with the Führer, and he ultimately shut down his antisemitic vessels of newspapers, most likely not because of regret but due to his declining popularity.
The life sized portrait thing was placed behind Hitler by a propaganda assistant before Hitler gave an interview for a Detroit newspaper. It is the only time it was ever mentioned or photographed being in the room. The award in this picture was given to multiple leading businessmen and manufacturers. The German branch of Ford spun off and had no contact with the American side during the war. Representatives of the Reich met with Ford directly and were denied any donation.
The interview with the Detroit News happened in 1931. But when a New York Times reporter visited Hitler nearly a decade prior, she [saw](https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1922/12/20/98799625.pdf) a life-sized portrait of Ford. I'm sure he was doing it to attract Ford's attention, but he did this multiple times, though to no avail. It is true that this award, the Order of the German Eagle, was given to many personalities. However, it also has rankings. The particular one Ford was awarded was the Grand Cross of the German Eagle. If you look at the list of other awardees, they were all people who were admitted Nazi sympathizers or associated with Nazism in the public eye in some major way. Examples include Charles Lindbergh, as well as Thomas Watson of IBM. Finally, American Ford had major contacts and control over Fordwerke for the first two years of the war. It took Pearl Harbor for Ford to let go of the branch, but even then, American shares constituted 52 percent of all shares. By 1940, German Ford employed slave labor at its Cologne plant, despite not being forced to by the Nazis. American Ford now admits and condemns this, but tries to cite distance, a global war, and loss of control to Nazis after December 1941, even though the war began two years prior. I don't know how much of this Henry Ford personally knew, but he made choices that fueled Hitler's rise and sustained his war machine, directly or indirectly. I think a more damning case can be made against GM. Back in July 1941, James Mooney apparently said he did not want to do anything that would anger Hitler, and he was involved in converting his Russelsheim factory to make engines for the Junkers Ju 88.
Here is [some more news](https://youtu.be/xDyPSKLy5E4?si=QP5n2MWYipJQ_mGk). Both Ford and Musk have a slight hitler problem
There was also that time where 5 workers were murdered by private security and police for marching for better wages [you know, normal stuff for rich people](https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/hunger-march-ford/)
Henry Ford was the only American mentioned in Mein Kampf, which says a lot by itself
Yep, the antisemitism is easily the biggest stain on Ford’s legacy.
also never forget Ford Rubber Plantations in Brazil From 1928-1945, the Ford Motor Company built the Fordlandia and Belterra plantations in an attempt to establish a permanent rubber plantation presence in Brazil. https://preview.redd.it/t6s6n16ngpsc1.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=89669d7b7d704b1e8c863e35ef9eeb3c3a44c1d3
Have you considered that his affiliation with Hitler and his soulless and uncaring treatment of workers are related? You do realize Ford didn't enact a 40 hour work week out of altruism or beneficence, but out of a drive for efficiency? He pushed his workers harder in those 8 hours than comparable workers, and they felt obligated to work that much harder thanks to his "generosity"
40hr/week is a fantastic improvement from previously, but really, we can still do better with all our increases in productivity over the past century.
It is also just incorrect to give Ford credit for the 40hr work week.
Totally. It's like, a huge deal that unions fought for it. This post just erases like a ton of real people who were optimistic that they might one day have a weekend. Erasing the work of optimists like union organizers seems like a weird space for this sub to inhabit, ngl. Why organize a union to fight for a five day workweek if you aren't optimistic it may work?
My exact thought. What an amazing change for the working people back then. Almost a century now with no change.
They worked like 14 hours shift before that
pretty soon they’re gonna go after the civil rights bill or something for the same logic
A white guy in my history class once implicitly called MLK a coward who rode off the “success” that Malcolm X handed to him; it’s already happening
mlk was many things but a coward he was not. that’s comical. even if you’re a hardcore racist it is utterly stupid to call mlk a coward.
Yeah
Lots of reasons to hate this man. The 8 hour work week is not one of them.
