This Guy Stinks! Michigan Business Innovator Created 8-hour,5-day work week

"I want to fight the guy who came up with 40-hour work weeks" or something of this nature. I know I have said this several times and I'm not the only one who's had this thought so now that we know, we can't take it out on him but we can take it out on his company. I would love to get in the gloves and just get one round in the ring with this guy for all the stress he's caused, but that's unrealistic.

Throughout hundreds of years, the workforce has drastically changed from everyone handling their own business for their family, slavery, and sharecropping to the Industrial Revolution, under-the-table jobs, and the current state. All I know is I didn't expect the current model of 5 days on and 2 days off for a total of 40 hours would have come from Michigan.

Get our free mobile app

One of the hardest things for business owners to deal with back in the day was a lack of workers come Monday morning. They would have what they called "Saint Monday", where workers would take Monday off after attending church and handling all of their Sunday Duties. So to combat this, some business owners allowed workers to take off the latter half of Saturday if they were to show up ready to work Monday morning.

This would be the first recorded use of the word weekend, which eventually would grow into what we know it as now due to none other than the great Henry Ford. He didn't feel accomplished enough when he created the motor vehicle so he had to take it one step further. No, in all seriousness, I believe this was a move to get the best production possible from his crew.

In 1926, he found a way to guarantee that all his workers could have two full days off which maximized his automobile production. This model has become the standard workweek expectation since 1940 with the Fair Labour Standards Act, which made it a US standard that spread across the world.

Now, that we know Henry Ford is the cause for all of this, we can just never buy another Ford or GM-made vehicle in our lives. He should pay for making us work more than we should have to. The next question: Is it time to revisit and rethink the 5-day workweek? I think we should, I don't mind a 4 on and 3 off model. What do you suggest?