Sun, March 17th 2024 at 2:59 PMFILE - Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., talks to the media as he walks to the House chamber before President Joe Biden's State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol, March 7, 2024, in Washington. Sanders, the far-left independent from Vermont, introduced a bill Thursday, March 14, that would shorten to 32 hours the amount of time many Americans can work each week before they're owed overtime.
Given advances in automation, robotics and artificial intelligence, Sanders says U.S. companies can afford to give employees more time off without cutting their pay and benefits. In 2022, a team of university researchers and the nonprofit 4 Day Week Global enlisted 61 companies to reduce working hours for six months without cutting wages. Afterward, 71% of the 2,900 workers said they were less burned out and nearly half reported being more satisfied with their jobs.
"These are concepts that have consequences," Roger King, of the HR Policy Association, which represents corporate human resource officers, told the Senate committee. "It just doesn't work in many industries."With considerable opposition from Republicans, and potentially some Democrats, don't expect Sanders' proposal to get very far in the Senate. A companion bill by Democratic Rep. Mark Takano of California is likely doomed in the GOP-controlled House.
"Do we continue the trend that technology only benefits the people on top, or do we demand that these transformational changes benefit working people?" Sanders said. "And one of the benefits must be a lower workweek, a 32-hour workweek."The Fair Labor Standards Act, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938, restricted child labor and imposed other workplace protections that included limiting the workweek to 44 hours.