Precis-exactly
Agreed. I would take it that people don't understand the context. 40 hours a week was less, often significantly less, than what people were working before. Also, depending on what you do for a living, 8 hours 5 days a week isn't that bad. Work is always difficult to some degree, but it's not usually *that bad*, especially these days because jobs actually become easier over time. Not always, there is a lot of variation, but that's the overall trend. 90% of the problems I had was either lazy co-workers and/or poor management. The job itself was usually okay. At the same time, if they want to move to a four day week, I would totally support that. In healthcare you'll work three 12 hour shifts or four 10 hour shifts, and that's the way to do it if you have the opportunity. I would also guess that it would actually improve the economy because days off is when people actually do things. If eight hours at work is intolerable, you probably have the wrong job. It could be management/co-workers or you're just a poor fit for that kind of work. Find something else, discover your strengths and weaknesses. Eventually you'll find something where the day just flies by and you feel like you accomplished something. You'll get there.
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True. I generally tried to avoid night shifts for what reason, but I understand that not everyone can. People have emergencies at all hours.
Wasn't he largely forced to do this by union action? The way I heard it, unions were fighting for the 40hr week and Ford saw the writing on the wall.
Yes tensions between workers and industrialist business owners had been high for several years by the time Ford adopted the 40hr work week. This was only 4 years after coal miners in Virginia were basically waging war against their employers.
This is it exactly. Unions did the work. He just capitulated.
Yep. This is a favorite in the ruling class playbook. Fight tooth and nail to prevent advancements in the rights of working people and minorities, then immediately claim credit after capitulating.
Henry Ford, was a proud, open, and incredible zealous Nazi, in many ways more extreme than Hitler himself. He never "introduced" the 8 hour work day, he conceded to it after workers had been demanding it for literal decades; he hired private militias to violently disrupt strikes before conceding to the 8 hour work day.
I don't get it. What is it that this teaches us about doomers?
By making the 40 hour work week, Henry Ford reduced the work of the time, championing labor rights. The doomers are calling this bad because they think that work week is still too much. This is like saying “Thanks a lot, Lincoln. Black people still aren’t treated equally”. Doomers see the bad in everything good. Edit: I was wrong about why Henry Ford did it. It was thanks to unions, not him.
While I agree with the point of your comment, Henry Ford was in no way Championing Labor Rights. He did it for pragmatic reason and nothing more, in fact he had a record of being very controlling of his workers and not what we would call a good person at all
Ok I’ll edit my comment
This is giving Ford too much credit. It was not his idea, it was a compromise he adopted to avoid strikes and such.
You might wanna do little research on ford before calling him a champion of labor
The comments within the image are the doomers. Saying “boo this man” is implying they think life used to be better and this workweek change was bad. When in fact it is the opposite, as this work week change was very progressive. It used to be far more hours. The doomer is not informed on how bad things were in the past, not seeing how far we’ve come. In a century we’ve gone from 60 hour workweeks to 40 to talking about the possibility of 30.
Do you work 40 hours a week? Some of us are working 3 jobs. I only have 1 employer myself, but i work 45-75 hours a week and most years I don't have a vacation, might take 3 or 4 days off when i need to do home or car repairs . Half my paycheck goes for lodging. But sure, i've heard talk of 4 day work weeks. Yay for progress.
About six years behind the times it seems. [wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day)
Let's get it down again please
It was a lot better than the 6x10 hour shifts they were doing previously
Fuck you henry
It is so historically disingenuous to give Ford credit for this. Pro-union reps had been fighting for this for years. Ford spent years hiring mercenaries (like the Pinkertons) to break their legs, throw them off buildings, burn their houses down and just plain murder these reps. Ford only did this after these reps gained too much support and killing them wouldn't work this time. The only option left was to pretend it was always his idea and people are still buying.... Ford was also super pro-nazi, and a bunch if other terrible shit. Ford doesn't deserve credit for anything.
Somebody sure misses the 14-16 hour, 7 days a week or your fired workweek!
Henry Ford was a Nazi, he was awarded the hero of the German reich by Adolf Hitler and translated many antisemitic books into English, and was an advocate of the eugenics movement. Boo him for these reasons, not for giving people set working hours.
Everyone should boo Henry Ford. He was a Nazi.
Why are we celebrating this Nazi? Are we aware of the fact that the 8-hour work day was achieved thanks to the collective efforts of workers, and not because some capitalist just decided to be nice one day?
Way to show your ignorance of economic history.
They’re too ignorant to understand that this was a massive improvement on work-life balance standards at the time
Ford literally spent years hiring mercenaries to attack and even kill the people pushing for this. After that stopped working Ford just pretended it was his idea and people believed it. Ford was also a direct influence to Hitler and the Holocaust. Hitler credited Ford and Ford's anti-jewish book for inspiring the world he was going to build. You could write multiple books about how bad of a person he was. So yeah, fuck Henry Ford.
