Bernie: Here’s a bill that will help literally everyone. People waste less of their lives at work, and productivity goes up massively for the corporate overlords. There is no downside here for anyone.
Everyone: Shut up, hippy.
Everyone: Shut up, hippy.
They've been telling him that since he was being arrested for protesting for civil rights and Joe Biden was fighting against school busing...
Their stupid bullshit hasn't stopped him yet
Bernie is still the only politician I have donated to but to be fair to Biden, bussing was met with violent protests and even black activists criticized it for weakening black communities. There were good reasons to be against that method without being against desegregation.
There were good reasons to be against that method without being against desegregation.
That's not a fact, it's an opinion.
One that Biden hasn't been able to rationalize to Dem voters for decades.
If you want to try, give it a shot. I legitimately believe you might do a better job at it than Biden.
But you're gonna have to do more than say there was "good reasons" besides people of Bidens age being completely ignorant of psychology.
School busing sped up integration by decades, and when kids grow up in multiracial environments it changes their ingroup determination to not just be "people who look like me".
We can only change that at a very young age, but it sticks with you for life. Even with busing, the effects were decades away.
If we didn't have busing, generations of people would have suffered.
So if you and Biden want to argue with that, you're going to have to put in a lot of effort to throw the last 30 years of psychology
It's not my opinion. It is the opinion of many black civil rights activists at the time. They argued that spreading out the kids would weaken the ties to the black community. They wanted to make black schools better rather than move kids. They argued that strengthening the black community would be the most effective way to pursue civil rights. Given that black children still get inferior education to whites and black communities are impoverished, they might have been right.
Lol.
You can't try to defend Biden...
So you make up hypothetical Black people and say they didn't want their kids to go to school with white kids?
Like, you just honestly tried to say it was the Black people being racist, and what's the implication?
That Biden knew that, lied about why he was against busing as a cover job?
Why not just stop replying instead of that shit you typed?
Black leaders were mixed on the practice. Activist Jesse Jackson, NAACP officials and U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm were among those who supported busing efforts and policies. But many Black nationalists argued that focus should instead be placed on strengthening schools in Black communities.
A February 1981 Gallup Poll found 60 percent of Black Americans were in favor of busing, while 30 percent were opposed to it. Among white people surveyed, 17 percent favored busing, and 78 percent were against it.
“It ain’t the bus, it’s us,’’ Jackson told The New York Times in 1981. ‘’Busing is absolutely a code word for desegregation. The forces that have historically been in charge of segregation are now being asked to be in charge of desegregation.’”
Has it been so long that you forgot which side eyounwere arguing?
Or do you legitimately think that backs up your opinion from almost a day ago?
Those are the "hypothetical" black people you were talking about. My point was always that there are legitimate reasons for not supporting busing.
Black supremacists...
So Biden wasnt against school desegregation because he agreed with white supremacists...
You think it was because he agreed with Black supremacists so it's fine.
Fucking ridiculous man, but if you can't just take the L this has definitely been worth a block., doesn't even matter at this point if you're trolling or legitimately incapable of understanding this shit.
Everyone: Shut up, hippy.
Don't listen to them, when they tell you that. As far as you know, might even be an astroturfer, trying to kill this in the crib.
If we citizens don't apply the pressure, nothing will happen.
And if your cynical about doing that, try it anyway, just as an experiment, to see what happens. Hell, even make a YouTube video about your experience doing so, for content.
Just say "Please let my representative know that I am in favor of the Bernie Sanders bill (Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act) for a 32 hour work week."
It's just a phone call. A 32 hour work week is worth a single phone call, right?
If we citizens don't apply the pressure, nothing will happen.
And if your cynical about doing that, try it anyway, just as an experiment, to see what happens. Hell, even make a YouTube video about your experience doing so, for content.
Just say "Please let my representative know that I am in favor of the Bernie Sanders bill (Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act) for a 32 hour work week."
It's just a phone call. A 32 hour work week is worth a single phone call, right?
"but more hours means more productivity %%"
I'm going to go with you forgot to add the /s to your comment.
The quotes provide the same meaning, basically that you are parodying the other side.
Quotes are usually reserved for actually quoting someone else (for example), and not making a statement about parodying the other side.
It's a pretty commonly used format on many parts of the internet, I think most people would interpret it that way, especially when everybody reading will see that what is being quoted is obviously untrue.
Well I guess I'm being nuanced here, but I don't think in this specific case that works out that way, considering what it's replying to.
In other words I would agree with your interpretation if the reply was parodying something I said directly. Otherwise it just seems something of a non sequitur.
Anyway, I get what you're trying to communicate towards me, I even agree that sometimes it is using the way you describe. I would just think that's done the minority of the time, and the majority of the time quotes are used to actually quote someone.
I felt like "/s" gives the "joke" away so I opted not to have it and have people actually think critically, especially since the statement is false.
Do you think the joke matched the comment it was replying to, which was about calling your house representative?
It's what a wealthy conservative business owner might say upon reading the first sentence of your comment, I think it fits.
It’s what a wealthy conservative business owner might say upon reading the first sentence of your comment, I think it fits.
Fair enough, and that's the answer I was looking for.
The majority of the comment was about contacting your house representative, but you're right, it could match the first sentence, I guess.
I kind of wished they would have quoted that first sentence as part of their reply with the joke, to save me some time in replying.
It's a cynical statement, lighten up
lighten up
Not a matter of lightening up, its a matter of trying to understand, as it seems like such a non sequitur.
Is it really so hard to believe that somebody would want to know why somebody replied to them in such a perceived strange and unrelated sort of way?
I think if it was intended to quote someone they would put who they were quoting. Otherwise there's not really a point.
Don't get me wrong, I love me some Futurama, but you're going to have to elaborate on this reply, and how it relates to my comment about contacting your house representative.
"I don't miss twice Campers."
I loved that line.
I was jokingly suggesting that unhappy workers are actually more productive but in reality I'm 100% with you.
Good idea. I have one little suggestion. Start the conversation with "Fuck Milton Friedman, and fuck your shares."
