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H.R.1332 – Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act
- ianai 3y agoUnfortunately many congresspeople routinely file such bills only to never get consideration.
- Simulacra 3y agoI was curious about this, and so I found that the entire time that Bernie Sanders has been in the Senate, only two pieces of legislation he has sponsored has actually become law. When he was a member of the House of Representatives, he only sponsored one bill that became law, which was to rename a post office Source: https://www.congress.gov/advanced-search/legislation?congressGroup%5B%5D=0&congresses%5B%5D=118&congresses%5B%5D=117&congresses%5B%5D=116&congresses%5B%5D=115&congresses%5B%5D=114&congresses%5B%5D=113&congresses%5B%5D=112&congresses%5B%5D=111&congresses%5B%5D=110&congresses%5B%5D=109&congresses%5B%5D=108&congresses%5B%5D=107&congresses%5B%5D=106&congresses%5B%5D=105&congresses%5B%5D=104&congresses%5B%5D=103&congresses%5B%5D=102&congresses%5B%5D=101&congresses%5B%5D=100&congresses%5B%5D=99&congresses%5B%5D=98&congresses%5B%5D=97&congresses%5B%5D=96&congresses%5B%5D=95&congresses%5B%5D=94&congresses%5B%5D=93&legislationNumbers=&restrictionType=field&restrictionFields%5B%5D=allBillTitles&restrictionFields%5B%5D=summary&summaryField=billSummary&enterTerms=&wordVariants=true&legislationTypes%5B%5D=s&becamelaw=true&chamber=all&actionTerms=&legislativeActionWordVariants=true&actionDateBoxCount=2&actionText=&dateOfActionOperator=equal&dateOfActionStartDate=&dateOfActionEndDate=&dateOfActionIsOptions=yesterday&actionText2=&dateOfActionOperator2=equal&dateOfActionStartDate2=&dateOfActionEndDate2=&dateOfActionIsOptions2=yesterday&dateOfActionToggle=multi&legislativeAction=156&sponsorState=One&member=Sanders+&sponsorTypes%5B%5D=sponsor&sponsorTypes%5B%5D=sponsor&sponsorTypeBool=OR&dateOfSponsorshipOperator=equal&dateOfSponsorshipStartDate=&dateOfSponsorshipEndDate=&dateOfSponsorshipIsOptions=yesterday&committeeActivity%5B%5D=0&committeeActivity%5B%5D=3&committeeActivity%5B%5D=11&committeeActivity%5B%5D=12&committeeActivity%5B%5D=4&committeeActivity%5B%5D=2&committeeActivity%5B%5D=5&committeeActivity%5B%5D=9&satellite=%5B%5D&search=&submitted=Submitted https://www.congress.gov/advanced-search/legislation?congres...
- ok_dad 3y agoWhat does that mean? What’s your point? I’m not sure those facts matter much.
- emestifs 3y agoStill in the "Introduced" stage. Given the amount of lobbying in the US, and isn't the US senate Republican controlled(?), and lack of bipartisan cooperation, seems impossible for this to go anywhere.
- drivingmenuts 3y agoWith the current House majority, this bill is DOA.
- Mo3 3y agoWith 40 hour pay? That's the real question
- jedberg 3y agoYes it includes a bit about no reduction in pay. Basically just changes overtime to anything after 32 hours.
- jedberg 3y agoIt's actually a decent bill. It basically says overtime starts at 32 hours instead of 40, and says that you can't cut salary because of this bill. I suspect if it actually passed (highly unlikely) that it would lead to wage stagnation for a few years as companies would say "well you got a 20% raise because of this law so you're good for a few years".
- enlyth 3y agoFeels like it would be worth it, at least eventually. Time is worth so much more than money
- avarun 3y agoThe other issue is that most white collar careers are already considered overtime-exempt, so it doesn’t really matter if the cutoff is 32 hours or 40 hours. Given employment structure in the US a company can require you to work 100 hour weeks and the only thing employees can do is quit.
- rvense 3y agoIMO the real battle here is the cultural normalization of working 32 hours. The legal structure is just one part of it.
- soupfordummies 3y ago>> a company can require you to work 100 hour weeks and the only thing employees can do is quit. Or the employee can stick to the 32 and force the company to fire them.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Kluggy 3y agoI'd be fine with wage stagnation for awhile if I got a day back a week.
- lapetitejort 3y ago
- joshribakoff 3y agoIf you are on salary, normally you don’t get overtime. If you’re on hourly, this potentially just means less hours
- alphazard 3y agoDoesn't this just make it harder for humans to compete with machines and automation? If you had a job that was on the cusp of being done by an LLM, now it's definitely gone.
