His proposal would pare down the workweek over a four-year period. The 40-hour workweek has stood as the standard in the U.S. since it became enshrined in federal law in 1940.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/sVDYB

Some key excerpts:

Senator Bernie Sanders this week unveiled legislation to reduce the standard workweek in the United States from 40 hours to 32, without a reduction in pay

The law, if passed, would pare down the workweek over a four-year period, lowering the threshold at which workers would be eligible to receive overtime pay.

Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, said at the hearing such a reduction would hurt employers, ship jobs overseas and cause dramatic spikes in consumer prices.

Mr. Sanders is far from the first to propose the idea, which has been floated by Richard Nixon, pitched by autoworkers and experimented with by companies ranging from Shake Shack to Kickstarter and Unilever’s New Zealand unit.

Representative Mark Takano, Democrat of California, introduced the 32-Hour Workweek Act in the House in 2021, and has reintroduced it as a companion bill to the one sponsored by Mr. Sanders in the Senate.

In proposing the legislation, Mr. Sanders cited a trial conducted by 61 companies in Britain in 2022, in which most of the companies that went down to a four-day workweek saw that revenues and productivity remained steady, while attrition dropped significantly. The study was conducted by a nonprofit, 4 Day Week Global, with researchers at Cambridge University, Boston College and a think tank, Autonomy.

  • underisk@lemmy.ml
    5·
    8 months ago

    maybe he could have proposed this when there was actually any chance of it passing, instead of waiting to deploy it as election fodder. who am I kidding, there was never any chance of it passing.

    • katy ✨
      9·
      8 months ago

      if people stopped crying about how they weren’t going to vote every four years just because they didn’t get 100% of what they wanted because they’re not the only people who live in the country and actually kept voting then there could be a bigger majority than 50 and you could pass it.

      • underisk@lemmy.ml
        4·
        8 months ago

        The two most recently elected democrat presidents were both put in office on the backs of record voter turnout. One of them even had a congressional majority.

        • katy ✨
          7·
          8 months ago

          the last president to have a supermajority in congress was president obama and that lasted for about 60 days and because of it we got the biggest overhaul to the american healthcare system in years which has benefitted millions.

          • underisk@lemmy.ml
            2·
            8 months ago

            the biggest overhaul being an extremely watered down republican bill that no republicans voted for.

            • katy ✨
              8·
              8 months ago

              you think republicans would have voted for a healthcare bill that was proposed by a black president?

              and that bill is one of the most popular pieces of legislation that has helped millions afford healthcare and medicine when they couldn’t before

              • underisk@lemmy.ml
                1·
                8 months ago

                i don’t think they would have voted for any bill proposed by a black president, so why start with their garbage bill as a basis to negotiate (with themselves) from?

                if nothing can be legislatively accomplished without handing the president a supermajority then why should I have any concern about the possibility of another republican president? why is it that republicans seem to have no issue achieving their policy goals without one?

                • katy ✨
                  1·
                  8 months ago

                  because it wasn’t a garbage bill; it was a great bill that continues to help millions of people

                  if nothing can be legislatively accomplished without handing the president a supermajority

                  nothing happening without 2/3rds of a majority is why republicans haven’t been able to pass don’t say gay bills and ban abortion nationally…

                  • underisk@lemmy.ml
                    1·
                    8 months ago

                    they got their wall, though, and it wasn’t based on some democrat written border bill, though the dems have been more than happy to keep building it for them and even give them more concessions on border policy. they killed roe v. wade and didn’t need congressional approval for that, either. the ACA certainly helped plently of people, the private insurance industry among them. other countries manage to have universal healthcare without all this bullshit so why is it apparently impossible to do that here?

                    if you’d like an example of the kind of power the president can wield without support of congress, look no further than Biden’s unflinching support and aid for Israel in the face of the genocide in Gaza. or his circumvention of environmental protections to pave the way for trump’s wall.