When COVID shut down my state (we were considered essential) we got furloughed one day a week. I was getting paid less so I was concerned, but it was honestly the best thing to happen to me. We started a garden, I got so much more done. I was healthier and happier.
Going back to 5 days a week, and longer commute (no more COVID clear freeways), I can absolutely feel my life shortening. I've gained a ton of weight, and increased stress significantly.
Upvote because I am Satan and I want you to suffer! /s
Yea, slaving away should be purely optional. If you love your job or you love money or you want to keep yourself distracted AND make money at the same time, by all means, knock yourself out and work 60 hour weeks.
It's a failure of the system if people have to work full time to scrape by with the very bare necessities and live in poverty, with all the nasties that come with it. America coined the term "working poor" (obligatory meme so we're on the same page)
Full Employment and Zero Protests go hand-in-hand.
As soon as unemployment figures start climbing (2008, 2014, 2016, COVID-2020) people hit the streets and cops start working a lot of extra overtime.
Imagine if people had a whole third weekend day to themselves. Imagine what they could spend their time doing that wasn't entirely predicated on enriching their bosses?
Imagine citizens actually learning how politics work and taking civic responsibilities for their own interests, instead of being chained to a job for every waking moment, and so zombified they don't even know what day of the week it is.
Happy people with stake in their own community. What a nightmare for the ownership class!
America coined the term “working poor” (obligatory meme so we’re on the same page)
It's also very American to just fucking ignore most of the world while saying things like that.
Are you saying that the term "working poor" was coined in another country?
Looking at the productivity gains, vs income gains since 1970, I would say that we need an 8 hour work week. We are producing well over 7 times as much stuff and economic value as we were in 1970
We should produce less stuff.
The amount of shit that companies produce and then just throw away because it's cheaper than donating, is staggering. There was some report a while back about Amazon doing this. Truckloads of stuff that doesn't sell, brand new, straight to the landfill. Stuff that could be donated to public schools or whatever. Fucking gross.
Not to mention all the food we produce, then waste.
A relative of mine used to work at a private school. The owner of the place wanted to throw an extra computer monitor in the trash. Literally just put it in the dumpster. That relative saved the monitor and now I am using it. Bought a DVI to HDMI cable and it works great. It's a 1680x1050 situash.
That is on third party sellers. They have to pay for warehouse space after a certain amount of time. If something isn't selling they can pay for Amazon to ship it back or destroy it. Most sellers don't actually have a warehouse themselves, they have their products shipped directly from the manufacturer to an Amazon warehouse.
Sure, but I honestly don't care much about the logistics or details of why. The underlying concept is the unnecessary waste. Whatever the reason it's happening, I disagree with it.
Agreed. The problem is a business like Amazon getting SO INCREDIBLY MASSIVE and yet completely neglecting the obvious problems with "Eh just destroy perfectly good stuff" being the easiest, most convenient option.
Heck, they're so evil I'm surprised they don't just have a ToS that says "We sell it ourselves if you don't wanna store it and don't want it returned."
But nah, filling landfills with wrecked computers, batteries, and plastics is so much more convenient this quarter /s.
They (amazon) need to be destroyed. We don't want to store them here anymore.
Nonono don't do it!!
Just look how it went in Germany, they went from 40 to 35 and then last year they overtook Japan as the 3rd largest economy in the world.
But if they had kept 40 hour work week, they might have done that a year earlier.
I tell you 32 hour work week will be an absolute disaster, marriages will break because people will have time to spend together. This is why the christian right will oppose this tooth and nail, and you should too.
/s
The drones might have time to think and get ideas above their station. Next thing you know, they'll start objecting to being maximally exploited at every turn! Letting them off the leash, even a little, will have disastrous effects for their owners, I tell you!
Dogs and cats, living together! Mass heysteria!
Hyuck, hyuck, I get this refernce, ya fucking nerd!
I agree with the sentiment. But the case with Germany and Japan wasn't so much Germany overtaking but rather Japan sloping down (Japan's strict working hours/culture probably played a part in this though).
What I'm saying is that there are other factors than work hours that determine productivity. Job satisfaction is a major factor too.
I am in Germany, how do I get a 35 hour work week without working part time? Every contact I've ever had has said 40 hours, not including breaks, with an expectation of overtime going up to 50 hours (legal maximum) unpaid.
OK now I'm confused, because I was pretty sure Germany introduced 35 hour work week already in the 90's, just like Denmark reduced to 37.5 hours.
Here the 37.5 is actually the norm for full time work. I thought it was 35 in Germany, but I can't even find anything on the introduction of 35 hours in the 90's ???
But apparently the AVERAGE which is a completely different measure, is 34.2 in 2020.
I apologize if I misrepresented the situation in Germany.
Isn’t Germany the country where they’re burning wood to keep warm in the winter?
Absolutely, wood pellets and stoker furnaces are brilliant, as they work very well, and is a near CO2 neutral source of heat.
We do that too here in Denmark 7th richest country in the world, and I bet they also do in Norway and Switzerland, the 2nd and 3rd richest countries in the world.
We have both stoker furnace for central heating and a windowed stove in the living room for traditional firewood. The brilliance with the stove is that it has higher energy utilization than any other heat source. And it creates hygge in the living room in the long cold winter evenings.
Let's make a point that has nothing whatsoever to do with the original point so i can maintain my bullshit opinion.
I don’t see a path forward that doesn’t start with the US government making the change first. They are one of the only employers that don’t have market competition.
Some departments in the US government give you a paid time off day every week to use however you want. A lot of people would take every Friday off, or some would stash them for a longer vacation.
It's wild to me how internally the government offers the kind of benefits politicians should've pushed into law a long time ago. It really is "for Me, not for Thee".
Source: worked in one of those departments
I work in the Federal Government, and this isn't true. You have alternative work schedules (4/10s, 5/4/9, maxiflex, etc.) but you're still going to work 80 hours unless you take leave. You gain annual leave every pay period and the amount is dependent on how long your federal service has been. But when you start (1-3 years) you only get 4 hours per pay period.
