FILE - 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. The 40-hour workweek has been standard in the U.S. for more than eight decades.
Critics say a mandated shorter week would force many companies to hire additional workers or lose productivity.The bill Sanders introduced Wednesday in the Senate would reduce the standard workweek from 40 hours to 32 hours. Employers would be prohibited from reducing their workers’ pay and benefits to match their lost hours.
“The majority of employees register an increase in their productivity over the trial. They are more energized, focused and capable,” Juliet Shor, a Boston College sociology professor and a lead researcher on the UK study, told Sanders’ Senate committee. GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said paying workers the same wages for fewer hours would force employers to pass the cost of hiring more workers along to consumers.
“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.
In the 1830s, coal miners and textile workers began pushing back against workdays of up to 14 hours. After the Civil War, the abolition of slavery caused those in the U.S. to take a fresh look at workers’ rights. Unions rallied around the slogan: “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what you will.”