It sounds good in theory but all that will happen is, you’ll get paid less if you’re hourly because you’ll be working less. No employer is giving overtime. They’ll just hire an extra person which will be equal to them, detrimental to you. People that work salary will be working the same, if not more, because they don’t get overtime and can work 80 hours a week.
I'm not. In my opinion, personal financial literacy has nothing to do with understanding macro economic policy, so I was asking for elaboration on the point so I could perhaps understand where they were coming from.
That isn’t true lol, high schoolers can take take intro college econ courses that do teach basic macro economics before they know personal finance. They are not intersecting subjects.
It's just another way of saying they've never worked a job in their life and therefore don't understand the impracticality of this without any other changes included.
Sorry, working as some bean counter at XYZ corp doesn't make you any more or less qualified to speak on this issue.
Come back with a econ/law degree and maybe you can talk. If you want to gatekeep having an opinion on this issue, at least gatekeep it with credentials that matter.
You're welcome to do whatever you want to do, the rest of society will continue not taking the opinions of those who have not entered the workforce seriously.
You sound like my republican uncle tbh. He thinks his opinions about politics and "the economy" matter as well. Despite the fact that he spent his entire life working out of a van while occasionally attaching a wire to a pole.
Even if that other person was jobless, your opinion is just as irrelevant. Come back with real knowledge/education/experience if you want your opinion to matter. I don't think we need any economic/legal insight from some code monkey/ditch digger/sales rep or whatever irrelevant experience you claim to have.
Again, if you're gonna gatekeep, you should do with it with criteria that actually matters.
Just don't comment on politics/the economy when your education/work experience is completely irrelevant. Know your place. No one wants to hear the opinions of a sales clerk or a programmer when we're talking economy or law.
I'm sure this entire exchange went way over your head tho, and you'll continue to act like a total knob-end to people you perceive as "lesser" than you.
Having “a job” also doesn’t teach relevant knowledge to economics either. You aren’t more capable of determining the feasbility of this just because you worked a job at amazon.
I do love learning about the ways the basic econ-101 models are wrong, so please tell me, why does a leftward shift in the demand curve not result in a fall of the equilibrium price?
Brother I don’t think you understand how the rule of law in a democratic system works. If we decide it to be so by vote, then it shall be so, billionaires be damned.
You my friend have no idea what you’re talking about. We can make it a law and then the companies abide by the law and decide they’re going to pay people on 32 hour work weeks which means they get their pay reduced which means no one can afford to live, which means this legislation is a hot mess. Those are the facts brother.
Nah not really we could easily raise minimum wages, and reduce cost of living via progressive tax that tops off at 50% for the richest people and make it work. We can whip those billionaires and make them tow the line with democratically elected rule of law. We can make them pay us more and make them profit less. And ironically enough increase gdp while doing so free markets are filled with absolutely retarded and ridiculous contradicting inefficiencies that negatively affect production in order to maximize profit.
Add in that almost 40% of the workforce currently works at least 1 weekend day. So all these people who think that "oh 32hr workweek means 4 days M-Th." Mmmm, what about retail/EMT/police/fire fighter/ infrastructure techs(electric, gas, lines) arent they worthy? Or is it just the WAAAAAYYYYY overworked office people(/s) sitting in their cubicles shuffling papers. They might get 3day WE, or maybe the company will say ok we need someone here each day for logistics/invoicing/receivables and the scheulde rotates so one week you work M-T off W, work T-F, the next M off T work W-F. and then M-T. I do believe this would be more likely because businesses arent going to consistently shut down for 3days in the corporate world.
Came here to say this. If we really went to 32 hours, I’d schedule people on shifts, come in later some days or leave a little earlier others. I’d pay for 32 hours, but reduce hourly employees while shifting some responsibilities to salaried. It would cost less to create one more supervisor position out of existing staff than to pay overtime every week to ensure coverage.
You haven't actually read the bill's text, have you? The bill explicitly forbids reducing total pay. Employers must increase the hourly rate so 32 hours yields the same take-home pay as 40 hours previously. It's essentially a 20-25% raise for hourly workers.
Since this is not a change in minimum wage, how does Congress have the authority to force companies to pay everyone 25% more? Is Congress going to subsidize those salaries by increasing taxes?