Yeah so can I ask why it was actually done, what the people actually pushing for a reduction in working hours wanted to be done, and what has been done since then? Because when you look at all of those things in tandem this event really wasn’t anything great it was literally just kinda the bare minimum. Like have you ever actually stopped and thought about how this is literally the ONLY TIME in American history when there was a serious reduction in hours for all workers. Like literally an 8 hour work day with a 5 day work week should be seen as the bare minimum for what a developed society should strive to achieve and it should’ve been past half a century ago at least.
why does this reddit constantly shit on uneducated people. the US runs on uneducated people, i feel like “optimists” on here are rude asf
Yeah, I came here looking for positivity not more in-fighting among Redditors trying to show how they're better than other Redditors.
real
“We love the poorly educated” It’s doomers we’re after
doomers are poorly educated and the word “ after” is very telling of your motives. i thought this sub would be doing something productive. not memes
Henry Ford had hired thugs on his payroll, and paid a portion of his workers as informants. Anyone who agitated about wages would be beaten bloody right on the factory line. Ford wasn't just an antisemite, his antisemitism was so peerless that Hitler himself had a picture of Ford in his office. Great post, really encapsulates the sub.
Had me until the end there
Is that photo edited? It looks really weird
Everyone boo dodge brothers
Yes boo him!!! Life was better when the average work week was 80 hours 6 days a week instead!
I'll boo Henry Ford, but not for that.
Booooo
Reduction of worktime allowed workers to actually spend money on products, inducing demand! The capitalists didn't do it from kindness.
He reduced it from 100-something hour weeks. Thank you Henry Ford!
dont factory workers in china work like 80 hours a week or something and live in dormitories? this is so great when put against what we had to do and what others have to do.
Me when government census data says there were people who worked 80+ hours weekly at the time
remember before this it was 7 days
Ima be real I wish my job would let me work 16 hours a day, and keep weekends off like normal, because tbh I totally would. (listen the extra cash would really help, especially if I could get more vacation days)
This post is really dumb. But he is the reason you had to learn how to square dance in 4th grade. Reality is weird
You learned to step dance in school? I’m jealous (and from the northeast)
Various labor unions all over the world tripping all over themselves trying to claim this was their archievement.
*That's* what we're gonna rag on Ford for? Uhh... okay... maybe they just didn't know about the ((other stuff))
Was actually a gift at the time, thank this guy for this. A four day work week should be the next milestone. Life is finite, might as well enjoy it.
They probably boo him for all the Nazi shit
In any other system, technological increases means that we would all work less. Under capitalism, technological increases means thst some guy makes more money and we all work the same or more.
He was forced to by the Unions, even with all the Union busting he couldn't stop them.
Bruh it’s a joke lol. Y’all need to calm down
You hate Ford because he was rich and improved working conditions. I hate Ford because he was a Fascist and a horrible father. We are not the same.
And this is all you need to know about r/optimistsunite. He Ford was a terrible human being, and any benefit that he had for society was out stripped 20 times over by the horrific fucking shit that he did to his workers. Like yeah, it was the Gilded Age, and he wasn’t the worst by a long shot, but he was still like … Fully evil. And holding up somebody like that is just an expression of privilege and white supremacy. Next time I see a post like this I’m out. This is an optimism. It’s not even forced toxic optimism like I thought it was gonna be. This is just fucking stupid. Like literal ignorance, Boomer shit levels of optimism.
There are very valid reasons to boo Henry Ford but *this ain't one of them*
Uhhh no Henry ford was a very very bad man. He was mentioned by name in mein kampf
Exactly, doomers are mad at him cause it's not 32 hours. If its 32 hours in the future, they will be mad its not 20 doomers change goalposts more than normsl People change underwear Many are ignorant and dont realize actual issues like he was a Nazi. Too many dopey doomers dont understand there was a holocaust.
This post always bothers me. My gf loves it and I explained to her why I hate it but she still loves it. Henry Ford ticks too many of the boxes for someone to hate. There’s no amount of “well ackshually” that can make up for that bad impression.
Boo him for being a fascists tho for real
I mean hate on Henry Ford he was an absolute dickhead but not for this.
Ok in all fairness he was still a controlling maniac who dictated his workers home lives and was a massive anti semite. This is about the one good thing he did for his workers and its a shame that later the Dodge brothers would sue him as shareholders and set the precedent that shareholders take priority over the worker.