Maybe you're seeing people who have long federal service (15 years) that gain 8 hours/pay period use their leave. That's their choice but they're still working 40 hours on paper regardless.
Literally everything US politicians and billionaires do is "rules for thee, but not for me". Even running for president.
Giving a benefit to government workers only requires a president to write an executive order.
Making a benefit into a law that affects all workers requires the House, Senate, President, and SCOTUS to all get on board.
Definitely true, but you never hear conservatives complaining about all the paid leave they get or the healthcare benefits they enjoy.
If some conservative president really wanted to walk the talk, they'd axe all those benefits for everyone.
They are walking the talk; they do not believe all people deserve equal treatment. Their worldview is inherently hierarchical.
wow, that's like two and a half months of vacation
Some departments in the US government give you a paid time off day every week to use however you want. A lot of people would take every Friday off, or some would stash them for a longer vacation.
Nope.
Source: worked in one of those departments
If you did, you had no idea what was going on.
An agency can't just "give" someone twice the leave accrual as the max. People were probably doing 4 days a week, 10 hours a day.
I had a US colleague that was ranting to me (a European) that people would still take calls just before having surgery and the moment the anastatics would have worn off work again. So I asked why not root for Bernie as he wants to do a more Scandinavian model (did not use the world socialism because reasons). Answer was no, would not be able to vote for him. Well........
Man, you're talking about a "radical", "extremist" politician who self-identifies as a (democratic) socialist.
Here in the US, most people from the poorest, least-educated states will simply never vote for a Democrat. That's not an exaggeration. The only reason Nikki Haley got so much attention despite never being viable is because with our 2-Party system she was considered the only non-Trump option for many people in these flyover states. Add in the outsized influence they have in the Senate and the undemocratic Electrical College... We're fucked.
I hear you my internet friend. Add to the fact that republicans want to keep their supporters dumb by further undermining education and it starts to look quite grim. Reforming the current 2 party system and electoral collage would be a common sense thing to do, but I fear this is only wishful thinking.
Large corps with infinite money will keep driving the direction of a country and the politicians are just the workforce for them to execute on it. Same goes for the foreign influence (read Putin's clerk boy Trump).
Now more paries does not mean better either. I mean I look at how things go in my country where we have over a dozen parties, ans now 4 of them trying to form a coalition, takes months. And unfortunately also here we are going further to the right and slowly embrace fascism.
Time for a new french style revolution I guess...
A good third of Americans are subhuman. They are proud to be stupid, abused, and evil.
Sometimes I imagine what America would be like if Bernie had enough votes to pass his bills.
I always vote for him when he's at the polls, since 2 decades ago. But the oligarchy of this nation will never allow him in position of power to implement these changes.
The reality of America is that our owners have no interest in making life better for the us, the common man, their only interest to bleed us as much as they can for their own selfish agenda. And the American people are collectively still too stupid to understand how it all works.
He also spoke earlier about Israel breaking the US law by disrupting Us Humanitarian Aid.
So that's two things the rest of the party will ignore him on?
Incomplete article by The Hill... Actually, the more I look at it this is a bad article. The only current bill introduced to the Congress is from last year by a different Representative. Bernie put out yesterday (the 13th) that he will be introducing a bill on Thursday the 14th (2024-03-14). It's only 0600 local time Washington, D.C. so it hasn't happened yet. And it would be very strange to he is introducing another act in the same session (118th).
Congress.gov has the sponsor as Rep. Takano, Mark [D-CA-39] (Introduced 03/01/2023).
Long title: Official Title as Introduced
To amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to reduce the standard workweek from 40 hours per week to 32 hours per week, and for other purposes.
I've noticed that I get the same amount of work done working 5 days a week as if I plan to only work 3/4 days and know I'll have some free time to enjoy life. My work is really project based so as long as it gets done no one cares.
My wife has also noticed that I'm a lot more stressed when I work 5 days a week and need pretty much the whole weekend to recover.
It's LONG overdue. Been saying this for years. Reducing the stress, increasing free time (and therefore things like family time, innovation time, etc.) would vastly overhaul our society. Productivity has risen for decades while wages remain stagnant and work-life balance, if anything, has worsened.
Productivity has risen for decades while wages remain stagnant and work-life balance, if anything, has worsened.
Wages are determined by balance of power.
work-life balance, if anything, has worsened.
I don't believe that(but that's just my gut feeling). I think its fair to say that demand of work-life balance has increased though.
Depends on the field but since the pandemic I see folks being"connected" to work in unimaginable ways where they are constantly answering emails or working from home to complete work in their evenings and weekends. Just logging into teams at anytime on a weekend I can see at least a few people online working. This wasn't the case pre pandemic.
Logging in on the weekend reinforces this norm. If people see you are online, it lessens any cognitive dissonance they have with the voice in the back of their head saying "this is some bullshit, this is my day off."
There was a time when if someone wanted to reach you after hours they had to call your house and leave a message on your answering machine. now you have "bosses" that get pissy if you take 5 minutes to respond to a text in the middle of the night.
Bernie is an example of what a progressive politician actually looks like.
American politicians (Republicans AND Democrats) have been moving steadily to the right for the last 40 years. So now, Democrats are where the Republicans were in the 1980s, boring corporatists and friends of banks, pharmaceutical and insurance companies.
And the Republicans have moved all the way into an insane asylum. They long for the "good old days" of company towns, run by 19th century robber barons and worry that the six corporations that control all our news are the "liberal news media."
This will never pass because we aren't seen as people with families and lives. We're seen as labor. Tools to keep the machine running and making money for corporations and its executives.
While a small tangent, I agree. I used to work 4x10 each week. Had done that for over a decade. Having a 3 day weekend really helped. When I got my current position I was moved to 5x8. I'm now endlessly tired, I can't get the weekend projects done, etc. Because you're just getting out of work, or getting ready to start work again, there's no break.
So if this ends up being 4x8, that would be great! Keep my hours and get my weekend back.
Though I assume corporate USA will find some way to muck it up, like the RTO bullshit.
