Bernie Sanders Champions 32-Hour Work Week With No Loss in Pay
Bernie Sanders Champions 32-Hour Work Week With No Loss in Pay
"Needless to say, changes that benefit the working class of our country are not going to be easily handed over by the corporate elite. They have to be fought for—and won."
As part of his Labor Day message to workers in the United States, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday re-upped his call for the establishment of a 20% cut to the workweek with no loss in pay—an idea he said is "not radical" given the enormous productivity gains over recent decades that have resulted in massive profits for corporations but scraps for employees and the working class.
"It's time for a 32-hour workweek with no loss in pay," Sanders wrote in a Guardian op-ed as he cited a 480% increase in worker productivity since the 40-hour workweek was first established in 1940.
"It's time," he continued, "that working families were able to take advantage of the increased productivity that new technologies provide so that they can enjoy more leisure time, family time, educational and cultural opportunities—and less stress."
This goes against what Republicans want. They're literally removing child labor laws so kids can get into the work force while they're in middle school. Start a kid working at 12 years old and they can get about 50 years of labor out of them. Chances are that kid will be working 60-70 years and won't be able to retire.
For like 10 years my work didn't want to pay as many pharmacist hours so offered 30 hour full time roles for the slower stores. I rode that wave as long as I could. It's a really stressful job, but at 30 hours it felt like I had a rough job. At 40+ hours it feels like I have a rough life. I'm fully in support of this 32 hour workweek. Those extra few hours won back can be magical for physical health, mental health, hobbies. I even got an extra degree in computer science.
This would DOUBLE my effective free time. It would improve my life so much.
I'm hoping the push for a 32 hour week gains enough traction that we could actually feasibly negotiate a 9-day sprint (2 week period) as the "middle ground", at least until the next wave of negotiations pushes further.
Gimme every other monday off, that way I'm always working toward either a long weekend or an early weekend
Do you all have the Congress app installed on your phone?
Can you name your House of Representative member?
Can you name your Senators?
This will go nowhere the same way that smart gun control went nowhere, despite the vast majority of the citizenship wanting it, despite even after a room full of elementary school kids were killed. Lobbying stops what the vast majority of the citizenry want.
The only way to affect change is to lobby Congress, that's what the corporations do. Corporations lobby Congress, so you have to as well.
You need to get involved, you have to let your Representative and your Senators know that you want a four-day work week. You should even throw some donation money their way for their next election cycle.
Just commenting about it on an Internet forum isn't enough. Just waiting for somebody else to do the work isn't enough.
You are the citizen.
Would this include a 25% increase to hourly minimums? Because otherwise it only benefits salaried employees.
And what about workers who are paid by productivity and not time? Salespersons on commission, servers receiving tips, ride-share drivers?
I'm all for a 32-hour work-week; that's what I have myself. But let's not pretend this would be enough, or that the main beneficiaries are he working class.
While I like this idea, this is not the argument union leadership should be making to achieve this goal:
Our union's membership is clearly fed up with living paycheck-to-paycheck while the corporate elite and billionaire class continue to make out like bandits," said Fain in a statement last week. "The Big Three have been breaking the bank while we have been breaking our backs
A change in hours does nothing to address pay discrepancies and you need to pick one lane and fight for it and get it, then attack the other direction.
Man saying two sentences about something is a pretty low bar to "champion" it.
I can only see this happening hand in hand with Medicare For All and the decoupling of healthcare from full time employment.
Service jobs, which are currently 80 percent of US employment, require the same amount of hours with actual people present, e.g. you can't wait more tables, or answer more customer service calls, in 20% less time.
Removing the cost of healthcare from employers will allow them to allocate some of the savings towards employee salaries instead of healthcare insurance.
My old place could really do this.
He's right
For the sake of comparison…
1940 median US male salary was $956. Women earned about 62¢ on the dollar to men.
Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $21,800.
Median US income (overall) in 2023 is $42,800.
You mean to tell me productivity has gone up 4.8x, and I don’t even see 2x the increase in salary.
Put otherwise, if my hours are worth nearly 5x to you, why aren’t they even worth 2x to me?
I think he is taking too big of a chunk off. If this were to be phased in with 4-day work weeks at 10 hours a day with 2 breaks could be a starting point. Companies get the same amount of production hours and save 20% on building costs, energy, etc.
He still supports Biden...The same Biden who forced railroad workers to stop being on strike. Biden who wrote the crime bill that exploded our prison population. Biden who supports every war we're involved in, all of which are illegal. Biden who was in favor of segration back in the day
Bernie had two primaries rigged against him in a row and didn't say anything about it. Speaking as a disabled person, I appreciate what he has to say about a lot of things, but what good is he if he's just going to cave in and do the same shit as the rest of them? He keeps saying that Biden is his friend. Well Bernie has some shitty friends.
The issue I see with this is the prices of things, if you had to pay some one 40 hours of wages for only 32 hours of work plus having to hire someone to fill that extra hours (if you can even find someone) will mean prices will probably increase.
Don't get me wrong only working 32 hours a week sounds amazing but as someone who works 60 hrs per week and still struggles to pay bills it's not something for me
32hr week is fine, but what does he mean by no loss in pay?
The mandated work week is something a central regulator controls, and the pay is not.
The drop in productivity because of working 32hrs instead of 40hrs will be much less than 20%, that's for sure. Maybe there'll be no drop at all. That doesn't always translate to no drop in pay.
If by 32hrs we mean 4 days, then it frees that day for other workers (if we imagine any job with a physical workplace). The pay is a result of the balance of interests. It will become less.
And personally I'd say 35hr week is a better idea - as in 5 days of 7hrs .
Oh wahhhh, you can't have risky sex and abort babies now. So fucking sad for your plight.
What about people that work in education? This is not possible to attain if kids go to school for the amount of time they currently do. Teachers, paras, custodians, IT people etc have no choice in this unless kids have less time in the classroom as well. So unless all those people get paid more to keep doing 40 while the rest gets more life back you'll be hard pressed to find people that want to work education..like anyone wants to work education these days anyways.