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We didn’t foresee COVID-19, but some of us saw this coming
Original article written on May 16, 2010 at 12:09 PM
Nine-to-five was the product of a process born over a hundred years ago. It was a child of necessity of the industrial age. Mass production and manufacturing plants required people to work the new contraptions; and men, women and children were drawn to the factories — the new pilgrim sites of industrial progress. Over time, the definitions of the work, the time required to do it, and the amount of money to be paid for the work done, evolved. The payments became wages and the agreement on the length of working time became working hours. At the onset, there were no labour laws, health insurance, pensions, fringe benefits or perks but all of that would eventually be put in place as workers worked long hours, sacrificing their quality of life, and conflicts arose that led to improvements in the working relationship between employee and employer. With each new conflict, nine-to-five morphed a little more, influenced by pressure from governments, employees and labour unions, with employers also playing their part in giving a human face to the sweatshops that became the symbol of the workplace in the late 19th century.
But that was over hundred years ago when there was no such thing as the internet and fancy words like ‘outsourcing’. Then computers came into the picture…
