As part of his Labor Day message to workers in the United States, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday re-upped his call for the establishment of a 20% cut to the workweek with no loss in pay—an idea he said is “not radical” given the enormous productivity gains over recent decades that have resulted in massive profits for corporations but scraps for employees and the working class.
“It’s time for a 32-hour workweek with no loss in pay,” Sanders wrote in a Guardian op-ed as he cited a 480% increase in worker productivity since the 40-hour workweek was first established in 1940.
“It’s time,” he continued, “that working families were able to take advantage of the increased productivity that new technologies provide so that they can enjoy more leisure time, family time, educational and cultural opportunities—and less stress.”
Allow them to allocate some of the savings towards employee salaries? Why would they do that when they could pocket the difference like they have been doing to all other cost savings and productivity boosts?
How are the employers going to pay for the additional employees to work those 8 hours, while paying the existing employees the same salary for working 8 less hours?
The money has to come from somewhere.
P.s. Not all employers have CEOs making millions in bonuses. Nearly half of employees in the US work for small businesses , including single person businesses.
Maybe this is stupid question but…single person business just mean it’s one person doing everything right? In those cases, how would changing the standard full time to 32 hours affect them in any way?
They wouldn’t be changing their own salary or have to change anyone else’s salary unless I’m missing something
ETA: small business just means less than 500 employees, I’m sure a good number of them could still afford it. And an easy (and admittedly imperfect) solution could be just adding an exception for small businesses.
I’m not an economist but I bet that the answer is going to be similar to how employers now pay for the additional employees to work ever since work weeks got made to be 40 hours and not 60 or whatever back during the 1800s.
40 hours a week isn’t some magic number.