Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Richard Nixon might seem to have little in common, but the disgraced former president was an early champion of the four-day workweek.
Richard M. Nixon says goodbye with a salute to his staff members outside the White House as he boards a helicopter after resigning the presidency on Aug. 9, 1974. A global crisis was in the rearview window, and the American economy was showing signs of strength. Unemployment had stooped tounemployment rate
Studies and pilot programs across the globe have shown that four-day workweeks can boost workers’ productivity and happiness. Take the findings from thein the United Kingdom, where the companies that participated saw increased revenue and employee well-being, while their productivity remained steady.
The battle over working hours goes back to the 19th century, said Erik Loomis, a professor and labor historian at the University of Rhode Island. As the Industrial Revolution picked up speed, the expectation was that the increased mechanization would result in fewer working hours — but the opposite turned out to be true. According to the, workers went from working 150-200 days per year, to over 300 after the Industrial Revolution.
And while others — like Nixon — pinned their hopes of more leisure time on new technology, “the larger socio-economic reality, the rise of globalization and other factors end up leading to the reduction in the size of the labor movement and its power,” Loomis said. And indeed, new tech don’t translate to immediate changes in the workplace, said Aaron Benanav, a sociology professor at Syracuse University.“There are periodic waves of excitement over new technologies every 20 to 30 years, but the implementation of it new unfolds over a much longer stretch of time,” he said. “Productivity increased a lot in the 50s and 60s, but it didn’t happen overnight.”
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