It's interesting how truth gets so easily distorted in collective consciousness.
Henry Ford reportedly had a couple of intuitions about his workers also being consumers of his products, so now every time you look at any aspect of the consumerist society, some people will assume that Ford must have thought of that.
Also, you can't talk about socialism in polite society, right? So the whole history of worker-rights movements in XIX and XX century is "forgotten" and concepts are shifted to the next available historical subject.
This is why the practice of historical research is so important, so progressive, and so underfunded. Whoever controls the past, controls the future.
It's quite laughable that you call his story revisionist when yours meets the standard. How do you explain other countries having 40 hour work weeks with no "bitter decades-long" union fights necessary?
By the way, it's also quite laughable that you're citing a blatant biased piece from a union website. Please tell me you're just trolling.
Getting the 40-hour week took a revolution in France, Mexico and Russia, an incipient revolution in the UK and Chile, industrial action in Australia, Portugal and New Zealand...
If you really want to argue that the 40-hour work week was the product of benevolent capitalists I think you have to try a bit harder. Perhaps there's an Ayn Rand blog somewhere with some made-up facts you can use?
And yes, I linked to the website of a union.
The IWW worked tirelessly to bring about the 40-hour work week, as well as other fun bits like "weekends" and "workplace safety" (probably Ford's ideas too, right? -_-). I'd say they're in a better position to comment than either you or the author of the original misguided article.
Are you for real or am I just imagining someone who just registered with the name "not an idiot" and yet provides a comment that indicate no capacity for deductive reasoning whatsoever?
The 40-hour work week was won after a bitter decades-long fight by workers and unions against business owners.
The idea that Ford bestowed it upon a grateful staff to improve capitalism is wrong, pointless and insulting.
Here's an article in favour of shorter workdays that takes history a little more seriously: http://www.iww.org/history/library/misc/Bekken2000