Skip Navigation

Bernie Sanders Introduces Legislation to Enact a 32-Hour Workweek with No Loss in Pay

www.sanders.senate.gov

NEWS: Sanders Introduces Legislation to Enact a 32-Hour Workweek with No Loss in Pay » Senator Bernie Sanders

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) today announced that this Thursday he will introduce legislation to establish a standard 32-hour workweek in America with no loss in pay – an important step toward ensuring that workers share in the massive increase in productivity driven by artificial intelligence, automation, and new technology. Sanders is joined on the Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act in the Senate by Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.) and in the House of Representatives by Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) who introduced companion legislation.

Read the bill summary, here. [PDF]
Read the bill text, here. [PDF]

The Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act would:

  • Reduce the standard workweek from 40 to 32 hours over four years by lowering the maximum hours threshold for overtime compensation for non-exempt employees.
  • Require overtime pay at time and a half for workdays longer than eight hours, and overtime pay at double a worker’s regular pay for workdays longer than 12 hours.
  • Protect workers’ pay and benefits to ensure that a reduction in the workweek does not cause a loss in pay.

https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/1be2bg5/bernie_is_fighting_for_the_4day_workweek_in_the/

51 comments
  • my direct manager is so deeply capitalism cucked. i used to bring up ideas like this to him, because he's a turbolib and fancies himself an intellectual and progressive. i have learned, he is the embodiment of the cultural hegemony of US political economy.

    • when i told him about some german/EU regulation for large employers... when emails are sent outside of working hours were met with a >1000 euro fine, he snapped to attention, "that could never work here! it would be a disaster!"
    • when upper management for our organization ruled [after threats of slowdown] that a historically, highly exploited position (which the institution is deeply dependent on for generating direct value) would now have a wage floor of an almost livable wage he COMPLAINED that it was incumbent on people in/around his managerial level to find the money going forward.
    • he preaches the gospel of austerity for everyone below the level of management but publicly fights hard to get managers bigger compensation packages, seeing them as full citizens and the rest of us as appliances and tools, or extensions of the value of managers.

    he seems to completely internalize the most obviously false values of capitalist ideology, even the ones the upper level managers parrot but know better than to believe. this guy personally makes 3x the median household income for the the county, and spends all his effort going to meetings complaining about the lack of money for projects. not to mention the perennial HR dumpster fire of his fiefdom from high turnover among productive, non-managerial staff with critical institutional knowledge. it should surprise no one that he is a doofus with his personal finances too and carries credit card debt.

    it's hard to imagine a more useful idiot for the bourgeoisie.

  • Good thing he waited until democrats lost control of congress. It might have been hard to make excuses for it not passing if he introduced it earlier

  • This is an objectively good thing, to have an actually existing bill in Congress even though it's Unrealistic™. Bernie does good things once and a while, great

  • If this passes then I'll take a massive loan, personally fly to the US, get a fake passport and vote for Biden personally.

51 comments