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This! 40 hours workweek with mandatory overtime pay (usually double per hour) with a minimum duration. Reducing the workweek below that would be considered unne

This! 40 hours workweek with mandatory overtime pay (usually double per hour) with a minimum duration. Reducing the workweek below that would be considered unnecessary government intervention and is liable to be bad for business and workers. No one wants a pay cut that goes with it.

t0mas88 5y ago
The proposal isn't a paycut right? As written employees keep the same pay but work 32 hours instead of 40.
- pc86 5y ago
  One, there are a lot of businesses that operate on margins well under 20%. Some percentage of these would absolutely go out of business if you somehow mandated 80% of the current hours for 100% of the current pay. Now you can argue they should go out of business anyway, and maybe you're right, but it's still the government passing a law to intentionally put a lot of people out of business and make a lot of people lose their jobs. Two, FTA "the proposed bill would require these employers to compensate employees who work in excess of 32 hours per week at 1 ½ times the employee’s regular rate of pay" - it's unclear to me how this impacts exempt vs. non-exempt workers. If you're salaried in California and you work 50 hours a week it's not like you get paid any more. Those are 10 hours of unpaid overtime. This doesn't seem to change that concept. If they're only talking about hourly workers, then it's a pay cut no matter what. In the "Disadvantages" section of the article it further implies that these changes would mostly impact hourly/non-exempt workers. Three, why the differentiation between <=500 and >500 workers? If I'm an hourly worker someplace with ~490ish employees who works 40h/wk I'm going to have to worry about my hours being cut because of hiring I have nothing to do with. If I'm consistently getting overtime for a larger employer at ~40 hours a week, I'm going to receive a pay cut if they downsize and that work is no longer considered overtime. Four, and perhaps most importantly, this is never getting signed into law. It's a publicity/donor stunt by some politicians and nothing more.
  - thomascgalvin 5y ago
    > One, there are a lot of businesses that operate on margins well under 20%. > > Three, why the differentiation between <=500 and >500 workers? I suspect that the third point is an attempt to address the first. A company with five hundred employees is (in theory) better able to absorb this cost than a mom-and-pop with ten people on staff. The exact number of five hundred is probably arbitrary, though.
    - robbedpeter 5y ago
      It favors megacorporations, who can afford to eat any short term losses as new unfavorable conditions drive smaller businesses under, eliminating competition, and then prices adjust upwards when the local market has been sufficiently captured. This is how Wal-Mart and Starbucks and their ilk take over. It's impossible to compete against multi-billion dollar companies regardless of service, quality, or loyalty because small businesses deal with local margins and megacorps have global reserves. Walmart doesn't need to compete with mom and pop, it simply needs to destroy them. In that context, if we see local economies as something to be preserved, better regulations are needed. There might not be a legitimate case for that, since megacorps being massive efficiencies to bear. Deliberately reducing efficiency to placate small business owners might feel justified, but to the consumer, things are pretty good these days aside from shortages and inflation.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    You are assuming that wages represent 100% of costs when its more apt to be 30%. You are assuming that all employees are full time when in fact the minority often are. Lastly you are assuming that people will be paid 20% more for working 20% less. They would be making 25% more 5/4 not 4/5. For example 100 for working 5 hours is 20 100 for working 4 hours is 25. Those errors corrected lets blow through a hypothetical. A shop that employs 40% of its folks full time will have to hire a ~10% (25% not 20%) bigger workforce in order to provide an identical number of labor hours. However labor costs while they are substantial aren't 100% of costs. It would be more normal for employee labor to be closer to 30%. This means costs ought to increase more like 3% not 20%. Businesses can take the additional profits from rising prices in fact only partially attributable to rising prices of inputs and probably come out even. It ought to be noted that its also possible that many firms can't all hire 10% more labor making paying the overtime rate for some of its people the only feasible alternative to serving business. Paying 8 hours of overtime for a given employee is like paying for an extra 4 hours of pay or once again 10% of effected employees minus the additional cost of acquisition and management. This may end up being the desirable option.
- ac29 5y ago
  That doesnt follow - if you get paid by the hour, a mandatory reduction in hours is a mandatory reduction in pay.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    It's more complicated than that. Cost of labor is driven by what management is willing to offer and what employees can afford to accept. If a 32 hour effective cap leads to employees demanding 20 and employers offering 15 they can keep on offering until their firm goes out of business if they like.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
I would take that pay cut in a heartbeat. And yes, I realize the cut won't be proportional, I just want to work fewer hours and still have healthcare and reasonable pay for the time worked.
standardUser 5y ago
The government saying 40 hours in the work week is OK, but any other number of hours to you is "unnecessary government intervention"? What makes the number 40 sacred?
- farseer 5y ago
  Because the government didn't set that minimmum, its what society determined over a course of 150 years as to what is "fair". Once the majority of the businesses by choice start reducing that, and the 32 hour week becomes the norm then sure legislate that for everyone. But it can't be imposed until then. [1]https://www.cultureamp.com/blog/40-hour-work-week https://www.cultureamp.com/blog/40-hour-work-week
  - standardUser 5y ago
    The idea that businesses instead of people should determine the normal working hours for people is entirely ass-backwards.
imtringued 5y ago
Yeah it's a completely ridiculous idea. All you need to do is implement a negative interest rate on cash and people will start cutting their hours voluntarily as they notice that there is no future generation that is willing to be in debt for their early retirement. Right now with the 0% interest subsidy on cash people will work 40 hours to save themselves into an early retirement that won't be possible in the future and then they complain that the government stole their money through inflation by letting them save money that has no reason to exist.

