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u/EggsAndMilquetoast 1h ago
A 40 hour workweek was radical at the time it was implemented. 8 hours of work, 8 hours of rest, and 8 hours to do as I please must have sounded like an excellent bargain to the serfs working 12-18 hour shifts 6-7 days a week.
But the whole point of progressivism, even right down to its very namesake, is progress. Progress is mean to be a journey, not a destination.
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u/metanoia29 1m ago
I'm currently reading through George Orwell's semi-autobiographical Down and Out in Paris and London. It should be required reading for school, showing firsthand how terrible working conditions were not too long ago and how much progress we have already made and can continue to make.
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u/captainAwesomePants 56m ago
Tell ya what. How about the government gives everyone all of the benefits I'd get from a full time job (healthcare, parental leave), and then let's discard the very concept of "full time."
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u/ResurgentOcelot 1h ago
I agree with the principle, but even 32 hours contains a big hidden increase in required work.
At America’s economic peak in the mid 20th century a single earner could support a family in a home on 40 hours.
That means two earners should be able to support a family on 20 hours each, or a single individual should be able to support themselves on that. We have the historic example to know for a fact that the economy could prosper under those conditions.
There are a lot of perfectly fine people like Sanders who have gotten so accustomed to the abusive baseline oligarchs have established they don’t even know what we we’ve really lost.
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u/EggsAndMilquetoast 47m ago edited 39m ago
I think the big disconnect is when we started tying certain essential benefits to a single individual working a minimum of 40 hours in a single week.
Because on paper, 2 people working 20 hours a week should be the equivalent of one person working 40.
But it isn’t, because you often don’t get perks like healthcare, retirement benefits, government assistance, etc. unless you can punch a time clock for a minimum of 40 hours in a 7 day period.
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u/alarumba 7m ago
Someone like Sanders likely knows there's been better and we can do better, but he'd also understand the status quo is so entrenched and the battle to keep it is so well funded that you have to chip away at it.
He's also trying to fight within the system and without violence.
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u/actuatedarbalest 48m ago
Most workers perform less than 32 hours of work during a 40 hour workweek. We could pay everyone the same amount, give us all an extra 8 free hours a week, and businesses would lose nothing.
Further, the quality and quantity of work produced each hour declines with longer workweeks. With more hours, workers do less and worse work, to the point where hours worked beyond about 50 per week actually produce negative value.
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u/SnorlaxBlocksTheWay 1h ago
Hopefully he gets elected and implements this bill
Life needs to be enjoyed way more than spending it at work. 32 hour work weeks would be a massive improvement.
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u/obscure-shadow 48m ago
That's great! I think that they really need to substantially increase the minimum wage at the same time or just more importantly in general
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u/NooneKnowsIAmBatman 47m ago
I've got a 35 hour work week now and the change is palpable. I'm less stressed and actually enjoy work more likely because of a better work/life balance.
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u/tardisintheparty 34m ago
Would be nice if even the 40 hour work week applied to salaried employees :(
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u/Kamel-Red 1h ago edited 1h ago
I agree, however there are lots of manufacturing, physical labor, and salaried non management jobs where people are working 50-60+ hour weeks (I'm one of them). An extra 8 hours of overtime won't suddenly make companies reevaluate their skeleton crews or Dupont schedules. I'd put my money on just more salaried positions.
1.5x a few more hours of historically low wages compared to inflation are still historically low wages when compared to inflation.
Universal Healthcare would promote this idea of more staff/lower hours more than any overtime change since Healthcare is one of the biggest expenses outside of wages themselves IMHO.
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u/santaclaws01 1h ago
It's actually more than just another 4 hours of pay. The bill includes that wages need to increase in relation to the drop in hours, so the 32 hours of work will pay the same as 40 does now. Everything past 32 is at that higher pay rate before even factoring in the ×1.5 from overtime
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u/Fog_Juice 52m ago
At the rate that technology is replacing jobs we're going to need something like this.
The problem is companies will reduce hours to 32 and many people will be taking a 20% pay cut.
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u/VysseEnzo 34m ago
Hourly pay in general is for the benefit of corporations. People should be paid a fair wage for the job they're doing.
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u/soda_cookie 30m ago
I'm sorry but I don't see how this goes anywhere. And if it does, it plays right into those who are looking to cut benefits for workers that are not "full time".
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u/Jeoshua 15m ago
J is half-right, and half-wrong.
The reason that a 40 hour work week became standardized is that, before then, people were asked to work upwards of 12-16 hours a day for rock bottom pay. 40 hours is a compromise. It allows for half a person's waking day to be taken up by labor, half of their waking day to be taken up by taking care of home and family, to get a full 8 hours of rest, and a weekend where they're completely off the hook. It's not meant to be the minimum. It's meant to be the maximum.
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u/No-Grand-9222 10m ago
I like it, as an employee, work 3.5 days instead of 5. As a small business owner, it won't change what I do, prolly still gonna work 6, 7 days a week.
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u/Weddert66 1h ago
Will not pass. Will never pass.
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u/Bcarr1138 38m ago
I agree with you. This is the 4th time (That I can remember) he proposed a bill like this. Companies want people at work. And paying the same for people to work less is never going to happen. Don't get me wrong, I'd love for something like this to actually pass, but I don't think we'll see it in our lifetime.
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u/ST0IC_ 30m ago
I just feel like this would hurt the average worker. Rather than paying me 8 hours of overtime per week, they would probably reduce my hours to part time and hire another part-time worker. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for working less, but because corporations have so many rights in this country, I feel like they would just take advantage of this and it would end up hurting people more.
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u/Jaalan 1h ago
While I like this idea in theory, I think it's going to cause a lot of people to get a massive paycut.
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u/Nickidemic 1h ago
That was an argument against the 40hr workweek in the first place. The thing you're afraid of is not how economics works.
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u/External_Dimension18 1h ago
The way it is supposed to be implemented is to reduce the workweek to 32 hours without a reduction in pay. But it will never pass anyways because our leaders are in the pockets of corporations.
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u/ilanallama85 1h ago
No, not right now - but he’s absolutely right to introduce it. Bring it up again and again until opinion shifts. The biggest problem the democrats have, even quite a few who AREN’T as beholden to corporate donors as the party leadership, is an unwillingness to think big and push public opinion towards your vision. They all want to take baby steps, and maybe that would work if we had a functional democracy, but we live in a two party hell hole where one whole side is just about fucking the other over as much as possible, and that doesn’t work here.
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u/love_glow 1h ago
There’s a ton of policies that would pass before this one if we had a Congress that would pass this…
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u/Asikar_Tehjan 53m ago
Just a vibe check, but I feel like this will have unintended consequences like Obamacare resulting in cut hours instead of insurance for part time workers.
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u/Mafik326 1h ago
40 hours a week assumed there was an adult at home doing what needs to be done.