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."
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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.
Allow them to allocate some of the savings towards employee salaries? Why would they do that when they could pocket the difference like they have been doing to all other cost savings and productivity boosts?
How are the employers going to pay for the additional employees to work those 8 hours, while paying the existing employees the same salary for working 8 less hours?
The money has to come from somewhere.
P.s. Not all employers have CEOs making millions in bonuses. Nearly half of employees in the US work for small businesses , including single person businesses.
Maybe this is stupid question but..single person business just mean it's one person doing everything right? In those cases, how would changing the standard full time to 32 hours affect them in any way?
They wouldn't be changing their own salary or have to change anyone else's salary unless I'm missing something
ETA: small business just means less than 500 employees, I'm sure a good number of them could still afford it. And an easy (and admittedly imperfect) solution could be just adding an exception for small businesses.
I'm not an economist but I bet that the answer is going to be similar to how employers now pay for the additional employees to work ever since work weeks got made to be 40 hours and not 60 or whatever back during the 1800s.
40 hours a week isn't some magic number.
Nobody is saying you should have to do 40 hours work in 32 hours - rather the company hires more people to cover those hours.
This only works out in 9 to 5 jobs. There are ao many people out there that work very different hours. Many career fields that work a lot longer shifts wouod not be able to simply work less. It just doesn't work that way.
Firefighters work 48 or 72 hours a week depending on the week. We can't just say, ok cool. You work 32 hours a week now.
You don't understand... After 32 hours it's overtime pay instead of after 40
That's totally understandable, but the "standard" work week is 40 hours. He's just saying to change the standard. So if you're job isn't standard hours, it would probably just mean a little more overtime pay. Still a benefit to those people
The point is, why is 40 hours the standard? What makes that the standard? Who says it's the standard?
Lobbyists for the 1%....ohhhhh.......right......and now the real issue comes about.
This is the opposite of where the 8 hour day/40 hour week came from. In the US, it was fought for and won by various pro labor groups and unions in the early 1900s and became part of US law under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
Removing the cost of healthcare from employers will allow them to allocate some of the savings towards employee salaries instead of healthcare insurance. Or just, y'know, keep the savings. On the bright side, it would mean you no longer depend on your job for healthcare, so people would have more freedom to quit.