- sabellito 3y agoYou think that 8 extra hours would be the solution for humans to compete with machines and automation?
- BugsJustFindMe 3y ago> If you had a job that was on the cusp of being done by an LLM, now it's definitely gone. If you have a job on the cusp of being done by an LLM, then it's already imminently gone. This changes nothing.
- headline 3y agoI feel like eight hours a day is already a bit less than twenty-four.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 3y agoThis is barely even policy. It will never happen. A list of problems: * Fundamentally what this does is offer some workers doing a 40-hour non-exempt workweek an additional 4 billable hours. But all that does is take a snapshot of current wages and offers a temporary benefit; prevailing wages will adjust to capture this phenomenon. Remember that very few full-time workers in the US make the minimum wage. * The economy is not set up to run on a 4-day workweek, most especially for the non-exempt employees who are the only people this bill applies to. A doctor's office is not going to shift from 5-day weeks to 4-day weeks to accommodate this, so either the non-exempt intake person is going to get converted to two non-exempt part-time intake people, or they're going to work a 40 day workweek anyways. * There is a huge swath of the economy that is in the same economic class as the median non-exempt worker but makes a salary, and, for no reason anybody backing this has explained, they get no benefit from this at all.
- pcthrowaway 3y agoHonestly I think such bills are an immediate answer to the problem of more of the workforce being automated. And at if we get to a point where technology has reduced the need for labor by 50% they are almost inevitable. In such a scenario, mandating a 20-hour work-week for example would be a reasonable solution to what would otherwise turn into mass unemployment and poverty. I don't think it's the best solution, but it's a decent one that requires less of a fundamental shift to society.
- tptacek 3y agoYou can say that a real policy to shift the economy to 4-day workweeks would be an answer to automation. But you can't reasonably say this policy is, because it doesn't do anything meaningful. It will give, for a period of some months, a ~10% pay raise to a fraction of US workers.
- jedberg 3y agoEvery one of these arguments were made when the five day workweek was introduced. Turns out the economy adjusted.
- hereme888 3y agoHow about government mind its own business and let the free market hash it out? Most of the world keeps working harder and harder, catching up more and more to the US. Keep it up and Americans will become uncompetitive relative to foreign labor.
- drivingmenuts 3y ago> How about government mind its own business and let the free market hash it out? Because the ultimate outcome of that is something like the Boston Tea Party, only this time with AR-15s. Daily. > Americans uncompetitive relative to foreign labor Waaaay too late, dude.
- hereme888 3y ago> Waaaay too late, dude. Lol, I get it. I meant even more uncompetitive.
- shrimp_emoji 3y agoIf they did that, we'd still have the 80 hour work weeks from the 1800s (with the same pay or worse).
- m463 3y agoI remember reading about steel mills. It was common for the mill to be covered by two workers. each would work 12 hours a day, and I believe they would alternate sundays off so folks could go to church ever two weeks (while the other worker would work almost all weekend)
- toomuchtodo 3y agoGovernment protects citizens and workers from the free market.
- EPWN3D 3y agoThis would probably hit the childcare industry very hard. Overtime-exempt employees would still need 5 days of childcare per week, but the employees of childcare facilities are much more likely to be non-exempt. So those childcare centers will have to send their prices even further into the stratosphere to either staff up, shell out for overtime, or convert their staff into salaried. This would make life a lot worse for salaried parents.
- pcthrowaway 3y agoThe overall need for childcare would decrease by about 10-20%, so I don't believe this will be a problem. Companies may stagger their 'day off' over the workweek, so people are just as likely to have tuesday, wednesday, or thursday off, though probably fridays and mondays would be more popular Yes, some employees will be working 5-days a week and need childcare for those 5 days still, but I don't see why a company providing it can't stagger their employees' off days also to be able to meet their needs. Also, a lot of those overtime-exempt employees realistically will have a partner who now has 1 more day off per week, so they may only need 4 days of childcare after all. I really doubt this change, were it to go into effect, would have a positive effect on the wages of childcare workers, though they may now have more time off, so hopefully good for them overall.
- throwway120385 3y agoWhere are you getting your information? Are you just assuming everyone salaried is married to someone who is hourly or something? Because the bill does not do anything for salaried, overtime-exempt employees. A more straightforward approach would be to completely eliminate the pay gap for tipped employees and raise the federal minimum wage, which hasn't seen an increase since the 1990's.
- pcthrowaway 3y agoI assumed this bill changes the definition of 'full-time' such that full-time employees will typically be working 32-hours per week. Not sure what the laws are in the U.S., but it's nearly unheard of for people to sign an employment contract which mandates they work 50, 60, hours/week, etc. I assumed overtime-exempt generally referred to people in fields like nursing or medicine, essential workers so to speak.