Citation needed
It really come from workers rights to have a life outside the workplace AND a salary even when they could not work (what we call safety).
In medieval servitude there was no life outside the workplace, nor safety.
Pre-induistrial workers worked less, on the average, because they were surviving
They were working when they needed money and not working (AKA doing some other job for the house or the family, like farming or breeding cows and pigs) when they had enough to go on for maybe a week or so.
Life was on the edge back then.
You had an accident, any kind of accident, you were ruined.
There was no safety net, of any kind.
> it's a game of face time, who sends most emails past midnight, and who is willing to sell more of their personal life and squeeze other people out of theirs
It's not in Europe, for example, where we don't think that socialism is a curse word, we think it is necessary for the progress of society as a whole.
I will quote one of my favourite computer scientist ever, Joe Armstrong, creator of Erlang, that unfortunately recently passed away.
> Yes - happy days. At the time I was working a 6 hour day due to the enlightened Swedish child care policies. Parents of young children are entitled to work 80% of full time - good for creativity and family life. Result 2 kids and a new programming language.
source: https://twitter.com/joeerl/status/1067720315151810560