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Sanders pushes for 32-hour workweek without loss of pay
Sen. Bernie Sanders said that technological advances have made it possible for Americans to decrease their time working while being paid the same amount.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Independent from Vermont, introduced legislation Thursday that would establish a standard 32-hour workweek in America with no loss in pay.
Sanders cited major technological advances in areas like artificial intelligence and automation as factors that could make this possible.
“Moving to a 32-hour workweek with no loss of pay is not a radical idea,” Sanders said in a statement. “Today, American workers are over 400 percent more productive than they were in the 1940s. And yet, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages than they were decades ago. That has got to change.”
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Sanders spoke about the topic during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing Thursday. The last time the topic was broached during a Senate hearing was in 1955, when the head of the United Auto Workers spoke about the potential of a four-day workweek.
Sanders’s push for a reevaluation of how and when Americans work comes as the idea of a four-day workweek has gained momentum in recent years. A nonprofit, 4 Day Week Global, has been leading the charge by implementing pilot trials for companies around the world. The nonprofit has backed Sanders’s recent proposal.
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These trials have found that four-day workweeks result in employees feeling more productive and like they are producing higher-quality work. At the same time, the trials did not lead to a general increase in the intensity or pace of work.
Last year, Massachusetts lawmakers filed legislation that would create a pilot program to study the effects of a four-day workweek.
In the future, the pandemic could be seen as a tipping point.
“The pandemic intensified the need for a four-day week because it led to a lot more stress and burnout, as well as to people reassessing what matters to them in life. People saw others die around them, and some are feeling much more eager to live in the present in a way that recognizes that your future is not unlimited,” Juliet Schor, a Boston College economist and sociologist, told Boston.com last year.
Sanders detailed the history of the American workweek in his remarks. In the late 19th century, workers organized and pushed for an eight-hour workday. The five-day, 40-hour workweek slowly became standardized and enshrined in the law during the first half of the 20th century. Sanders pointed out that, in 1933, the U.S. Senate actually voted overwhelmingly to establish a 30-hour workweek.
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It is unbelievable, he said, that all these decades later Americans are generally working longer hours for lower wages. Today, 18% of the American workforce, or about 28.5 million people, work more than 60 hours a week, according to Sanders. A total of 40% of employees in America now work at least 50 hours a week. Americans work more hours than employees in other wealthy nations, such as Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
But average American workers make almost $50 a week less than they did 50 years ago, adjusting for inflation, Sanders said.
The massive technological breakthroughs of the past few decades have boosted productivity, he said, but only the richest Americans are feeling the benefits.
“Almost all of the economic gains of that technological transformation have gone straight to the top, while wages for workers have remained stagnant, or even worse,” Sanders said. “While CEOs are making nearly 350 times as much as their average employees, workers throughout the country are seeing their family life fall apart as they are forced to spend more and more time at work.”
France, Norway, and Denmark have all moved away from the 40-hour workweek, Sanders said. He singled out Belgium, which has already made a four-day workweek a possibility for workers. It should be noted, however, that Belgium’s program involves employees working about the same number of hours per week, just over fewer days. This is different from most of the trials happening around the world and what Sanders is advocating for.
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Even proponents of the idea admit that a four-day workweek is not feasible for every profession.
A four-day workweek makes sense for “low intensity” office jobs, where superfluous meetings and wasted time can be eliminated, Schor said. It could also benefit “high intensity” workplaces like in the health care industry. Workers in these jobs rarely have time to spare, so burnout is a major problem. Decreasing the number of hours worked in a week could lead to lower turnover and better-prepared health care professionals.
“I call it the paradox of work intensity. The highest intensity and the lowest intensity workplaces are the ones who would most benefit from the four-day week,” she said.
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