I totally feel you! I did 12h shifts 4 days a week the absolute difference with 5x8 in crazy! I've never been so tired and that's including my night time stint doing that as well!
America should make Bernie their Emperor.
It would have been really nice to have had him as a president for a term. He'd be doing all the same things he's doing now, but with more authority. It would have been really interesting to watch mainstream media have a meltdown over everything he put forward.
I often dream of that alternative universe where Bernie became president instead of Biden...
This makes the election really simple later. Vote against whoever opposed or brought any friction to this bill whatsoever...which will be pretty much everyone.
“Step into my office.”
“Why…”
“BECAUSE YOU’RE FUCKING FIRED!”
Love the idea. But like free college and free healthcare I'm thinking it's just wishful thinking.
Amazing how so many people have been tricked into thinking these ideas are impossible. It’s really not crazy at all.
Oh I think it's possible, but considering our useless government and the obstructionists we all know, utterly impossible.
I think it's less useless government and more brainwashed citizens voting against their best interests. The useless government didn't elect itself after all.
…I think it’s possible, but…utterly impossible.
So you don’t think it’s possible? Have you tried to do something, and have come to that conclusion because no matter what you do, nothing seems to be changing?
I’m not focusing on you specifically, but why people say things are “impossible “ and then you ask what, if anything, they’ve done, people will say nothing (or won’t even vote!).
You don’t need to devote your life to something you want to change…an hour or two a week. Join an advocacy group. Go to a town hall meeting. Call your congressman. If time is something you really have ZERO of, then donate so that other people can spend more time working the change you want to see happen.
“It’s impossible to change anything, so I’m not even gonna try”. Again, not saying this is you. I hear this “argument” so friggin often. It’s like people try and subconsciously excuse their own inaction and apathy.
When I said "I think it's possible" it was within the context of being able to maintain production, and economic output. Productivity per worker has increased between 30-50% within the last 40 or so years.
When I said "utterly impossible" It was in regards to corporation control and influence in the government, as well as corporation sympathy with republicans. Considering they are obstructionists that will even deadlock mutually beneficial laws and acts, they would 100% kill something they actually oppose.
Even with most Americans in support of Roe vs Wade, that was shut down.
Coming from Germany where both of this is normal it’s pretty crazy to me that this is seen as some kind of socialist utopia.
Admittedly there are a lot of problems in that country as well but the root of them is imo not in free education & healthcare.
Scotland: "Are we just wishful thinking?"
America: "We told you and the rest of your kingdom to fuck off and now we're doing it the stupid way!"
No shit. I learned that Scotland has it. Okay we have a working. Cool
Needs support. Not just from congress but from voters contacting their elected representatives. Zoomers and Millenials can complain all they want about Congress being out of touch, but if you're over 18 Then fucking vote, not just in presidential elections but midterms and local/state elections. The country isn't going to change to fit what young dreamers want it to be if the only people who vote enmass are the older generations that want it to stay the same.
Hopelessness is about the worst thing for an individual psychologically.
Written in our universes language: "Bernie Sanders released a plan that will absolutely never happen and caused literally every single person that isn't a worker to laugh until they couldn't breathe anymore."
Written in our universes language: “Bernie Sanders released a plan that will absolutely never happen and caused literally every single person that isn’t a worker to laugh until they couldn’t breathe anymore.”
I'm failing to see the problem here - most people are "workers" and this will benefit them. Anyone not workers will..... presumably die from laughing? Win/Win - what's the issue?
The issue is the government is run by parasites non-workers and anyone who wants to even stand a chance needs funding from parasites non-workers.
If only they really would stop breathing, that would be nice lol
The issue is the government is run by parasites non-workers and anyone who wants to even stand a chance needs funding from parasites non-workers.
If only they really would stop breathing, that would be nice lol
Ending a statement with "lol" always reads like nervous laughter to me. You're fine. Well, you seem to have a head full of some interesting non-information backed conclusions, but that's not the end of the world. The posibility you might change your mind exists so I'm not going to freak out over that.
Relax. Everything is going to be ok.
It's a bit of nervous laughter sometimes, but it's more to show that it's just meant as light hearted and a bit of a joke. I don't really wish death on anyone.
As for the rest, it's exasperation. Venting about the state of things and how they appear. My own ignorance and all that jazz.
I wonder how fox news spins this? Maybe commies want more free stuff from money we dont have i suppose. or maybe they just ignore it
Guess how many hours rich people have to work?
0 hours
If it's a sliding scale of leisure to labor seeing time as a resource or currency, perhaps even negative hours!
It's offset to a ridiculous degree by all those who do the labor for them, and not only alleviate their burden to contribute to society, but elevate them to lives of seeking hedonism and pleasure.
The only real work they seem to do is seeking more power...but they probably hire people for that, too.
It's not going to go anywhere, but it's good that it's being introduced regardless.
At my job (standard 9–5 office) we're on a "hybrid" WFH schedule where we each get a single WFH day throughout the week. If this passed, it would be so easy to implement for us, we'd just "lose" our WFH day and get it transferred into a weekday off-day. The inside-joke among alot of people here is that nobody is working on their WFH day anyways (which I hate the joke, people are shooting themselves in the foot with it), but it would be an easy transition.
Sometimes being available and on call is the work. If you went in to the office that day you’re not going to be more productive than if you stayed home. But people should not make that joke at work.
i don't even like looking at or thinking about this stuff, it's too depressing getting my hopes up
Completely understand feeling this way but remember: this is how they win. If they can't steal or nullify your vote, they want to discourage you from going to the ballot box bcause you feel it's all rigged or pointless. It's not. Here in the US, we still have free and fair elections and the power still resides with us if we claim it...
I'm not opposed to a 4 day work week, but I am always curious as to what jobs the studies have looked at to conclude that people with 4 work days instead of 5 do the same amount or more work.
I'm a construction worker. Despite the jokes about standing around, we work hard. I do not think that a 4 day work week would produce better results than a 5 day in my field.