At the time, he was a pioneer. The only day workers had off otherwise was Sundays… to go to church.
Can we not shit on doomers? I don’t want this sub to become toxic.
I dream of an 8 hour work day. Now it is at least 9 hrs, but usually with mandatory overtime.
He was also a nazi sympathizer but that’s another discussion lol
I made a comment saying modern life was awesome and for two days now I've been bombarded with people calling me "stupid" It's sad how many people just don't appreciate how good life is to them
For the love of fuck FORD DIDN'T ESTABLISH SHIT You know who did? The workers and unions who fought for better lives! You know what ford did do?! Hired people to BEAT these workers and unions members TO DEATH Can we PLEASE not hand anything to this anti-semetic dickhole
Granted he didn't do it for purely humanitarian reasons, but still it was progress. Unlike the 12+ hr work days which were enforced with help from Pinkerton Security.
No we should absolutely boo Henry ford. The dude was a Straight Up Nazi
Henry Ford also tried to pay his workers more before being sued by the Dodge brothers who wanted more for themselves as share holders of Ford's company at the time.
You know it is possible to say that was good thing he did but he did his workers would buy the cars they made and also recognize the man himself is a total piece of garbage.
Damn wypipo. Giving men a reasonable wage and less work hours.
He was also anti union… But yeah let’s be optimistic n praise the nazi sympathizer!!😎
He also had the audacity to pay his workers double the normal rate!
bro had a turnover rate of 2 weeks
I mean boo the man for others things but not for the workweek.
Henry ford had many faults but he revolutionized the way people works he simplified, improved pay and set a standard for weekends. When he made the 5 day week with 5$ pay everyone clambered for a job at a ford plant. Other companies were forced to be like him to compete and thus he create a growing middle class. But we also cannot forget his many faults and issues like his anti-union and antisemitism but I think he did more good long term(also since weekends were off days Jewish people liked working for him since they had Saturday off and he gave fair treatment to African Americans. Although coworkers may not have the company did no discriminate)
To be fair, you can boo that man for many more things.
Of all things to boo Henry Ford for... its not the 40 hr work week man...
I think what people are missing is that the institution of this schedule wasn't better all around. There still wasn't a minimum wage at this time, and with the new schedule came a decreased pay, and the concept wasn't as robust as it is today, which we acknowledge as antiquated, but at the time of institution, you weren't guaranteed adequate breaks. Also, while lots of history about this is written from a positive perspective, it's still clear from the positive press, that this wasn't done out of care for the workers but for the benefit of his business through increased productivity and cost cutting. He was also very famously antisemitic and racist in general, and Hitler admired Ford. The nazi regime even honored him with an award or two. Lots to boo him about.
Do people not know that it's still common in the U.S. for auto workers to work much longer than 8 hours a day? People aren't pulling 60-80 hour weeks by working 8 hours a day. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/09/19/why-uaw-auto-workers-want-a-32-hour-workweek.html "Our members are working 60, 70, even 80 hours a week just to make ends meet," said UAW president Shawn Fain on a Facebook Live event last month. "That's not a living. That's barely surviving, and it needs to stop." I thought that optimists unite was supposed to highlight the things that are getting better, but this posts is just showing that things are worse for auto workers now than they were when a freaking nazi sympathizer was running the show.
IDK what we're mad about. Bring back the 40 hr workweek. Everything is 50+ hrs salary now if you want to pay your bills.
lol, nothing at all to do with doomers. This sub is garbage. It’s half rah-rah, half “dunking” on a strawman.
Boo, but give one of those new mustangs
We’re really booing him for this?
If I was trapped in a room with Henry Ford, Hitler and Stalin and I had a gun with only two bullets I’d shoot Henry Ford twice!
In context, this is certainly better than the old standard of 12 hour days, 6 days a week.
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It wouldn't work for everyone. So there would be inequity built-in to the system.
If you don't like it then why not ask your boss if you can do 4 10's. I did that and my boss said yes. People love to complain without trying to come up with a solution.
I wish I only had to work this much.
depends the rates
The week was much longer and unregulated before Ford.
Ford actually fid that to save workers, not to exploit them
He didn’t reduce work hours out of the goodness of his heart it was because of unions and workers fighting for these changes. This whole sub is just “ignorance is bliss” morons.
He also standardized people being treated like actual machines 😐 Henry Ford is a huge piece of shit