Unions had role in shrinking workdays, better wages | Fact check

A Sept. 4 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) includes an image of American industrialist Henry Ford.
On-screen text included in the post reads:
“Unions did not create …
HENRY FORD did in 1926 to attract better workers, from his competitors, for his automobile plants. CAPITALISM & COMPETITION creates higher wages & better working conditions.”
The post was shared more than 200 times in about two weeks. The claim was shared widely in other posts on Facebook.
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While Ford did offer higher wages and less-demanding schedules to some factory employees, he was not the first to offer less-demanding work schedules and he was not the driving force behind changes at the national level. Labor historians told USA TODAY unions had been advocating for better working conditions with some success since the late 19th century, while the 8-hour workday, 40-hour workweek and minimum wage only became national standards under federal legislation enacted more than a decade later.
Ford Motor Company announced in 1926 that it would move to a five-day, 40-hour work week. This came after the company announced it would pay male factory workers $5 per eight-hour workday in 1914. Both moves were groundbreaking and prompted other employers to follow suit.
But Ford was not the first workplace to offer such a schedule, nor was it the driving force behind improvements in working conditions at the national level, labor historians told USA TODAY. There were also stipulations with some of the benefits at Ford.
“It’s absolutely true that Ford introduced an eight-hour day for Ford workers, but it wasn’t universal,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, a history professor at Cornell University.
She pointed to documents from The Henry Ford Museum that explain how the lighter hours and higher wage only went to workers who were deemed “qualified” after an investigation into their private lives.
Unions pushed the concept of a “living wage” at least as far back as 1880, according to the University of Maryland. So it didn’t start with Ford, contrary to the post’s assertion.
The post is also wrong in asserting unions had no role in the eight-hour workday. This had been a goal of unions since shortly after the Civil War, as documented in telegrams and pamphlets collected by the University of Maryland. Elizabeth Faue, a history professor at Wayne State University, noted that “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will” was a slogan used in the movement to standardize the workday.
And Sarah Milov, a history professor at the University of Virginia, said government employees were the first large group of workers to switch to an eight-hour workday. President Ulysses Grant announced the 8-hour workday for all government employees in 1869, decades before Ford made the switch.
The eight-hour workday and a minimum wage for all workers was not established in federal law until the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, more than a decade after Ford instituted its schedule changes.
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Over time, the law evolved to include a 40-hour work week, and the minimum wage has been increased several times since the act first went into effect.
USA TODAY reached out to social media users who shared the claim but did not immediately receive responses.
PolitiFact previously debunked a version of this claim.
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