A FRIEND OF LABOR

Always a progressive employer, George Westinghouse was the first industrialist to care for the health and happiness of the people who worked for him. In addition to paying much higher wages, providing safer working conditions, and offering benefits like insurance and pensions, he invented the weekend.

Rather than having his employees work long shifts six days a week, he made Saturday half free days to promote community involvement and personal development.

Here’s a wonderful article from the Library of Congress that describes the ethic about labor and working conditions at all of the Westinghouse Works.

Notably, there was never a strike at any Westinghouse company while George was in charge.

In fact, Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor once said, "if all businessmen treated their employees like Mr. Westinghouse, there would be no need for labor unions.”

The Westinghouse Memorial in Pittsburgh’s Schenley Park was made possible by contributions of more than 50,000 employees.