Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) is proposing cutting the standard 40-hour workweek down to 32 hours in the hopes of rebalancing worker productivity and stress.
In March, Sanders introduced legislation that would require employers to pay employees overtime for any time worked over 32 hours in one week. Employers would also be prohibited from reducing employees’ pay and benefits as a result of the reduction in hours. Sanders argued that with advances in technology, worker productivity has increased, some studies suggest by as much as 400%, since the 40-hour workweek was set by the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1940.
He added that corporate executives are benefiting from the increased productivity via increased profit margins. “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 during a March hearing in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, for which Sanders is the chairman. “And one of the benefits must be a lower workweek, a 32-hour workweek.”
Sanders pointed to other countries, including France, Norway and Denmark, that are already adopting shorter workweeks. He also highlighted a U.K. study of a four-day workweek program that included 3,000 workers and found that more than 70% of the surveyed workers reported greater satisfaction and felt less burnout and participating organizations experienced a 35% increase in revenue, on average.
The U.S. legislation is gaining support among labor unions and workers’ rights groups, including the AFLCIO, United Automobile Workers (UAW) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU). “[A hundred] years ago, critics of the five-day workweek predicted doom, as they worried that a weekend would set the United States’ economy back,” Vishal Reddy, executive director of WorkFour, a national campaign promoting the four-day workweek, said in a statement. “Instead, it helped launch us to the front of the global pack by creating a thriving middle class. Once the fourday workweek becomes a reality, every American will have nearly six years returned to them over their lifetime. That’s six additional years to spend with their children and families, volunteer in their communities, learn new skills, and take care of their health.”
This is not the first time that someone has proposed a 32-hour workweek. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) began introducing similar legislation in 2021 following the significant shifts in work caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Wide swaths of the American workforce are worn out and tired, and the pandemic has made them be more real about their lives after seeing someone die or be at risk of dying,” Takano told Reuters in a 2021 interview. “People are seeing that time is just as important as money. I think we’re seeing a global cataclysmic event that has created an opening for people to rethink the current workweek.”
As Takano’s bill did not progress to a hearing in 2021, he reintroduced it in 2023, but supporters of the bill have acknowledged that it is not likely to progress in the Republican-controlled House. Several Republicans have voiced concern about the idea of reducing America’s standard working hours and argue that it could lead to the need to hire more workers to meet demands. They also argue that the cost of hiring more workers would be passed to consumers.
“It would threaten millions of small businesses operating on a razor-thin margin because they’re unable to find enough workers,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “Now they’ve got the same workers, but only for three-quarters of the time.
And they have to hire more.” Other critics of the idea argue that it would not necessarily be a boon to all industries, such as manufacturing, that still require hands-on, manual labor. “These are concepts that have consequences,” Roger King, HR policy senior labor and employment counsel at the HR Policy Association, which represents corporate human resource officers, said at the March Senate hearing on the topic. “It just doesn’t work in many industries.” King added that AI and other technological advances will likely further increase productivity and wealth in many industries but argued that the market, not the government, should determine how that wealth is distributed.
Given current opposition to the bills in the Senate and House, legislation promoting a 32-hour workweek will likely not see movement at this time.
For more background, see the April 2021 issue of Congressional Digest on “Federal Minimum Wage.”
