Why the weekend isn’t longer

By B.F.

FRANCES O’GRADY, the head of Britain’s Trades Union Congress, threw down a gauntlet on September 10th. “We can win a four-day working week,” she told members. While partly a reflection of the emboldened state of Britain’s unions, the demand is far from unprecedented. Shorter working weeks have been tried in New Zealand and Sweden, where they resulted in happier, healthier and more motivated employees. Those who work shorter weeks are also reported to be more productive. Should weekends, therefore, be lengthened?

A five-day working week has been the Western norm for less than a century. The Reformation cemented Sunday as a holy day in Europe, but the day was often used for less-than-sober activities. With factory hands sometimes reluctant to work hard on all other days, 19th-century bosses started granting a half-day holiday on Saturdays to encourage workers to apply themselves during the week. The widespread adoption of the five-day, 40-hour working week took several more decades though. Industrialists such as Henry Ford pioneered it in the early 20th century and, nudged by unions, governments capitulated. In France the Matignon Agreements of 1936 put the 40-hour week into law, and America mandated two full days of freedom in 1940. Not every country was so quick: China’s Communist Party only allowed workers to shift to five working days in 1995. Last year full-time workers in the OECD, a group of rich countries, laboured for 40.1 hours per week on average.