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.”
I can only see this happening hand in hand with Medicare For All and the decoupling of healthcare from full time employment.
Service jobs, which are currently 80 percent of US employment, require the same amount of hours with actual people present, e.g. you can’t wait more tables, or answer more customer service calls, in 20% less time.
Removing the cost of healthcare from employers will allow them to allocate some of the savings towards employee salaries instead of healthcare insurance.
Nobody is saying you should have to do 40 hours work in 32 hours - rather the company hires more people to cover those hours.
This only works out in 9 to 5 jobs. There are ao many people out there that work very different hours. Many career fields that work a lot longer shifts wouod not be able to simply work less. It just doesn’t work that way.
Firefighters work 48 or 72 hours a week depending on the week. We can’t just say, ok cool. You work 32 hours a week now.