Bernie Sanders unveils 32-hour workweek bill with no loss in pay for workers
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday introduced a bill to establish a standard four-day workweek in the United States without any reduction in pay. The bill, over a four-year period, would lowe…
Which will be struck down almost unanimously because the US government is a cesspool of liches and ghouls.
Those corporate liches and ghouls are going to trickle down wealth any day now. Any day.
Sanders also pointed to other countries that have already made the move toward shortening workweeks. France has a 35-hour workweek and is considering moving to a 32-hour workweek, and Norway and Denmark have workweeks of about 37 hours.
The problem with this comparison is that those countries have socialized healthcare, so healthcare expenditures come from the tax pool. In the U.S., healthcare is privatized so if workers don't get burnout, injuries, diseases from stress etc. that translates to loss of revenue in the healthcare sector (but not for the companies that don't have to pay workers if they're out sick), and many of the decision makers in the U.S. are invested in the healthcare industry so there's an obvious conflict of interest there when it comes to anything that benefits the health and well being of Americans. And the numbers are pretty big when you consider how much more expensive healthcare is in the U.S. than in those above mentioned countries.
Great idea, love it as a former factory worker myself. Hope it gets traction but let's be real, it has a Republican Christian chance of getting into heaven to get enacted into law at least for now.
As a white collar worker, of love to see a bill that just sees white collar workers just get paid their equivalent hourly wage when we go over 40. Fucking crunch due to unrealistic manager bullshit schedules.
it has a Republican Christian chance of getting into heaven
Off topic, but, I love this as an alternative to "a snowball's chance in hell".
I appreciate Bernie and what he stands for. But, unlike pretty much every other developed country on earth, the US, aka the no-vacation nation, doesn't even have universally available PTO. I'd start there.
May as well start somewhere and this is somewhere.
Start as extreme as you can, because you will end up compromising and getting less than what you asked for. The only question is: where is there line beyond which you won't even begin to get a conversation started. Wherever you decide that line is, start your demands there, because you will have to give something up.
I try to like humans, but I hate this part of humanity more than nearly anything that isn't an atrocity. If people would enter negotiations in good faith, and not having to play shitty games like this, I would like my fellow man far better. Then again, I also hate poker and other forms of gambling, and am probably in the minority about this.
I do want this change, but this system is built off exploitation look at the child labor laws being rolled back.
My boss just told us all how this will "remove our lunch and break times and take away all holidays" trying to scare us. Leeches, all of them.
Let's assess the effects this change could cause on real numbers.
Note: This is a duplicate of a part of a comment I've written here above as a response, but I don't want it to be buried. Hope that's fine
I'll take Nutrien's 2023 audited financial statement as an example. (Numbers in brackets are what's deducted to get what's not in brackets)
Out of cost of goods sold (2858) is cost of labour, let's also add (626) from general administrative expenses, and just say it's all wages.
Let's see what happens to our efficiency if the changes take effect.
All of costs can be divided into Fixed and Variable ones. Labour, in this case, is Variable because we can manipulate it by employing more staff to compensate for reduction in working hours and keep the sales at the same rate. (Contract workers are usually Fixed Cost, but it's all relative, as no Fixed Cost is ever truly fixed.)
Going from 40 => 32, we have a 20% reduction in working hours. Mind you, this doesn't mean there will be a 20% hit to productivity. It may be more, it may be less (most likely less), for simplicity let's say it's 20%. So, we need 20% more workers to compensate. (2858+626)*120%=4180.8
So, our net profit margin went from 1282/29056 = 4.4% to 2.8%. Looks bad at first glance, but it's also a bad year. A year prior net profit margin was at whopping 20.3%, so a decrease from 4.4% to 2.8% would be nothing in comparison.
Will it result in increased prices? Yes, but it will also lead to economic growth, because more free time = people spend more money = companies earn more = companies grow faster, but so does inflation. If they can manage the inflation, I don't see why this couldn't be possible.
Reducing net profit doesn't have any impact on pricing in capitalist markets. It's not like capitalists have some specific profit percentage they are allowed to hit (unless they're in a very regulated industry like grid or water supply). They want infinite returns, and they'll increase prices as much as the market allows to generate more profits.
Capitalists don't look at a net profit of 4.4% and say "yup that's enough", but if it were 2.8% they'd say "damn guess we have to increase prices for customers, I really wish we didn't have to do this".
They might increase prices as a retaliatory measure. The same way businesses slashed hours as a result of Obamacare. They didn't have to, but it benefited them to, and they didn't see a downside.
They might be able to increase prices, blame it on this law, and have people who are aligned politically with them put up with it and maybe even support their business more to "stick it to the libs". They already do this with things like inflation, blaming it on Biden and then increasing prices far more than necessary.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Price policy is a whole different topic. Only monopolies can afford to increase them just because they're not meeting the expected quota.
Don't know about "retaliatory measure", it's hard to imagine companies uniting like that over it. Usually, they just play by the rules, and those could be the new rules (strong emphasis on "usually"). In fact, if the management is competent, it's likely that they have already accounted for it, just in case, after the news dropped.
We don't deserve Bernie 🥺
He'd frown on you for saying such a thing. We absolutely deserve him, and more.
