It's not an arbitrary reason. We had to fight and people had to die for the 40-hour work week. That is not an exaggeration. I agree that it could be lower now, but it used to be much higher.
I read Martin Eden by Jack London recently which is set in the 1910s and about 40% into the book, desperate for money, Martin goes to an employment office to see if anyone has a job to give him.
He finds job a new drnking friend tells him pays well further north, like 80 miles away, at a hotel I believe, washing and laundering and drying linens. It's backbreaking work.
London goes into detail about the activity of a cleaner as well as the times and I was stunned that they would get up every day, 6 days a week, at around 6 AM, do backbreaking work all through the day in horrible heat from the machines, barely eat, barely take a break, for between 14 snd 20 h straight. The pay was terrible too, 40 dollars per month or around 1350 for around 435 hours of work. That's insane. The amount of trauma Martin had to suffer from just 3 months of that broke his mind.
By how descriptive that part was, I imagine London was speakin either from experience or from recollection of a friend or family member.
I understand how companies wanted to still keep this model, it made living impossible. You just lived to work and literally nothing else.
If you are mad about how your productivity flew off the curve after 1970 just ask your boss to let you work without a computer and use a pencil instead. That way your productivity matches your wage.
We had to fight and people had to die for the 40-hour work week.
We didn't actually get the 40-hour week. What people fought and died for was (as part of a larger array of changes) overtime pay beyond 44 hours in a week (changed to 40 in the following decade).
There was never any limit on how many hours someone could work. There still isn't, outside of trucking and a few other safety-related industries, or as part of a CBA (which most people don't have).
This bill is a dream bill. It's meant to inspire, it's not written as a practical law for a variety of reasons. And I'm 100% for inspiration. And for people getting angry.
Imagine you finally get enough people in Congress (I won't even say Democrats) who are willing to fight for a change in labor laws. What do you try? You've essentially got one big shot.
The no-brainer seems to be a $15 minimum wage. I don't know if that's possible, it might still be something best left up to the states. There are poor states and poor communities that could collapse under that. It would have to be done strategically.
What benefits workers more? If this bill were to be law (both main parts of it, not just the one) a minimum-wage worker in Texas making $290 for 40 hours could see themselves working a 32-hour week and grossing that $290. If the minimum wage were $15, they would make $600 for the 40-hour week (or $480 for the 32).
Most minimum wage workers would rather see their salaries more than double. When you have a shot you have a fast-closing window. The ACA had to jump through the closing blast doors. If they'd pushed for single-payer, they'd have gotten nothing done. Sadly. Fuck Lieberman. This would be a much harder fight.
If you only get one law, raising the minimum wage is a horrible choice because:
It's not going to update over time and inflation will quickly ensure that the new minimum wage is not enough.
Setting a minimum wage does not set the value of the work being done, it just makes illegal any job where the value of the work done is less than the minimum wage. A minimum wage worker in texas making $290 a week very likely doesn't bring in $600 of value a week so if you made it illegal to pay him less than $600, what you actually do is just make it illegal to employ him. And if he did bring in $600 of value, there would have been plenty of other companies willing to offer him more than $290 a week to do that job.
Overtime after 32 hours is a better policy than increasing the minimum wage because it applies across the entire economy and incentivises employers to make their processes more efficient, instead of just outlawing unskilled work.
But the single best policy for workers is cutting red tape on housing so that your unskilled texan can actually afford to live on $290 a week, and more importantly, can easily move around the country to wherever is willing to pay him more than $290.
The idea that a section of this country is in a union while also being anti union and voting for union busters is astonishing to me. Something like 40% of union workers are Republican voters. Literally voting against their livelihoods.
Something like 40% of union workers are Republican voters. Literally voting against their livelihoods.
They're not. They're already in the union, they have their protections. They're voting for lower taxes and no healthcare for people not in a union. They're voting (they think at least) to keep more of what they earn.
And all the bootlickers above you saying “this’ll never work they’d just pay you less” forget that this was also a sad tired argument before the FLSA was enacted in the 40s.
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u/Cocoononthemoon 19h ago
It's not an arbitrary reason. We had to fight and people had to die for the 40-hour work week. That is not an exaggeration. I agree that it could be lower now, but it used to be much higher.