Labor unions literally had to bleed and die in the streets during the nineteenth century just to force wealthy factory owners to grant the working class the concept of a two-day weekend.

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Labor unions literally had to bleed and die in the streets during the nineteenth century just to force wealthy factory owners to grant the working class the concept of a two-day weekend. Prior to the labor movement, the standard workweek during the Industrial Revolution was brutal, consisting of up to a hundred hours of backbreaking labor across six or seven days, with zero overtime pay, child labor running rampant, and safety regulations being entirely nonexistent. The forty-hour workweek and the glorious invention of Saturday off were vehemently opposed by corporate tycoons who insisted that giving poor people leisure time would instantly destroy the economy and lead to moral decay. So the next time you are enjoying a lazy Sunday brunch and avoiding your email inbox, you can thank radical socialists and union organizers who fought violently against the capitalist class just so you could legally have a day off to do your laundry