The weekend and the 40-hour week were created by the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act that mandated a maximum 40 hour work week, imposed the minimum wage and time and a half for overtime, and banned child labor.
The Fair Labor Standards Act was New Deal Legislation first proposed by the unions, and backed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The legislation was initially proposed by Senator Hugo Black (D-AL) as a 30-hour week, but met fierce opposition from corporations and the US Chamber of Commerce, who also supported child labor and opposed Social Security and Medicare.
Hugo Black later became America's longest-serving Supreme Court justice, and was one of the Supreme Court Justices who held in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.
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