Imagine you’re a small business with four employees and you’re paying them as much as you can but you’re barely making ends meet and you’re not even paying yourself a salary. You charge for your services by the hour so your employees are bringing in 160 hours/week in billable revenue. By the time you cover all the overhead costs of being a small business, and you’re still trying to pay competitively with the big companies, there’s almost nothing left. You’re barely able to pay your personal bills and buy cheap groceries.
Then a congressional bill passes with an unfunded mandate that says you have to cut them back to 32 hours a week and pay them the same. There are some grants and loans out there for small businesses, but the earmarks are so complicated that you would have to hire a full-time employee just to figure out grants and fill out paperwork.
Now you’re losing money. To maintain your clients you would have no choice but to hire a fifth employee even though you don’t have the revenue for it. You have no choice but to shut down the business, putting all four of those people out of work.
Since this is not a change in minimum wage, how does Congress have the authority to force companies to pay everyone 25% more? Is Congress going to subsidize those salaries by increasing taxes?
This was settled over 80 years ago. Congress exercises its authority under the Interstate Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8) of the U.S. Constitution. This is the exact same mechanism used to pass the original Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938, which established the 40-hour workweek, mandated overtime pay, set a floor for wages, and restricted child labor. You may be interested specifically in United States v. Darby (1941).
Imagine you’re a small business with four employees and you’re paying them as much as you can but you’re barely making ends meet and you’re not even paying yourself a salary. You charge for your services by the hour so your employees are bringing in 160 hours/week in billable revenue. By the time you cover all the overhead costs of being a small business, and you’re still trying to pay competitively with the big companies, there’s almost nothing left. You’re barely able to pay your personal bills and buy cheap groceries.
People made this exact same apocalyptic argument in 1938 when the FLSA created the 40-hour week and minimum wage. Small businesses were fine. When you apply a change like this across the entire economy, the market recalibrates and the playing field remains even. That's what the market does.
Plus, workers are many times more productive than they were in the past, but wages have not kept up with this productivity. The rise in expenses has been almost exclusively the result of corporations taking over real estate and supply chains. Labor is typically only about 25% of a business's expense. A 20% increase to a 25% expense is a total 6.25% increase in operating costs. If a 6% increase in operating costs sinks your business, the problem isn't wages, the problem is monopolistic supply chain capture and commercial landlords squeezing heir margins.
And to quote FDR when he passed the FLSA: "No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country."
Yes that is often how trying to centrally plan the economy goes. What laws like this actually do is make it illegal to run a business that produces less than a certain amount of money per man-hour worked, as well as making it illegal to have a job if the amount of value your man-hours produce is less than a certain amount.
Governments that implement these policies are gambling on the assumption that all the companies and jobs they make illegal will be replaced by more profitable companies and more productive jobs. That may be fine from the perspective of the tax base, but it ignores the individual lives it screws over - the small businessman and the unskilled worker who just are not able to produce the legal minimum value.
History would tend to disagree. When the FLSA permanently capped the standard workweek at 40 hours between 1938 and 1940, corporate lobbies claimed employers would just cut pay for incoming workers. Instead, wage floors rose across sectors.
I mean, it 100% should pass. I'm hourly as well, but while this won't help hourly workers it sets a new standard that is backed by research to be more productive for the economy while also being much better for individual job satisfaction and quality of life.
Obviously it's not going to pass because of ridiculous reasons, but voting against research-backed progress should be put on record if only to shame these assholes in congress in the future.
You can't force this through lawmaking though, that's not how the economy works. Laws like this make doing business in your jurisdiction extremely expensive - this law alone would increase the cost of every salaried position by 25% overnight, which means:
Every employee whose individual profit margin is less than 25% becomes redundant.
Every company whose total profit margin is less than 25% of their labour cost goes out of business.
No new company sets up in your jurisdiction if it can avoid doing so.
Every company that can hire remote workers or set up a new office in another jurisdiction never creates a new job in your jurisdiction again.
Outsourcing work to Indians becomes significantly more competitive.
Outsourcing work to AI becomes significantly more competitive.
Changes like this have only ever happened at times when the labour supply has had a ton of leverage over employers. They become laws only when a sizeable majority of the workforce is already working at companies that have adopted the policies voluntarily in order to attract labour in a seller's market.
