Archive link: https://archive.ph/sVDYB
Some key excerpts:
Senator Bernie Sanders this week unveiled legislation to reduce the standard workweek in the United States from 40 hours to 32, without a reduction in pay
The law, if passed, would pare down the workweek over a four-year period, lowering the threshold at which workers would be eligible to receive overtime pay.
Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, said at the hearing such a reduction would hurt employers, ship jobs overseas and cause dramatic spikes in consumer prices.
Mr. Sanders is far from the first to propose the idea, which has been floated by Richard Nixon, pitched by autoworkers and experimented with by companies ranging from Shake Shack to Kickstarter and Unilever’s New Zealand unit.
Representative Mark Takano, Democrat of California, introduced the 32-Hour Workweek Act in the House in 2021, and has reintroduced it as a companion bill to the one sponsored by Mr. Sanders in the Senate.
In proposing the legislation, Mr. Sanders cited a trial conducted by 61 companies in Britain in 2022, in which most of the companies that went down to a four-day workweek saw that revenues and productivity remained steady, while attrition dropped significantly. The study was conducted by a nonprofit, 4 Day Week Global, with researchers at Cambridge University, Boston College and a think tank, Autonomy.
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In a hearing on Thursday before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on the proposed law, Mr. Sanders, independent of Vermont, said profits from boosts in productivity over the decades had been reaped only by corporate leaders, and not shared with workers.
Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, said at the hearing such a reduction would hurt employers, ship jobs overseas and cause dramatic spikes in consumer prices.
Mr. Sanders is far from the first to propose the idea, which has been floated by Richard Nixon, pitched by autoworkers and experimented with by companies ranging from Shake Shack to Kickstarter and Unilever’s New Zealand unit.
But the concept has gathered steam in recent years, as the Covid-19 pandemic has caused fundamental shifts in work culture and reset expectations about employment.
Representative Mark Takano, Democrat of California, introduced the 32-Hour Workweek Act in the House in 2021, and has reintroduced it as a companion bill to the one sponsored by Mr. Sanders in the Senate.
Juliet Schor, an economist at Boston College who was the lead researcher on the study, testified at Thursday’s hearing that 91 percent of the companies that switched to a four-day workweek had stuck with the new arrangement a year later.
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I think I recently saw an article about a trial of the 32-hour work week in the UK that most of the companies ended up sticking with.
I work at a smallish company that has to be really precise with how much time is charged to specific (mainly government) programs, but there’s a lot of downtime. I think this would really help.
John Maynard Keynes, basically the founder of modern, macroeconomic theory predicted in 1930 that his grandchildren would only be working 15 hours a week. Ironically, up until the 80’s in the US, average work hours per employee per week was trending down and had it continued would have gotten as low as 15 by now (I think, can’t perfectly recall the trend line)
naturally the talking heads on fox who work 3 hours a day are upset
I love Bernie, but all his bills are so pie in the sky, they never have any chance of passing. He’s the great hope, that’s always dashed on the rocks. Unless we king him…
Less incentive to waste time, more ability to focus on work, and a population suddenly increasing their potential time as consumers by 50%? The capitalists should be drooling over it as much as the socialists. It’s like increasing the population of some markets by half for free without any additional housing costs.
What would be curious to see, are effects on the wider economy (i.e. main street).
Having an extra day during the week would mean more hobbies, travel, purchases, doctor visits, etc etc…
A collective breath of relief for society
Here is the actual bill. As far as I can tell, all it really does is make some wording substitutions and redefinitions to the original 1940 bill.
What I find interesting is that it addresses weekly pay, assuming salaries workers. What happens to hourly employees? Will the employer be required to up their hourly rate to compensate for the 8 hour loss? People are already stretched thin enough, an 8 hour loss for hourly workers would be devastating in many cases.
There would also need to be payroll tax adjustments on the employer side regarding hourly workers. Payroll taxes generally end up being about 90% of an employee’s wage added on to their gross wage (at least here in California), so while employees see a great benefit of increased pay and/or reduced hours, this would absolutely screw small/medium businesses that already operate on tight margins. I operate in the construction industry, and dropping down to 4 days would delay projects even more, and having to pay overtime on a fifth day at increased hourly wages would be prohibitively expensive that most wouldn’t do it.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely think this is a step in the right direction, but I think there needs to be a good balance for both employees and employers. I know online communities like to paint all companies as evil, but I do my damnedest to take care of my guys and provide good jobs with great pay and benefits while also giving my customers reasonable prices in a state that’s already stupid amounts of expensive to do business in, and I’m not penny pinching or being anal about my bottom line. Stuff like this without consideration of the impacts of small businesses is how you end up with mega corps that are the only ones that can afford to stay in business.
I find it interesting that you oppose this bill because it would make your life harder, which you plan to pass onto your workers.
How much better of a life exactly do you deserve for being the “boss”?
There’s a whole lot of assumptions you’ve got going on right there, along with terrible reading comprehension. At no point did I say that I’m going to make life harder for my employees, nor that I deserve a better life than them. I also said I think this is a step in the right direction, just that it needs to be hashed out a little more for businesses other that office workers.
I think instead of paying everyone overtime, most places will have to adopt to shifts. A crew that is Monday to Thursday and another crew Tuesday to Friday with most work occuring Tuesday through Thursday
Yeah that probably is the way to do it. Overtime is already insanely expensive to do, but what gets me is they also tax employees even more for taking on overtime, which I always thought was ridiculous.
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I truly don’t see how doing so would adversely affect any company. If they need the additional labor an extra eight hours can provide, they can hire someone else at 32 hours/week to cover it with an overlapping schedule. If the business is smaller, they can pay overtime.
Anecdotally, my own job doesn’t require me to work eight hours every day. Shit, I’m lucky to do four hours of actual work in a day. The amount of work ebbs and flows, but I find myself more often than not watching YouTube on my work computer simply because there’s literally no more work for the day.
Tbf it’s expensive to find a new hire. At least, that’s the logic I rely on when arguing not to fire employees frequently.
Oh no! A company spending money on anything but the CEO’s next yacht is such an awful idea!
Why not fix two problems? I don’t expect a fair answer though.
Oof this screams out of touch though you see that right?
I’m a chef I work a lot. 11 hour shifts no break is common. 32 hour work week means I’m assured 8 hours OT + my already typical 2 hours OT every week.
For someone like me this is a huge pay bump or they hire someone and I get more time off. Either way is a win.
11 hour shifts no break is common.
But they shouldn’t be and that’s the point.
And so cutting to 32 hours a week helps. I didn’t make this standard it just goes this way because of the career.
Truckers, Doctors, Nurses all deal with similar schedule issues and it is usually because we can’t just hand out workload over you have to know what is going on, nobody can just walk in and take over.
id be happy if i could work 40 hours a week and not be freaking on call all the time.
