Sharing an expert from an NPR article.
The five-day workweek can feel as preordained and immovable as the number of minutes in an hour. You wake up, go to work and come home. Then, wash, rinse, repeat until the weekend.
But the Monday-to-Friday grind hasn’t existed forever. Nearly a century ago, working six days a week was the norm. In the U.S., the five-day workweek (along with the two-day weekend) is something workers fought for and won in the 1930s after working years in grueling conditions that are now illegal.
The world has changed a lot since the five-day workweek became enshrined into federal law. But we’ve kept working 40 hours from Monday through Friday even though that schedule no longer supports many workers.
“The normal working week doesn’t work in many ways,” says U.K.-based researcher Will Stronge, who co-wrote the book Overtime: Why We Need a Shorter Working Week with Kyle Lewis. “It’s just hidden by the fact that we’re forced to do it.”
READ MORE over at NPR
