Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday introduced a bill to establish a standard four-day workweek in the United States without any reduction in pay.
The bill, over a four-year period, would lower the threshold required for overtime pay, from 40 hours to 32 hours. It would require overtime pay at a rate of 1.5 times a worker’s regular salary for workdays longer than 8 hours, and it would require overtime pay at double a worker’s regular salary for workdays longer than 12 hours.
The Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act would also protect workers’ pay and benefits to ensure there’s no loss in pay, according to a press release.
Please please please please happen
Fuck I wish.
The Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act would also protect workers’ pay and benefits to ensure there’s no loss in pay, according to a press release.
How, are we actually going to punish the employers who will inevitably retaliate by cutting all of their employees hours? I’ll believe that when I see it happen.
Without strong protections, major employers (i.e. retail/food service/manufacturing) will just evade this the same way they already evade current benefits and overtime laws: by purposefully having zero full time employees on the payroll and instead hiring twice as many people but not scheduling any employee with enough hours to ever come close to hitting overtime, obtaining benefits, or being able to make enough money to live. Hitting overtime at 32 hours is great on paper, but that’ll never help the Wal Mart employee whose schedule is six four hour shifts randomly scattered across the week.
We ought to start by making those types of big corporation schedule fuckery illegal. With the exception of nurses and truckers, practically no one in a “blue collar” position has the problem of too many hours in a work day. It’s rather the opposite.
Eventually, the quality of service drops to a point where they lose enough customers to revert some of their changes.
Or they close their business and blame it on theft.
That would be nice if it were true, and in an ideal world maybe it would be. But this is already exactly how all the major retail chains you shop at do it: Wal Mart, Target, Home Depot, CVS, Walgreen’s, Best Buy, Dollar General, etc., etc., etc. None of them have gone out of business yet, quality of service or not. Everyone knows they’re crap and mistreat their workers, and yet there are no real competing alternatives, or if there are the competitors are exactly like them anyway, so here we are.
And everyone knows this is how big retailers do it, too. It’s an openly known that they over-hire and under-schedule and have nothing but part time employees so they don’t have to pay anyone overtime or provide health benefits. But nobody does anything about it.
Like, breaking up a big cash deposit to your bank into a bunch of little ones so you don’t have to report to the IRS is illegal, right? So why the fuck is structuring your hiring and scheduling to evade overtime laws also not illegal for exactly the same reason?
We already know the answer, of course. Without oversight, these big corporations will do anything and everything to cheat and shortchange anyone they can to pocket the difference.
Exactly. I read the bill and it only protects currently employed workers. Its basically a grandfather clause. New employees will be offered 32 hour schedules at 32 hours of pay and it will greatly disincentivise job hoping. Don’t get me wrong, I love Bernie and every single thing he stands for. I’m just too exposed to C Suite mentality to be hopeful.
I’d willingly take a bullet for Bernie, honestly.
I’m not even American and I would take one for him also.
I’d take a paper clip flick for him
Are exempt employees still boned?
I would assume that salaried office workers would eventually go down to 4 days as the culture of Full-time changes. That or they’d just leave for hourly positions, causing competition.
Salaried employees aren’t the only ones that can be exempt.
I’m salaried, and collect OT. I have to log all my hours to specific contracts so we charge other groups appropriately, so we get 1.0x OT pay
Not that uncommon to be non-exempt salary. Our warehouse people are salaried but if they work over 40 get 1.5x
True, certain positions are still exempt even if they’re hourly. In my state I think it’s managers, medical workers, and IT workers plus more.
But yet, fulltime used to be 6 days a week until we changed the definition to 5 and now that’s the standard. Changing the standard is exactly what this likely will accomplish.
There’s an FLSA overtime exemption for making over $107,432/year. That’s the threshold for no more overtime. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17h-overtime-highly-compensated
In Boston that wage is on the low side of office worker pay over 30yo.
Yes always
Yes, the bill is just an amendment for FLSA that changes hourly workers thresholds. It does not remove exemptions in any way. https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/WIL241041.pdf
Assuming it passes (of course it won’t), I wonder what it will do to a lot of industries where it’s less feasible to make happen.
Firefighters work 24 to 48 hour shifts. So do many eats and paramedics. Nurses and doctors also work odd hours, and they’re already in short supply. Then what about teachers? Are kids only going to go to school 4 days a week as well? The curriculum will have to be trimmed up.