t0mas88 5y ago

The proposal isn't a paycut right? As written employees keep the same pay but work 32 hours instead of 40.

pc86 5y ago
One, there are a lot of businesses that operate on margins well under 20%. Some percentage of these would absolutely go out of business if you somehow mandated 80% of the current hours for 100% of the current pay. Now you can argue they should go out of business anyway, and maybe you're right, but it's still the government passing a law to intentionally put a lot of people out of business and make a lot of people lose their jobs. Two, FTA "the proposed bill would require these employers to compensate employees who work in excess of 32 hours per week at 1 ½ times the employee’s regular rate of pay" - it's unclear to me how this impacts exempt vs. non-exempt workers. If you're salaried in California and you work 50 hours a week it's not like you get paid any more. Those are 10 hours of unpaid overtime. This doesn't seem to change that concept. If they're only talking about hourly workers, then it's a pay cut no matter what. In the "Disadvantages" section of the article it further implies that these changes would mostly impact hourly/non-exempt workers. Three, why the differentiation between <=500 and >500 workers? If I'm an hourly worker someplace with ~490ish employees who works 40h/wk I'm going to have to worry about my hours being cut because of hiring I have nothing to do with. If I'm consistently getting overtime for a larger employer at ~40 hours a week, I'm going to receive a pay cut if they downsize and that work is no longer considered overtime. Four, and perhaps most importantly, this is never getting signed into law. It's a publicity/donor stunt by some politicians and nothing more.
- thomascgalvin 5y ago
  > One, there are a lot of businesses that operate on margins well under 20%. > > Three, why the differentiation between <=500 and >500 workers? I suspect that the third point is an attempt to address the first. A company with five hundred employees is (in theory) better able to absorb this cost than a mom-and-pop with ten people on staff. The exact number of five hundred is probably arbitrary, though.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    It favors megacorporations, who can afford to eat any short term losses as new unfavorable conditions drive smaller businesses under, eliminating competition, and then prices adjust upwards when the local market has been sufficiently captured. This is how Wal-Mart and Starbucks and their ilk take over. It's impossible to compete against multi-billion dollar companies regardless of service, quality, or loyalty because small businesses deal with local margins and megacorps have global reserves. Walmart doesn't need to compete with mom and pop, it simply needs to destroy them. In that context, if we see local economies as something to be preserved, better regulations are needed. There might not be a legitimate case for that, since megacorps being massive efficiencies to bear. Deliberately reducing efficiency to placate small business owners might feel justified, but to the consumer, things are pretty good these days aside from shortages and inflation.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  You are assuming that wages represent 100% of costs when its more apt to be 30%. You are assuming that all employees are full time when in fact the minority often are. Lastly you are assuming that people will be paid 20% more for working 20% less. They would be making 25% more 5/4 not 4/5. For example 100 for working 5 hours is 20 100 for working 4 hours is 25. Those errors corrected lets blow through a hypothetical. A shop that employs 40% of its folks full time will have to hire a ~10% (25% not 20%) bigger workforce in order to provide an identical number of labor hours. However labor costs while they are substantial aren't 100% of costs. It would be more normal for employee labor to be closer to 30%. This means costs ought to increase more like 3% not 20%. Businesses can take the additional profits from rising prices in fact only partially attributable to rising prices of inputs and probably come out even. It ought to be noted that its also possible that many firms can't all hire 10% more labor making paying the overtime rate for some of its people the only feasible alternative to serving business. Paying 8 hours of overtime for a given employee is like paying for an extra 4 hours of pay or once again 10% of effected employees minus the additional cost of acquisition and management. This may end up being the desirable option.
ac29 5y ago
That doesnt follow - if you get paid by the hour, a mandatory reduction in hours is a mandatory reduction in pay.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  It's more complicated than that. Cost of labor is driven by what management is willing to offer and what employees can afford to accept. If a 32 hour effective cap leads to employees demanding 20 and employers offering 15 they can keep on offering until their firm goes out of business if they like.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

I would take that pay cut in a heartbeat. And yes, I realize the cut won't be proportional, I just want to work fewer hours and still have healthcare and reasonable pay for the time worked.

standardUser 5y ago

The government saying 40 hours in the work week is OK, but any other number of hours to you is "unnecessary government intervention"? What makes the number 40 sacred?

farseer 5y ago
Because the government didn't set that minimmum, its what society determined over a course of 150 years as to what is "fair". Once the majority of the businesses by choice start reducing that, and the 32 hour week becomes the norm then sure legislate that for everyone. But it can't be imposed until then. [1]https://www.cultureamp.com/blog/40-hour-work-week https://www.cultureamp.com/blog/40-hour-work-week
- standardUser 5y ago
  The idea that businesses instead of people should determine the normal working hours for people is entirely ass-backwards.

imtringued 5y ago

Yeah it's a completely ridiculous idea. All you need to do is implement a negative interest rate on cash and people will start cutting their hours voluntarily as they notice that there is no future generation that is willing to be in debt for their early retirement. Right now with the 0% interest subsidy on cash people will work 40 hours to save themselves into an early retirement that won't be possible in the future and then they complain that the government stole their money through inflation by letting them save money that has no reason to exist.