Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) today announced that this Thursday he will introduce legislation to establish a standard 32-hour workweek in America with no loss in pay – an important step toward ensuring that workers share in the massive increase in productivity driven by artificial intelligence, automation, and new technology. Sanders is joined on the Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act in the Senate by Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.) and in the House of Representatives by Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) who introduced companion legislation.
Read the bill summary, here. [PDF]
Read the bill text, here. [PDF]
The Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act would:
- Reduce the standard workweek from 40 to 32 hours over four years by lowering the maximum hours threshold for overtime compensation for non-exempt employees.
- Require overtime pay at time and a half for workdays longer than eight hours, and overtime pay at double a worker’s regular pay for workdays longer than 12 hours.
- Protect workers’ pay and benefits to ensure that a reduction in the workweek does not cause a loss in pay.
https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/1be2bg5/bernie_is_fighting_for_the_4day_workweek_in_the/
I'm at least glad to see Bernie back to wasting his time proposing modest reforms for the senate to unanimously vote down instead of wasting his time bothesidesing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Hold on... where is it... shuffles through papers... Ah! Here it is...
Is it time for this one? Are we using this one again?
Should this pass, everyone would all of sudden find themselves as gig economy workers somehow.
I've seen this idea gaining traction (with the public, obviously not a single person in congress will support this) but what is the enforcement method supposed to be.
Knowing how labor laws work in this country I'm pretty sure every single business in the country is just going to go "yea we aren't doing that you're free to go work somewhere that is though" which will be nowhere.
Starts at Federal level agencies where both regular Federal employees and something like "Qualified Contractors" (not sure if that's technically a thing, but covering my ass here) can't easily get around the change.
Probably pushes State level agencies to try to comply just to make things easier for scheduling purposes.
But only the largest private corps will have enough employees to fall into a category that this would apply to. Not a revolution but half a sandwich is better than no sandwich when you're hungry.
both regular Federal employees and something like "Qualified Contractors"
They did something like this with a minimum wage increase in like 2018 I wanna say. It hasn't trickled down yet lol
Vermont already ignores existing federal overtime laws for state workers. When a state worker sued them over it, the state's initial attempt to claim that all hourly employees are actually salaried was so flimsy that the federal judge just told the state to invoke sovereign immunity so they could keep breaking federal law with impunity.
TFW: A Federal Judge decides to copy/paste some soverign citizen wall of text into their decision and hit the golf course early.
They wouldn't enforce getting people home at 32 hours, but if the overtime is enforced(since hours are all on record), a lot of companies will adjust to avoid paying so much extra wages. Similar to a higher minimum wage.
Of course most of those adjustments will be worker-and consumer-hostile. Like "inflation" prices or how companies skirt by by giving people 31hrs (currently) to avoid providing health coverage at 32hrs.
Just seems like the enforcement would have to be massive for it to stand a chance and I've pretty much given up hope on the American government siding with workers in labor disputes.
Feels like everybody is either suddenly going to be salaried so the overtime rules don't apply or we all now get a 3 hour u paid lunch break every day that you're fired I'd you dont work through.
my direct manager is so deeply capitalism cucked. i used to bring up ideas like this to him, because he's a turbolib and fancies himself an intellectual and progressive. i have learned, he is the embodiment of the cultural hegemony of US political economy.
- when i told him about some german/EU regulation for large employers... when emails are sent outside of working hours were met with a >1000 euro fine, he snapped to attention, "that could never work here! it would be a disaster!"
- when upper management for our organization ruled [after threats of slowdown] that a historically, highly exploited position (which the institution is deeply dependent on for generating direct value) would now have a wage floor of an almost livable wage he COMPLAINED that it was incumbent on people in/around his managerial level to find the money going forward.
- he preaches the gospel of austerity for everyone below the level of management but publicly fights hard to get managers bigger compensation packages, seeing them as full citizens and the rest of us as appliances and tools, or extensions of the value of managers.
he seems to completely internalize the most obviously false values of capitalist ideology, even the ones the upper level managers parrot but know better than to believe. this guy personally makes 3x the median household income for the the county, and spends all his effort going to meetings complaining about the lack of money for projects. not to mention the perennial HR dumpster fire of his fiefdom from high turnover among productive, non-managerial staff with critical institutional knowledge. it should surprise no one that he is a doofus with his personal finances too and carries credit card debt.
it's hard to imagine a more useful idiot for the bourgeoisie.
when i told him about some german/EU regulation for large employers... when emails are sent outside of working hours were met with a >1000 euro fine, he snapped to attention, "that could never work here! it would be a disaster!"
You mean, the way workplaces functioned for decades before email was a thing? Christ if you really want to get the email sent that badly just set it to delay delivery at 9 the next morning, but shit will still get done if off hours are respected.
There are very few people I have more contempt for than self described "as progressive as they come" people who would never support anything 1 inch to the left of what is already established.
Good thing he waited until democrats lost control of congress. It might have been hard to make excuses for it not passing if he introduced it earlier
Today, I declared myself King of the World. So we've both been pretty busy.
This is an objectively good thing, to have an actually existing bill in Congress even though it's Unrealistic™. Bernie does good things once and a while, great
Senator Peepaw Bumblestein introduces groundbreaking legislation to slow the child grinding machine by 1.5%. This is a good thing! Even if it's unrealistic, it's a harm reduction step in the overton window!!!1!
I had a libertarian manager who used to say "What has Bernie ever actually done?". Hate to hand it to him, but hey, at least im still not a libertarian
Why would a libertarian be complaining about a politician not getting laws passed?
Cuz they're just libs with extra edge and that was a talking point from when the bern was a presidential candidate but i suspect your question was rhetorical :D
Why is the rest of our government so bought and corrupt they refuse to do any good?
I mean, even if Bernie had succeeded in couping Demonrats back in 2020, i dont have much faith in
democratic socialism. No sectarian smoke to my comrades who are still demsoc, but I jumped ship around 2020 after the history I read and reality started to collide. Even in the FDR days the working class has never held lasting power, it always gets funneled into bourgeois parties and unions. 
is controlled opposition, anything he accomplishes at this point will be because his colleagues in all four branches (including 
here) allow it to happen
I had a libertarian manager who used to say "What has Bernie ever actually done?". Hate to hand it to him,
Of al the criticisms one can have of Sanders, this one really annoys me. Offcourse he "doesn't get annything done", because all other people there are the worst monsters imaginable, who're only trying to get tax cuts for their donors. That's a criticism of them, not of Sanders. The problem is that there is no broader movement agitating around these sort of bills, not that they're voted down. These bills are a meager form of pressure on the elite, their existence is a net positive.
You dont have to hand anything to Bernie. All criticism is valid, cuz he still cant even do the bare minimum of not waffling on issues like Yugoslavia or Palestine. But I guess not batting 100 in the Imperial Senate is what it takes to keep your seat
I love the way Sanders' legislation always needs to have that little tail on it (with no loss in pay). Like when he was doing M4A, he had to explain that, while taxes go up, they will go up less than the amount you pay to an insurance company.
The "higher taxes but lower overall costs" talking point kind of annoys me, because basically every other highly developed nation (and a number of developing nations) provides better healthcare than the US with lower government expenditure. There's no need to raise taxes specifically for the purpose of transitioning to universal healthcare other than US healthcare companies charging grossly extortionate prices, which the government can make them stop doing, and it'd help public understanding of the situation if this was brought up more.
Remember when we used to call this loser chairman sanders?
Once again I must hold up my copy of Reform or Revolution and point out the futility of working for change within a system designed to resist fundamental change
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