Also, if it all get pay adjusted, in reality, I would imagine a lot of jobs will stop increasing any pay to offset inflation for quite a while, until everyone does end up essentially making less.
This seems hard to pull off while unemployment is low and so many people are poor.
90% of my company is salary and already work more than 40 hours a week. Our hourly employees need to be available to support our salaried employees 5 days a week. It’s exciting to think that we’ll all get Fridays off but I bet most companies would just implement 2 hour staggered lunch breaks and office hours would still be 9-5 but people would only work 6.5 hours a day. I know there would be a mutiny at my firm if suddenly all the lowest level employees got permanent 3 day weekends.
Might not impact you directly, but as other companies would adopt benefits of it, employees at your company would start to leave for companies that are adjusting their schedule. They’d either be forced to adjust, or risk hitting unsustainable attrition rates
They’d either be forced to adjust, or risk hitting unsustainable attrition rates
Checks Notes. Welp a ton of companies are already there with RTO.
90% of my company is salary
This 32 hour workweek act will not apply to you. It only applies to non-exempt workers as it’s an amendment to FLSA. FLSA provides exemptions to overtime based on income or certain responsibilities. It’s also very often mis-applied by businesses who do not want to pay workers for overtime and very rarely challenged.
My industry is IT. It’s very common that IT support workers making under the income threshold are given exempt status even though their responsibilities are not exempt job duties. There are a shitload of IT support workers.
Another thing Biden did that people don’t really notice.
On Sept. 8, 2023, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued a proposed rule that would increase the salary threshold to $1,059 a week ($55,068 annualized) for the Fair Labor Standard Act’s (FLSA’s) white-collar exemption from overtime pay.
And why exactly does any labor need to be exempt at all?
Who the fuck decided your time becomes worthless at Checks Notes 50k. That’s not even enough to pass the “Must make 3x Rent” in the majority of the country?
If you’re an exec making $350k/year, it might be reasonable to ask you to at least be available 60 hours a week (not every week).
I certainly agree that $55k is too low, but it’s much better than the $38k it was before. If it were up to me, I’d put it around $200k, indexed to inflation.
My industry is IT. It’s very common that IT support workers making under the income threshold are given exempt status even though their responsibilities are not exempt job duties. There are a shitload of IT support workers.
Same here. I am like, great so now ill get paid to work 32 hours, but still work 60.
It’ll affect a lot of the worst jobs. It’ll make construction stupid expensive.
I do think a 32 hour work week should be doable. Overtime exemptions are utter bullshit across the board though.
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This would be a huge upset for the nuclear industry. 12s are the standard during outages, and while we get overtime, it’s all predicated on overtime starting at 40. 40 regular + 32 overtime doesn’t just flip. You’d be in overtime before the third day is even over, and you’d still already have 8 hours of overtime at that point. If I’m figuring it right, it’s 24 regular and 48 overtime, just because we go over 8 every day. I don’t see this being applied to the industry during outages, or outage workers just get reduced hours, and fuck that.
Edit: let me clarify that I don’t have a problem with this bill. I just don’t want a paycut.
There are 40,134 people employed in the Nuclear Power industry in the US as of 2023.
In February 2024, the U.S. civilian labor force was ~167,430,000 people.
Yeah, let’s scrap the whole thing for 00.024%
I also feel VERY safe knowing that our nuclear plants are staffed by people working 12+ hour shifts, there’s no way anyone is tired or would make mistakes towards the end of those shifts at all. Gotta keep that status quo of keeping our nuclear workers from being able to see their families… or just hire a 3rd shift and cut the bullshit.
Doesn’t matter though. This will NEVER happen in the US. We’re allergic to worker’s rights. Far more likely that overtime will be scrapped and FLSA will be gutted.
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I never said scrap it. I actually support it. I just don’t want to be paid less and I’m mostly wondering aloud about potential effects on my industry.
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You should feel safe since this is the safest work environment I’ve ever been in with the highest quality of work I’ve ever had the pleasure of being around. Everyone wants to be here and takes it very seriously. If someone obviously doesn’t want to be in this field or doesn’t take it seriously, then it’s extremely easy to get rid of them.
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Huh? You’d get more money 8 more hours a week allocated to OT.
Anyway laws like this elsewhere like Germany and France have excemptions for certain sectors like medical, nuclear, law enforcement etc.