Just for reference I've been doing home rehabilitations for lower income families. There's not a ton of heavy lifting, there's just a lot to do.
Also, a lot of guys in my line of work also work side jobs on their days off.
You don't think there's a chance that working 4 days instead of 5 reduces the physical toll to keep you going longer and working better? Wouldn't working 4 days a week reduce your stress, allow you to recover from all that heavy lifting you mentioned, and improve your physical and mental health on the long-run?
Besides, as I understand it, if your company still wants you to work 5 days, you would still have the option. This bill would require them to pay you overtime for that extra day.
I specifically mentioned not much heavy lifting. The most taxing work I've had to do in the past few months was yesterday, lifting a solid core exterior for into place. And the entire second half the day was recovery while I finger painted with wood putty on all the doors and trim.
Regardless of my personal work situation, I can't deny that there would be mental and health benefits for shorter work weeks. I just really don't think that more work would get done in less time, which is what a lot of studies on "office" work seem to say.
For your line of work, maybe not. But who cares? They can hire more employees or pay them overtime.
We aren't machines. What's the point of life if all we ever do is work? Are we working to live, or living to work? A 32 hour work week makes it a 4/3 day split instead of a 5/2 day split. Seems a lot more balanced if you ask me.
They can hire more employees
I'm much in favor of this, but it requires the regulated overhead of an employee to be reduced.
Instead of employer insurance, public health service.
Unemployment insurance should be reworked, because that also penalizes per-employee (extremely low wage caps, that start from fresh per person).
Probably various other taxes similar to unemployment insurance.
Generally speaking, there should be no difference to hire an employee for 12 hours versus 32 versus 40 hours. Currently a lot of positions get their hours capped to avoid incurring the overhead of a 'full time' employee.
Yeah, this construction worker guy doesn't get it. There were plenty of people who said a 40-hour work week was not a good idea. People were used to working 6 or 6.5 days per week.
As a construction worker, it shouldn't matter to you how quickly the work gets done. Why do you care? If you're doing it for yourself, then work as much as you want. This limitation is just on how many hours you work before overtime pay.
Ultimately speaking, it's not really about that anyways. It's about shrinking the ever growing wage gap.
The productivity angle is interesting but just a justification that even the capital has to either agree with or admit it's about control, not efficiency.
My base comment was more about the 32 hour work week studies which usually coincide with bills of this nature, showing improved productivity and so the lobbyists overlords had nothing to worry about from the change.
As much as I enjoy my work, making end meet isn't ever a simple task.
I think something people are missing when thinking less work overall will happen is that this gives opportunities for new job openings for at least part time (if not just more full time position) people to fill in the gaps, or the people already working will just get paid much better. Both are wins imo
It looks like it's about overtime - people getting paid more when they work more than 32 hours.
I like this as a concept, and since it has a low likelihood of passing, let a lone being bought up for a vote, i feel comfortable casting this critique:
We need a long-term solution that addresses the power imbalance of employer-employee relations, and all this does is places a temporary and incremental improvement on something that will inevitably be undermined.
I have a similar critique on minimum wage laws - while undeniably better for working class people, they fail to address the broader inequity and end up needing to be updated every couple years (which never happens).
This is one of those moments where I really wish Bernie would put a finer point on it - this is an issue driven by capital. The federal government wouldn't need to spell out labor laws if they could strengthen the working-class's position against capital more broadly. I would almost rather him propose a bill that strengthens union laws and the NLRB, since those are currently under attack.
I'd like to think this actually gets some consideration though. Totally agree with your points, but let's be honest: Once you start calling it like it is and openly blaming Capital, your career in American politics is dust.
Somehow Bernie has managed to have quite a career, in spite of constant opposition by the status quo machine.
I honestly wonder why there aren't incremental versions of this. Like why not advertise a 38 hour work week where Fridays are 6 hours long? Or 35 where every day starts or ends an hour early?
Fisher-Price offers half day Fridays in the summer and that's a big part of their pitch for why to work there. They are the only company I've ever heard of with anything like it and it's not even year-round. But it makes a lot of sense.
My current job does this: I work 7-430 M-Th, and then 7-12 on Friday. It's pretty cool, and the extra hour those 4 days feels negligible, with an early start to the weekend. Unlike Fisher-Price, though, mine is year round.
However, I've worked jobs that advertise as "full-time, 32-35 hrs/week," and as the system is currently set up, it's sucks big time. Like, I worked as a chef 32-hours a week and (shockingly) got benefits like health insurance and stuff. But when I went to buy a house, the mortgage company told me I either needed another 8 hours per week from my current job, or to find another that would give me at least 40 hours/wk. While the company considered me full-time, the mortgage company did not.
Worked another job for a school cafeteria as a cook, same thing, 30-35 hours per week, but the only benefits they offered were health insurance (which was expensive), and the ability to follow the school calendar. So, we'd get all the half-days and vacation days like the kids did, which was cool, but we didn't get paid for it. So if 2 days per week were an early dismissal, I'd lose about 5+ hours of pay. Any break that was 3-days or more, we had to file for unemployment, which is an absolute joke and headache in my state. The only time I tried before I quit that job, the forms required me to give:
My entire employment history for the last 5 years, including exact start and end dates,
The hours I worked per week at each job,
Direct supervisor's name and contact information, and
Reason for leaving each and every job, plus several other things I was literally flipping through my phone trying to find email/photos/etc of,
Random questions like why was I seeking unemployment, why was I filling out the form, why why why
Took me over 3 hours to put it all in, just for the system to acknowledge my bank existed, and then refuse to accept the routing number, trying to force me to get one of those temp debit cards mailed to me (that I think they charge fees on). I was so frustrated towards the end of it all I started putting "Why do I FUCKING need to tell you about a job from 6 years ago when I'm requesting unemployment for THIS FUCKING MONTH" in the comment sections.
Basically, until the laws/regulations regarding worker's rights are standardized and written in a way where workers can actually benefit from shorter work weeks, or actually enjoy the incentives that shorter days and such provide, then these corporations will continue to find these loopholes to fuck us over. It's why I'm trying to go into business for myself in the next few years: set my hours, choose my workload, and not deal with this corporate bullshit anymore.
