His proposal would pare down the workweek over a four-year period. The 40-hour workweek has stood as the standard in the U.S. since it became enshrined in federal law in 1940.

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.

  • SuiXi3D@fedia.io
    28·
    8 months ago

    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.

    • eveninghere@beehaw.org
      2·
      8 months ago

      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.