My workweek never seems to end, but that's up to my own making.
The United Auto Workers don't want to live like that, and honestly, I can't blame them.
In their negotiations this fall with Ford, Stellantis, and GM, the union demanded a 25% wage increase, baked-in wage growth, cost of living adjustments, and more.
But the showstopper demand was a four-day workweek without a wage cut.
A few days back, they reached a deal, but they didn't get the workweek cut.
But it all made me wonder about what's possible.
On one level, A 32-hour workweek seemed crazy, but as I thought about it, maybe not, because the workweek has never been set in stone.
According to the Economic History Association's timeline of the workweek, many Americans worked 70 hours or more in the mid-1800s.
And that number has dropped ever since.
And when you dig a little more, you'll see that manufacturers in the early 1900s were the first to move to a 40-hour workweek.
Among them, strangely enough, was Ford Motor Company in 1926.
About a decade later, In the depths of the Great Depression, 40-hour work weeks became American law.
Work hours and workplaces didn't stop changing there, and COVID-19 sped up that evolution, as I'll discuss here in the weeks and months to come.
I think in a few years, we'll look back and say, wow, we worked more than 32 hours on average a week?
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