Sorry, that turned into a rant, and I do want shorter work weeks, but unless the law is written extremely well, companies will just continue these bullshit antics.
There's a bunch of smaller tech companies and ad agencies that do half day Fridays during Summer. (They call it Summer hours and it lasts from Memorial Day to Labor day.) A bunch of my friends work for companies that do this. As someone who works for a small IT company that does not, I am massively jealous every summer.
Can someone explain that "with no loss in pay"?
It's not like there is a magical way to know what you'd get paid if you worked a 40hr week, when everybody works 32hr week, and punish your employer if it's less.
It's not like wages are determined by the government either.
"(3) With respect to any employee described in paragraph (2) who in any workweek is brought within the purview of this subsection by the amendments made to this Act by the Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act, the employer of such employee may not reduce the total workweek compensation rate, including the regular rate at which the employee is employed, or any other employee benefit due to the employee being brought within the purview of this subsection by such amendments."
And yes, wages can definitely be determined by the government; see the Federal minimum-wage limit. Salary would remain the same; your hourly-wage would be increased by 1.25x.
Does the bill also include at least a 1.25x minimum wage increase to enforce this as well?
That would be logical, but still would affect only people earning close to minimum wage.
It would increase pay for some, and leave others without their jobs. Same as any other minimum wage increase.
Yes, but combined with shorter work week, which may cause some increase in the amount jobs of exactly for people earning close to minimum wage, the result may be less noticeable.
If a shorter work week results in there being more jobs, that conflicts with the notion we’d get just as much done in 32 hours as in 40.
I guess you’re saying this effect is more likely in non-creative professions that simply can’t be compressed, which also happen to be the most likely to be minimum wage?
Then what you’ve accomplished is cutting the hours of higher earners from 40 to 32, and increasing the hours of minimum wage earners from 40 to 64.
Salary would remain the same
For somebody hired before the law is enacted.
EDIT: And minimum wage, if it's going to be increased, will mostly affect people earning the minimum wage. Obviously.
It means that full time is 32 hours per week.
I havent read the bull so I don't know what protections it has for hourly or salary employees.
There can possibly be none.
And most things get done in the first 4-6 hours of every day, if it's not a dumb job at McDonalds. So I'm not sure there'll be need to hire many more people.
Is there any reason that it couldn't use existing employees rate of pay as a benchmark and literally force them to pay accordingly while reducing hours? It's not like that wage data is secret its reported to the government as part of withholding. Ultimately a business would have to hire to meet needs or commit to paying overtime to all its 40 hour workers.
Yes there is at least one reason: jobs that aren’t yet defined wouldn’t exist in the Big Table of Centrally-Controlled Prices. So we either don’t apply it to those, or we prevent anyone from creating any new kind of employment arrangement without first getting government approval.
This kind of thing precedes starvation and mass murder. This is very dangerous.
Nobody suggested that a each business would have a fixed price for labor nor that new employers would have to apply to the government for a defined wage. Just that existing businesses and positions would be subject to such regulations and that businesses couldn't pay new workers less than existing.
Prices for labor are inelastic. If you have 1M people in an industry nationwide making 50k for 50 weeks x 40 hours. If you scale down year by year your workers down from 40 -> 32 ultimately you end up with 1.25M workers earning 50k plus inflation if the size of the market served remains the same. In actuality labor effects price and price effects quantity demanded so you actually end up with 50k+inflation 1.10M or some such.
In this environment you could perfectly legally start up a new outfit paying 40k x 32 hours. However the well paying outfits need new workers at 50k to keep rolling and are aggressively hiring so the logical conclusion is that folks paying 40 wont be able to meaningfully hire. Even if you do manage to get SOME useful hires you will live in fear of them jumping ship at any moment for an instant life changing raise which will happen constantly until your business closes and you cry on social media that the government destroyed your business.
Actual up and comers will start out paying similar wages as the rest of the market and the price for labor is stuck at the new level.
OK, then hiring new people they'll pay less, and after everybody's been rotated - for everybody.
Which is logical, I don't get why he adds that phrase everywhere.
Since we are playing I run the world can't I just say you can't offer less than the average you are already paying for new people? If you don't like it you can always close up shop and cede the market to someone else. Also wages are normally sticky. A large portion of your workforce works for someone else how will you ever attract them to work for you with smaller wages?
can’t I just say you can’t offer less than the average you are already paying for new people? If you don’t like it you can always close up shop and cede the market to someone else
And some employers will close up shop, causing inflation, then some wages will be raised to correct for inflation and some won't. Those of people working in the same area as hit by such a law likely won't, because there'll be more people qualified and fewer jobs.
I'd wish Bernie limited this to changing the normal work week to 32hrs, and none of the other smartassery with unpredictable results.
The core idea is good.
Employers closing up shop doesn't cause inflation. Neither houses nor groceries get more expensive because a fast food joint closed. Marginal businesses who make poor use of cheap labor such that they can't even make much while paying people so little they get welfare are the assholes going down.
Good for Bernie Sanders.
That would be a great thing but I also had another idea, why can't a test be devised and codified into law, to tie minimum wage to. I know the main reasons why, obstructionist capitalists, but a test to find a living wage, average rent costs tied with other bill expenses and grocery costs. The companies raising costs feel free but the minimum wage will rise. Could something like this work? Tie wages and service/goods costs together to incentivize either livable/thrivable wages or lower costs. either way we need one of those two things, more buying power, or... more buying power.
Something to stop the decages long stagnation of worker compensation.
Of course that could work. That’s why it won’t even be considered in the current political climate.
Of course, I do enjoy the fantasy, especially on the precipice of an election that decides my right of existence.
The walls were to keep us in, not the other way around, after all.
Well not only do you deserve to exist, but I am glad you exist.
How miserable must some peoples’ lives & minds be that they need to make Kyattophobia a significant part of their political concerns and/or personality?
