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That socialist madman Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is at it again, Crom bless him, this time with a bill that would mandate a 32-hour work week with no loss of pay, phased in over four years. US labor law has set a 40-hour work week as the national standard since 1940, and that only came after unions pushed for decades to get a five-day work week and to eliminate child labor.
Under the proposal, NBC News explains, workers would become eligible for overtime after 38 hours of work in a week (salaried folks would not be affected), and more:
It would also require overtime pay at time and a half for workdays that last more than eight hours and overtime pay that would pay workers double their regular pay if their workday is longer than 12 hours.
In a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee yesterday, Sanders, the committee chair, noted that worker productivity has risen sharply in recent decades, but the resulting wealth has gone to corporate executives and shareholders, not the more-productive workers.
“The sad reality is that Americans now work more hours than the people of any other wealthy nation,” he said, citing statistics that workers in the U.S. on average work for hundreds of hours longer each week than their counterparts in Japan, Britain and Germany.
Hundreds of hours more a week? Oh you innumerate old NYT!
Sanders pointed out in a statement that since the 40-hour week became standard in the 1940s, American worker productivity has increased 400 percent, but that most Americans are now working longer hours for lower wages, and what the hell is that about?
As of 2019, nearly 40 percent of U.S. workers are on the job at least 50 hours a week, and a staggering 18 percent – or 28.5 million workers – are clocking at least 60 hours a week. The average full-time worker in the U.S. now works 42 hours a week – although this estimate does not necessarily account for those working multiple jobs. On top of this, more than 8 million Americans work multiple jobs, with 4.7 million working a second part-time job on top of a full-time job.
When adjusted for inflation, a fact sheet on the proposal notes, Americans are in fact making far less per hour than we were 60 years ago, although CEOs are now making about 400 times more than the average worker. It’s pretty unlikely the CEOs are working 400 times the hours, either, what with your laws of physics and all.
Sanders also cited a pilot program in the United Kingdom showing that a four-day work week resulted in 70 percent of the 3,000 workers in 60 workplaces “report[ing] greater satisfaction with their time and feeling less burnt out, while participating businesses saw a 35 percent average increase in revenue.” A different pilot program in the US and Canada, with 41 companies participating, also had similar positive outcomes, and not one of the companies went back to five-day weeks.
To that, we’ll add that Yr Wonkette has been doing four-day weeks since sometime during the pandemic, albeit with a 40-hour expectation over those four days that I sometimes meet, and it’s been a life-saver stress-wise.
At Thursday’s hearing, United Auto Workers union president Shawn Fain testified in favor of the bill, saying,
“The truth is working-class people aren’t lazy. They’re fed up. They’re fed up with being left behind and stripped of dignity as wealth inequality in this nation, this world, spirals out of control. […] They’re fed up in America. In America, three families have as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of citizens in this nation. That is criminal.”
Sen Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), the ranking member on the committee, said that a shorter workweek would be hard for small businesses that might struggle to find enough workers, and then in our head we told him that small businesses might actually find more workers too, since it would allow more flexible scheduling for those workers, too, you ever think of that?
Cassidy also said American workers might think they’d like a shorter work week, but what if they were all laid off ? Workers in China work 80 hours a week, so US workers have it pretty good in terms of work-life balance, the lucky duckies. Besides, Cassidy warned, US employers might just move factories overseas in search of lower labor costs, and how would you like that, hmmmm?
Also too, Fox Business tried to make a story out of how very angry and out of control Sanders was when one of its reporters, Hillary Vaughn, tried to ask him a loaded question about how businesses can possibly survive the onslaught of high taxes and regulations that Democrats are trying to destroy them with. Instead, Sanders rejected the premise and explained why he introduced the bill. And hell no, he wasn’t “frustrated”; the network was frustrated that Sanders didn’t play along with their dumb attempt at a “gotcha.” To wit:
Sanders: We held a hearing on a 32-hour workweek, because what we have seen is that over the last 50 years, despite a huge increase in worker productivity, almost all of the wealth has gone to the top 1 percent, while 60 percent of the people living paycheck to paycheck. Many of our people are exhausted. We work the longest hours of any people in the industrialized world. I think it is time for a shortened work week.
Vaughn: How are businesses gonna survive that? That’s the question… How can businesses survive that? How can businesses survive all of those proposals?
Us: Bite me, the end.
[Sen. Bernie Sanders / 32-Hour Workweek Act fact sheet / NBC News / NYT / Fox Business]
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