In a hearing on Thursday before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) highlighted the benefits of a new bill titled the “Thirty-Two Hour Work Week Act,” which he hopes will improve quality of life for Americans who have, for too long, found themselves in a rut of working more and receiving less. And while a four-day workweek sounds like a relief that anyone could appreciate, Sanders is still coming against opposition.
“It’s time that working families— not just CEOs and wealthy shareholders — are able to benefit from increased productivity so that they can enjoy more leisure time, family time, education and cultural opportunities, and less stress,” a fact sheet on the bill highlights, breaking down that "The Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act" would:
- Reduce the standard workweek from 40 to 32 hours over four years by lowering the maximum hours threshold for overtime compensation for non-exempt employees.
- Require overtime pay at time and a half for workdays longer than eight hours, and overtime pay at double a worker’s regular pay for workdays longer than 12 hours.
- Protect workers’ pay and benefits to ensure that a reduction in the workweek does not cause a loss in pay.
Per reporting from NBC News, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La) spoke against Sanders' bill during the hearing, saying, “We have a balance. We don’t have people as they do in China working 80 hours a week, but we have that balance — this disrupts that balance. And we won’t maintain the status of being the world’s wealthiest nation if we kneecap the American economy with something which purports to be good for the American worker but indeed will lead to offshoring of jobs seeking for a lower-cost labor force.”
So far, Sanders' bill has the support of two other lawmakers, California Democrats Sen. Laphonza Butler and Rep. Mark Takano, but will need to get a thumbs-up from the Republican-controlled House as well as a filibuster-proof 60 vote approval in the Senate before it makes its way to Biden's desk.
"It will never get through Congress — not in my lifetime," Tracy Roof, a professor of political science at the University of Richmond who focuses on labor issues, told ABC News. "Maybe it will happen in my children's lifetimes."
