Winter was still spent productively. Hunting/trapping/fishing/livestock all need handling. Farm land needs preparing, wood needs to get chopped. It was also a time to create & repair tools and housing or work on side hustles such as processing raw materials in a low level artisanal way ( e.g. weaving / fabric spinning ).
Yes, very true. And let’s not forget that child rearing and elder care also had to be provided by the family, which usually all lived under one roof. Public schools are a relatively recent development too, during the Middle Ages schools only provided education in Latin for people to become clergy (hence the term grammar school.
The notion that we have it worse than Medieval peasants is absolutely ridiculous.
Half your labour value being taken by your employer for their own benefit? I wouldn’t rush to say they take less now - that’ll vary by role, but I know that last time I had a billable rate, it was ~7x my salary - the rough equivalent of working 319 days for my lords.
Back then, you worked for the state essentially for free.
You were also not working 8 hour days, you were working basically from sun up to down, you also had to work if you were sick unless you were so sick that you were bedridden.
And remember how I said that you basically had to work outside of that? That means you had to run shops, grow and maintain your own food, etc.
What I’m getting at is that this was not work that provided living for you, you still had to pay taxes after this as well. This applied to basically everyone except for nobles.
That’s very much not true. Workdays would typically last around 6 hours, not including multiple breaks during the day. Also, your employer would usually provide the food for lunch, and it was acceptable to have a nap in the afternoon.
In winter, even shorter days were common to account for the reduction in daylight. If you were ill, you’d simply not show up and not get paid. In fact it was normal for people to only work for what they needed in the immediate future and stop showing up as soon as they had enough for the week
You only worked for a LORD for 150 days of the year.
You still had to provide for yourself from scratch outside of that. Work today may be shit, but it wasn’t that shit.
Also, there was 3-4 months where nothing grew.
So it was normal to work everyday, all-day, for long stretches, and then do little in the winter other than try and stay warm.
Winter was still spent productively. Hunting/trapping/fishing/livestock all need handling. Farm land needs preparing, wood needs to get chopped. It was also a time to create & repair tools and housing or work on side hustles such as processing raw materials in a low level artisanal way ( e.g. weaving / fabric spinning ).
Yes, very true. And let’s not forget that child rearing and elder care also had to be provided by the family, which usually all lived under one roof. Public schools are a relatively recent development too, during the Middle Ages schools only provided education in Latin for people to become clergy (hence the term grammar school.
The notion that we have it worse than Medieval peasants is absolutely ridiculous.
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Half your labour value being taken by your employer for their own benefit? I wouldn’t rush to say they take less now - that’ll vary by role, but I know that last time I had a billable rate, it was ~7x my salary - the rough equivalent of working 319 days for my lords.
Back then, you worked for the state essentially for free.
You were also not working 8 hour days, you were working basically from sun up to down, you also had to work if you were sick unless you were so sick that you were bedridden.
And remember how I said that you basically had to work outside of that? That means you had to run shops, grow and maintain your own food, etc.
What I’m getting at is that this was not work that provided living for you, you still had to pay taxes after this as well. This applied to basically everyone except for nobles.
That’s very much not true. Workdays would typically last around 6 hours, not including multiple breaks during the day. Also, your employer would usually provide the food for lunch, and it was acceptable to have a nap in the afternoon.
In winter, even shorter days were common to account for the reduction in daylight. If you were ill, you’d simply not show up and not get paid. In fact it was normal for people to only work for what they needed in the immediate future and stop showing up as soon as they had enough for the week