36 years ago today, Czechia said goodbye to the six-day workweek

On this day—March 11—in 1989, Czechs went to work on a Saturday as part of a standard six-day work week for the very last time. This marked the end of a decades-long transition to the standard five-day schedule that today is taken for granted. 

While today’s debates revolve around shortening the workweek to four days, older generations remember a time when working on Saturdays was an expected part of life.

For much of the 20th century, blue-collar (manual) Czech workers adhered to a six-day work schedule, with only Sundays designated as a day of rest. The practice was rooted in long-standing traditions, including religious influences. The biblical commandment to work six days and rest on the seventh was reflected in labor norms across Europe, both in socialist and capitalist states, as outlined by Czech media outlet Seznam Zprávy.

Before 1956, workdays in Czechoslovakia were uniformly eight hours long from Monday through Saturday. That year, however, the government introduced the first reduction in Saturday hours, limiting them to six. This marked the initial step toward a more balanced work-life structure.

The transition accelerated in the 1960s. In 1966, the State Planning Commission introduced every fourth Saturday as a day off, though this arrangement was short-lived. By January 1967, workers were then granted every second Saturday off, and in September 1968, a full five-day workweek was officially implemented. This shift was considered a significant “labor revolution” at the time.

Contrary to assumptions that working Saturdays were exclusive to socialist regimes, similar schedules existed in Western nations. Austria, for example, only phased out the six-day workweek in the mid-1970s.

Historian Martin Franc of the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Academy of Sciences notes that discussions about reducing workdays had been ongoing since the mid-1950s. However, economic pressures delayed implementation. “There were even proposals to designate Monday, rather than Saturday, as the second day off, but ultimately, traditions favored Saturday,” Franc explained.

Despite the five-day workweek’s introduction, working Saturdays did not disappear entirely. The government retained the power to declare special working Saturdays, often to compensate for public holidays and maintain a stable number of annual working days. These extra shifts, sometimes called “subotniky” (a Soviet term), were met with mixed reactions. In Ostrava, for instance, they were nicknamed “mamulovky” after regional Communist Party secretary Miroslav Mamula.

By the 1980s, working Saturdays had become increasingly rare. Many companies found that productivity on these days was lower than expected. “It turned out that they were not as economically important as originally assumed,” said Franc. Schools also began filling these days with alternative activities, such as military exercises.

The final working Saturday on March 11, 1989, marked the definitive end of the practice. In the years that followed, the concept of a five-day workweek became deeply ingrained in Czech culture. One of its lasting effects was the rise in weekend leisure activities, particularly the country’s enduring passion for weekend cottages and rural getaways—an interest that continues to this day.