“Before the standardisation of the five-day week, Mondays were the week’s highlight for many British workers. Beginning in the seventeenth century, a tradition of absenteeism on a Monday among artisan workers came to be known as ‘Saint Monday’. These workers worked long hours between Tuesday to Saturday and believed a single rest day to observe the Sabbath on a Sunday was simply insufficient”
“In 1842, a formal campaign group, the Early Closing Association, was formed by a coalition of shop workers across the country. It was supported and championed by social reformers Samuel Carter Hall and George Passmore Edwards. The group had branches across the country and lobbied the government to keep Saturday afternoons free in return for a full day’s work on a Monday. The Saturday half-day for those in mills and factories was eventually made law through the 1867 Factory Act”
“The 3PM Saturday kick-offs that we’ve become accustomed to are not coincidental: this new work pattern came to shape and develop the football craze of the 1890s, with most factories closing at 1 or 2PM. Most sought-after entertainment offerings were shifted from Mondays to Saturday afternoons, establishing the half day as the norm”
“The weekend was not benevolently bestowed from above. It’s the product of incremental changes, won in a series of victories through resistance enacted by the labour movement. Broad coalitions with religious institutions and sympathisers in Parliament and other places of power were key—including in the European Union, which instituted the Working Time Directive setting a 48-hour maximum week in 1993—but the driving force for the weekend, like many other rights and freedoms we have today, was the organised working class”
“This week, a pilot of the four-day week declared a ‘major breakthrough’ as 56 of the 61 companies that took part kept the change. Workers reported feeling less stressed and sleeping better, and employers reported higher rates of retention. The Trades Union Congress has backed the shift to a four-day week. The organised labour movement is going to be no less vital in further reducing the working week in the future than it has been in the past”