It's ridiculously depressing he's still considered the crazy edge-case in the government.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday introduced a bill to establish a standard four-day workweek in the United States without any reduction in pay.
A press release described the legislation as “an important step toward ensuring that workers share in the massive increase in productivity driven by artificial intelligence, automation, and new technology.”
“The financial gains from the major advancements in artificial intelligence, automation, and new technology must benefit the working class, not just corporate CEOs and wealthy stockholders on Wall Street.
“While CEOs’ wages continue to increase, our workers are finding themselves doing more, yet earning less than they have in decades,” Butler wrote in a statement.
“The Thirty-Two-Hour Workweek Act would allow hardworking Americans to spend more time with their families while protecting their wages and making sure profits aren’t only going to a select few.”
In the announcement, Sanders cited several pilot programs and studies that show productivity improving with a four-day workweek.
The original article contains 494 words, the summary contains 156 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Imagine I manage a business where my employees earn $1000 a week, working five 8-hour days. Suppose my profit margin per employee is 10%, resulting in a $1100 return for each one.
Now, if a new law mandates that I pay my employees $1000 for a 4-day workweek, my operation could start incurring losses. The question then arises: where would the necessary additional funds come from? Likely, I'd have to increase my prices. I'm open to considering this arrangement, but I seek clarity on the strategies to mitigate such financial gaps. Should a 4-day workweek lead to a 20% hike in prices, I'm uncertain about the benefits of this change...
I'm all for a more healthy work/life balances, but typically businesses don't like to incur extra expenses, so I would predict if workers are present 20% less, businesses would charge 20% more to make up the gap, which means workers would end up needing to earn more money, which may lead them to work more hours, making this change pointless.
If this came with some consideration from the federal government, like "we will give a 20% tax break to businesses that do this" I would consider the idea funded and I think it may work. Otherwise, this just feels like voting our way into price increases.
I think you might be making a fundamental assumption that quality of each hour of the day is the same.
Maybe for a particular business it does not matter, they just need an employee on the clock to cover time that customers may come in, but I think many businesses have tried this out, and found that they get about as much from their employees in 32 hours as they do in 40 hours.
I think it helps to give people time to rest and deal with life so that they can be more focused and thoughtful when they are with you.
In manufacturing, there is a piece rate for every SKU. At places I have worked this is a very carefully tracked number, as it will inform the production rate which will then affect inventory. A gain of 20% would be extremely major.
If this ends up working out, awesome. I just fear that cost of living has risen so much lately and this will be weaponized into yet another excuse to charge consumers more. "Of course we have to charge more, our workers are here less!"
Do you think your overhead would also decrease if you only had a 4-day work week?
Look at it this way. Let's say I run a widget factory. I have a worker, Joe, that I pay $1000/week to. Each day, Joe creates me a widget that I can sell for $220. That means at the end of the week, I have 5 widgets I can sell for $1100, yielding me $100 profit.
Now, we move to a 4 day work week. I pay Joe $1000. He creates me 4 widgets, still worth $220 each. I sell them for $880 total. I now lose $120 each week.
Under the current plan, it seems the guidance is that Joe will magically start working faster and produce more than 1 widget per day. If he does not, my other option is to increase the price of widgets or to decrease the amount of money I pay Joe.
Actually, you'd need to charge 25% more if you only had 80% of the work to match your current profits (considering only the time and materials for that product and ignoring all other business expenses / taxes / etc.), since 1/0.8 = 1.25. If the worker makes 1 widget a day, you need 25% extra per day to make up the lost widget and still make 5 widgets worth of profit.
It’s hard to imagine how an hourly worker is going to not loose pay; going from 40 to 32 hours.
When you’re hourly… you’re, you know, paid hourly. The pay rate stays the same and you loose hours, not pay. The effect is the same, but technicalities are then soul of the legal profession.
The article literally tells you that this was done before, to give us the 40 day standard we now have. It worked before, and the article also points out that other countries have recently reduced work weeks under 40 hours. How is it hard to imagine that something that factually has happened could happen?
Hopefully it reclassifies weekly work hour threshold to be considered for full time benefits. Either way it’s going to be a bumpy ride. At least someone is trying something
The irs already defines full time as 30 hours per week or 130 hours per month.
The ACA and FMLA also use that definition as full time.
The only change would be to require paying OT at 32 instead of 40- but that will have consequences of reducing hours, and not improving pay.
I suppose we would have to raise the minimum wage, and since neither party wants that, it's dead in the water.
Yeah, I don't understand how the "no loss of pay" part is implemented either.
Even if there is something in the bill that requires overtime pay, that's just a multiplier to the base wage. What keeps an unscrupulous employer from just dropping the base rate by 20%?
It’s not even a question of dropping the base rate.
Hourly workers are paid per hour. I mean it’s pretty basic, right. The terms of employment are your paid at a rate of x per hour.
They’re just going to cut hours- not pay. And it’s a bit ridiculous to expect that companies are going to just increase effective rates when they still need the same number of hours worked.
They’re still going to be paying for that labor. have to pay someone for the hours you can’t work because paying overtime is one of the carnal sins of middle Managment.
A 32 hour workweek just doesn’t translate well to retail or anywhere that’s not white collar office jobs.
