I heard that back in the days, people used to just go when their work was done on the farms and there was no concept of 9-5 (these days seem 24 hours work). There used to be a lot of holidays. Is that true? If it is, then given the abundance in technology, why our work hours increased and why do we have such weird lives that we live to work?
I believe that for IT it was more the result of how the technology had increasing productivity and revenue that empowered IT employees to negotiate good contracts for themselves. Because of this they saw no need to organize and considered themselves in par with the owners of the company. Now LLMs are used to undermine IT work and that is partly why tables are turning.
The tables were already turning.
Silicon Valley pushed a completely insane concept of free overtime for pizza and beer. They normalized the industry working 3-4 hours a day extra for free.