In 1894, just eight years after founding the company, Robert Bosch cut the working day from ten to nine hours. And on August 1, 1906, the company introduced new work rules. The opening sentence of the work rules was remarkable for the time: “The working day shall last eight hours.” Because Saturday was still a normal working day at the time, this was equivalent to a 48-hour week. One step ahead of the times.

One step ahead of the times

Such a step was unprecedented in Stuttgart. At no other industrial company in the city were workers allowed to down tools after just eight hours of work. The new work rules stipulated that associates had to work from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a two-hour lunch break. Robert Bosch was one of the first industrialists
in Germany to initiate a shorter working day. In Germany as a whole, an eighthour working day had only been introduced by very few entrepreneurs, such as Heinrich Freese in Berlin and Ernst Abbe in Jena.

A glimpse at the typical working hours in the Stuttgart iron and metalworking industry shows just how unusual an eight-hour working day was at the time. In 1910, for example, the Deutscher Metallarbeiter-Verband (German Metalworkers‘ Federation) reported that employees worked between 57 and 60 hours a week in more than half of the companies surveyed, and even longer still in a good third of these companies. These long working hours prompted organized labor worldwide to make the eight-hour working day one of its key demands, claiming that a worker‘s daily routine should consist of eight hours labor, eight hours recreation, and eight hours sleep. In those days, this seemed to be the ideal working time. From the 1890‘s onward, workers took to the streets every year on May 1 to voice this demand.

Social and business considerations

Alongside social factors, it was above all business considerations that influenced Robert Bosch‘s decision to introduce the eight-hour working day. The Bosch magneto ignition was a huge success worldwide. In 1904 and 1905, Bosch was barely able to keep pace with demand, even though the number of associates was rising and the factory complex in Stuttgart‘s west end was constantly extended. It was for this reason that Robert Bosch opted for a reorganization of  working hours, with production now being divided into two eight-hour shifts. Robert Bosch was sufficiently encouraged by the positive results of this experiment to move toward a permanent eight-hour day. Contrary to general expectation, there was no reduction in the quantity of goods produced per shift, even though working time had been cut by one hour. Indeed, productivity actually increased slightly.

In addition, Robert Bosch had not forgotten his own time at the workbench, and he was also honoring a promise he had made in 1894, when he told Bosch associates that he would introduce an eight-hour day as soon as economic conditions would allow it and production quantities could be maintained.

He was later to give the following reason for his decision to introduce the eight-hour working day: “I introduced the eight-hour day very early on – in 1906 – because I believed it the most efficient solution economically, as well as the best way of preserving human capacity for work.”

Eight-hour working day becomes law

Twelve years later, in the course of the November 1918 revolution, the eight-hour day became law for all companies in Germany. Interestingly, Robert Bosch, the pioneer of the eight-hour day, thought that the unwavering across-the-board introduction of a fixed working time for all professions did not make economic sense. He believed that working hours should depend on the requirements of the job in question and the economic situation of the company concerned.

In 1906, magneto ignition devices were still largely produced by hand. The pictures show the various steps involved in the production process:
winding the armature, assembling the armature, and drilling out the pole shoes.