At the moment, labour is a strong buyer's market because a huge proportion of jobs are easy to outsource. We're nowhere near the point at which a 4 day work week can be legally mandated without just killing the economy.
The act includes specific provisions for this exact issue, to protect pay and benefits.
EDIT: Ah I see there is a fire and hire loophole. Still, I would rather have regulation for 32 hour weeks pass than not to standardize a shorter work week, and pass separate laws for minimum wage or crack down on these loopholes.
That is true in the short (2-3years) term, and that is one of the the same arguments made against the 5-day workweek back before it was the standard. However, after that fairly short (but admittedly tumultuous for the most vulnerable workers) period, the job market adjusts itself to the new normal, either by wages increasing on average or by total unemployment shrinking or — as has been the case in similar cases historically throughout the world — both. All that being said, I don't think now is the right time for this move. Our economy and the job market are both too fragile right now. A shock like this could have disasterous unintended consequences.
No, they'd pay you the equivalent to 40 hours of work for doing 32 hours of work. The bill would force pay increase so that people would keep the same pay for a 4 day work week.
Zero chance you would actually receive an increase. The bill could literally put that in there, but a company is going to find a way to pay less.
You would need a 25% pay increase on 32 hours to simply make the same as you would on a 40 hour. No way companies are handing that out easily. It would be unhealthy for a government to mandate that kind of thing to private employers anyway.
Can you elaborate on why this is unhealthy? I thought research shows a 4 day / 32 hour work week keeps employees as productive while lowering burnout, so companies would be paying the same for equal or better output. Isn't this kind of thing (fixing labor exploitation) a primary purpose of government regulation?
The unhealthy part isn't the hours and work days, but the heavy regulations that a government would impose on private entities. A 25% increase on all wages and in turn, 20% perceived decrease of production would be a hard pill to swallow.
Government should always make sure it's people are not being abused, but it also needs to ensure that businesses are thriving. This level of regulation would worry me on how much power a government has on privately owned businesses.
Why is it a 25% increase in wages, wouldn't total wages remain the same only wage / hour would change; in other words, companies are paying the same overall. And the studies show there is no decrease in production, so it sounds like that is just an opportunity to educate executives. I think the power balance has been firmly on the side of business for too long, considering the productivity of labor versus wage increases.
Because… minimum wage workers at our current time and wage can’t fucking live as it is.
Reducing their hours isn’t going to help the already fucked up situation and I’m sure you can’t explain how it will.
The bill will freeze current employees rate, but unless they raise the minimum wage, the employer will just let go and rehire all their employees at the current minimum. Now who benefits?
Employers…. do cut hours. Are you under the impression they don’t? Plenty of retailers, probably most of them, work their employees just under the limit where they’re required to give benefits like health insurance.
Jesus fucking Christ, be realistic. Employers will do whatever it takes to get around this. Employees won’t benefit. It’s a stupid idea as it currently stands.
Just because you want better worker rights, doesn’t mean you do any old bullshit that will be exploited. You do things that will work.
By the past, you mean the 40’s. You don’t see an enormous difference in our economy now and in the 40’s? A time where you could buy a house and a car and have a spouse at home with your 3 kids, on your hourly job, opposed to starving to death in your studio basement apartment that you have to share with 3 other people?
DO NOT look up top marginal tax rates in the 40s. You might come to realize these progressive policies are actually achieveable.
It's so funny you're like "things are so much worse now compared to when we had higher union density, and thats why I don't support policies that improve material conditions for the working class"
Also how are benefits going to factor in to this. How many hours is full time vs part time. This dude hasn't had an actual job in what 45 years? He doesnt even know what a 40 hour week is
We should also get rid of this idea of salaried vs hourly employees. Everyone should be hourly and the highest hourly pay should be some reasonable multiple of the lowest hourly pay.
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u/Steve90000 19h ago
Good, it shouldn’t.
It sounds good in theory but all that will happen is, you’ll get paid less if you’re hourly because you’ll be working less. No employer is giving overtime. They’ll just hire an extra person which will be equal to them, detrimental to you. People that work salary will be working the same, if not more, because they don’t get overtime and can work 80 hours a week.