In contrast, I find that being Kyattophilic enhances the life and the mind!
kyattophilic?
Well not only do you deserve to exist, but I am glad you exist.
thank you ^-^
As in hydrophilic vs hydrophobic.
I was essentially just trying to vomit positivity in your general direction, lol.
Oh I forgot I was @Kyatto here >.>
That was silly of me, Thanks Zink <3
😆
This sounds awesome. Here's what I wanna know though:
What stops your boss from then saying "You better stop at 31.95 hours or you're in trouble." Because they don't wanna pay overtime? They already do this in a lot of jobs.
So, you'd need additional pay to compensate for less hours, but now you have a two-pronged battle because that just sounds way too lovely.
And I'm guessing a lot of the "exempt" office workers that grind themselves into dust the hardest won't be affected?
I mean hey, I'd rather it just passes and we see what happens, and keep fixing it as it goes, at least it's something! But the hardest part is blocking your bosses from weaseling around laws and screwing you anyway.
having your boss say “stop” at 32 hours is the intent of the bill.
Correct. But that's the issue right now. People look at the equation all wrong and say "I just wish I could get more hours!" instead of fighting for reasonable pay. If hours go down but pay doesn't go up to compensate, a ton of people will actually get hit really hard by this and their lives will get worse instead of better.
Companies can use that tired, stupid line that "Washington says you don't have the eagle-screeching-freedom-right to WORK! How dare they!" and people will buy it.
We don't want that, because it'll turn workers against worker-friendly politics, and that would be a Very Bad Thing, given the level of job-simp-indoctrination we're already combating! :O
This will never be allowed to happen.
Nice, now you can go from two jobs to three in order to afford a house!
Fuck the DNC.
So let's say I run a business and I employ workers at $1000/wk and they work 5 8 hour days. Maybe I have a 10% profit margin on them and I make $1100 for each employee.
If this law passes and I need to pay my employees $1000/wk for 4 days... that means suddenly I'm losing money. Where would that extra money come from? I'd probably end up raising my prices. I'm not necessarily against this plan, I just want to understand what the proposals are to fill this gap. If I work 4 days a week but prices all go up by 20%, I'm not sure that's a good outcome.
At some point, you lose productivity and reduced work weeks have shown increases in productivity can happen.
So, basically the employees would have to cram their same workload into 20% less time for this to work. (without changing prices)
Effectively yes, however numerous studies have shown that not all work hours are actually productive. The idea is that you remove some of those unproductive hours, which makes employees happier, and productivity, employee satisfaction and retention increases naturally as a result.
The large scale trial of a shortened work week in the UK resulted in great success and 92% of companies decided to keep the new hours after the trial ended, with 30% already having committed to making it permanent.
The benefits to the employees is fairly obvious, but the employer gains by having less retraining, employees are more focused and less mentally exhausted, employees require less time off. The end result is that companies did in fact see increased productivity during the trial, and most companies reported increased YoY revenue growth.
Seems counter intuitive, but 61 companies tried it, and most liked it!
Anecdotal but i know i am way more productive when there has been or will be a holiday, for two weeks.
I also noticed i feel a lot less drained working 38 hour jobs than 40 hour job, and generally do less at the 40 hour job.
So i find it easy to believe this adds up. For an employer it's hard to see this of course, they just see the raw output of the one thing they've been doing.
You'd have to get rid of the least productive workload. We have work in abundance, but well paying jobs are kept tight by a minority of the population. By reducing the workweek, the medium term natural reaction of the market is getting rid of the least productive jobs, and create job opportunities that pay better all across the board to fulfill the more productive workloads that have just been left vacant, ultimately making each hour of work more productive.
This isn't a painless process: there are businesses that are going to have to rethink their finances and a few will have to shut down. But businesses aren't an end by themselves - they're useful as long as they serve to allow people to earn a living: if we're going to oppose a restructuration of the economy that benefits the vast majority of the people because businesses will suffer, we've got our priorities backwards.
I'm not necessarily opposed to this... I just expected the plan to address how the productivity gap will be filled. Looks like the plan is: "People will just work harder in the 32 hours to make up for it".
My pessimism says that if this passes, businesses will just increase their prices to cover the extra cost per hour of employee time.
I can see how this appears burdensome to some jobs/areas of employment where productivity is directly related to output such as mechanics, plumbers, veteinarians, or maybe even like food service. It's probably not an issue with many fields where productivity is achieved more through creativity/ideas/or generating more efficient workflows to save time. I suppose some fields are already at their "maximum efficiency" and will probably just need to raise prices to accommodate.
I'm actually cool with the prices of those sorts of things increasing if I get three day weekends. For one, I'll have more time to do them myself if I desire, offsetting the cost entirely. Large corporations will hopefully be forced to just eat the loss; sure, companies have no problem kicking up the prices of their services.... but I think they'll find that we won't be quite as dependant on eating out and buying garbage once we have more time to live our lives. Maybe people can learn to maintain their own cars as a swift "FU" to car manufacturers proce gouging and refusing to produce affordable automobiles for the masses.
Just throwing out some thoughts!
Large corporations will hopefully be forced to just eat the loss;
They will just increase prices and pass the expense on to the consumer.
Literally addressed this in my original comment. The key is not purchasing their products, which will be enabled by us having more time to do our own stuff. But obviously, it won't apply to things we can't replace or reduce the consumption of (gains, electricity, water)
But yeah, if Americans (for example) want to keep eating terrible, unhealthy food at exuberant expense from McDonald's because they can't be bothered to figure French fries out themselves, why wouldn't McDonald's raise their prices? Haha
which will be enabled by us having more time to do our own stuff
You may be underestimating the laziness of the average consumer. I don't think people are going to use 1 extra day a week to start refining their own gas, making their own clothes or raising their own cattle.
This is a bad faith response. Of course nobody is going to refine their own gas, since it takes a multi-billion dollar refinery to refine gas. People can definitely do the two things I specifically mentioned, as well as a myriad of other things that I did not mention, which will take load off of the economy, and price gouging power away from the specific industries I mentioned.
