The origin of the weekend (2024)

Draft workplace reforms released by the Productivity Commission on Tuesday recommended that Sunday penalty rates for hospitality and retail workers match lower Saturday rates, prompting debate about the financial and social value of weekends. What are they worth to us?

We haven't always reserved weekends for barbecues or the footy. For centuries, the working week was six or seven days long. The weekend, as we know it now, is a modern invention that's still changing. So what is the origin of the weekend?

The weekend evolved from the religious concept of the sabbath, a day devoted to God and not work. In Jewish tradition, the sabbath is from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday. Most Christians eventually adopted Sunday as their day of worship and rest.

Over time, workplaces in Western countries began to accommodate those religious observances. Professor Greg Patmore, a labour and business historian at the University of Sydney, says Australia's early convicts were encouraged to spend Sundays at church, which was seen as good for their character.

But what about Saturday?

The two-day weekend evolved alongside campaigns for a shorter working week. Workers in 18th and 19th century Britain started to ask for longer breaks from the harsh working conditions of industrialisation – as opposed to farming, which depended on daylight and the demands of the farm.

Waiting for the Weekend author Witold Rybczynski​ noted that employers were also willing to give workers more time to recover from drinking, which is how many employees spent their time off. A shorter or half-day Saturday was seen as a natural lead-in to Sunday's day of rest.

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the first use of the word "weekend" to 1879, when British magazine Notes and Queries observed: "If a person leaves home at the end of his week's work on the Saturday afternoon to spend the evening of Saturday and the following Sunday with friends at a distance, he is said to be spending his week-end at so-and-so."

How did the two-day weekend evolve in Australia?

Professor Patmore says Melbourne and Sydney stonemasons in 1856 became some of the first people in the world to successfully campaign for an eight-hour workday. They argued that labouring long hours in the Australian heat was bad for their health.

Australia earned a reputation around the world as a "working man's paradise." But it wasn't until 1916 that an eight-hour day was commonplace, and even then most people worked close to nine hours each day Monday through Friday and four hours on Saturday.

The work week was finally reduced to 40 hours in 1948 and to 38 hours in 1983. In the postwar era, when families had more time and money for leisurely pursuits and vacation, the two-day weekend became standard.

So why did we start paying people more money to work on weekends?

Penalty rates on weekends were introduced in 1947 as compensation for making people work when others did not have to.

Studies have noted that people pay a social, psychological and physical cost when they are cut off from their families and friends on a regular basis.

Professor Patmore also says the education system has come to reflect the standard working week and its weekends, so parents could spend time with their children on Saturday and Sunday.

"Given the importance of the family and the raising of children, that has to be considered when looking at weekends because our school system works that way," Professor Patmore says.

What's changing about our weekends?

While Australians don't go to church in the numbers they once did, the notion of the weekend as a break from labour remains.

According to the Productivity Commission's draft report, however, a more "flexible" labour market has made weekend work more common again.

"The traditional Monday-Friday week is not dead, but nor is it as predominant as in the past," the report says, noting that one in three working Australians work at least one Saturday or Sunday each week.

Consumers now expect certain businesses – particularly in hospitality, entertainment and retail – to open on weekends. Australians want to be able to do their shopping or grab a coffee seven days a week, making it more important for employers to have people working during those hours and less important for them to have people working on Mondays, for example.

How do other countries view the weekend? Do they pay penalty rates?

Not everyone looks forward to Saturday and Sunday as days off. Fridays and Sundays are days of rest in Brunei, while Israelis work Sunday through Thursday. It's normal in the Netherlands to work four days a week.

Most OECD countries have penalty rate systems in place for work on prescribed days of rest, though the degree to which workers are compensated varies.

Germany has resisted growing consumer demand for extended trading hours on Sunday. Most traders are prohibited from opening on Sundays. People who do work on Sundays receive an extra day off.