And if not, then they can keep paying for overpriced, unhealthy food that they will continue to be price gouged on (which I also already said).
I didn't explain that very well, but my thinking was that industries such as gas where there is no 'DIY' alternative will be immune to these positive effects.
Makes sense. But traveling to the office one day less per week, one day less per week of daycare, and having one more full day per week to do things like food prep will also help cool demand for adjacent markets. Not an expert though, obviously!
True, but keep in mind this is less revenue for the daycare center, less revenue for the coffee shop around the corner from the office, etc. That money doesn't just go into a void.
when workers won the 40 hour week, the 8 hour day, there were basically no restrictions on the time workers could be required to work.
a 32 hour week is a 6 hour day.
This is weak.
I don't oppose this, but it should be done by employees themselves rather than further leaving this up to congress.
How? Maybe by electing people to some kinda group? Maybe a congress of people?
Strikes, refusing to work. Which yes, unfortunately not everyone has that luxury, which it could be argued something like a UBI(or negative income tax) could provide, or at least not as excessive housing costs.
Perhaps collectively gathering, discussing what would be good things, then kindly telling the boss they're going to hold a picket until good things get done.
But honestly, if good things come by law before that, I think it would be neat. Wouldn't want the boss to get scared by all the kindness, you know?
By choosing the job that is best for oneself. I work Uber by choice, and I work long hours by choice, and I’m happy about it.
You know Uber only pays you the way they do because the government had to step in.
Tell me you've never worked a day in your life without telling me.
That certainly isnt Bernie
You dont get something for nothing, either prices have to rise, or the government is propping up companies that are that ineffient that workers are only doing 32 hours in a 40 hour work week.
You should probably update your economic knowledge.
Study after study over the last 20-30 years has shown that productivity remains or increases when switching from 40 hrs to 32.
No no no, hours = productivity.
Monkey types on typewriter for more time, monkey write more code. All top quality. Best code.
It's not just software engineers out there though. I work in a factory and it absolutely works that way here. More hours = more output. If the fucking scumbags like musk and whoever the fuck owns trader joes actually wins this case in the supreme court and they remove all the protections workers have gained in the last 100 years you bet your ass the owner of this factory will IMMEDIATELY go to 7 days a week 12 hour shifts as they won't be required to pay overtime and they'll more than likely be able to drop wages as far as they can possibly get away with.
It's funny because this article points out a pipe dream for Americans, while simultaneously the supreme court is about to pull the rug out from under us and have us move in exactly the opposite direction... :(
And that would be under the government is propping up companies that are that ineffient.
If you mean that the common best practice of working 40 hrs/week is inefficient, then yes.
Governments aren't pushing for 40 hr work weeks, socialists and industrialists of the early 1900s were, and the rest is conservatism.
Cool, so you think that framers get as much done in 32 hours as 40?
I don't know if there's any studies made specifically on framers, but machinists and manufacturers have been reported to, and of course almost anyone in a knowledge job.
So you think that all jobs are more efficient if they just lower the hours?
I'm saying there's independently verified, peer reviewed, and repeated research that show that many jobs keep or increase their productivity.
So then you would need to dive into why that is true. I actually agree with you because I had a job like that when I was not self employed. And the reason I could be ineffient was because it was directly government funded. The only reason a machinest and manufacturing job can be ineffeicinet is because of government involvement.
If you'd approached the conversation honestly 2-3 replies ago, I'd be happy to provide sources.
Now you seem a boorish and rude troll, and you can go be that on someone else's time.
Yes
Cool, but you would be wrong.
Your math is wrong
Dude, you have not done a real physical day of work in your life, dont pretend like you even know what framers do.
You can’t even do a cartwheel because your butt is too big. And you pick your own bugers
I nailed it, you have zero experience. Until you understand what physical work is, I recommend you just stay out of it.
Many workers already only work 32 hours a week and fill a chair while bullshitting the rest of the time. Many people do that because they would burn out otherwise. Cut the hours by 25% and it's more reasonable to expect people to actually work. Right now even supervisors don't crack down on that behavior because it's just generally accepted that you can't push people that hard or productivity starts to fall. Imo 30 hours/week is the sweet spot for productivity and cutting down wasted dead time.
Most supervisors don't push that button because they don't want anyone to question how much work they do. Because it's the same as the rest of us. Or less.
The hardass bosses who do demand more typing and more hours simply don't possess self-awareness.
And that would be under the government is propping up companies that are that ineffient.
Don't know where you get that idea from. If you cut out the hours where employees sit around wasting time, you get the same productivity for less hours worked. There's no difference besides time saved. Government has nothing to do with it, as revenue is not affected.
The government creates a hedge of regulation protection for large businesses. Also the government directly gives money via contracts, between 20-25% of the GDP is government spending, and that is just on the federal level.
Pharmacist here. I definitely work the full 40 hours basically non stop and... It's awful. I don't think this is how humans are meant to live. If you have a job that absolutely requires the full 40 to be 100% effort, the rest of your life suffers. I believe the reason so many people are able to do 40+ hours is the downtime that's built into most jobs.
I did 30 hours as a pharmacist for years and it was AMAZING. Like the job was still hard, but it felt like I had a portion of my life that was hard. Now that I'm stuck back to 40 it feels like I have a hard life. I barely have energy to give to my 1 year old baby on days off because I am recovering from the day before. I do the best I can but man was I in a better place at 30 hours.
This is a different discussion, but I agree with you. I think the issue you are looking at is that the way the government manages the currency has created the issue where many people NEED to work 40 hours just to get by. The government has been devaluing our wages for generations and we are on the same side, I just think we all need to realize what the actual problem is.
Which is disproved by Germany. When you compare Germany to surrounding countries, the economy of workers that now only work 35 hours per week, has not declined by comparison to neighboring countries.
Other factors are way more significant, like wealth distribution, economic environment, and quality of public services. If you look to UK they are way worse off, because they have generally fucked up and used economic thinking similar to republicans.
Also look at Denmark, we have one of the least number of yearly work hours, yet we are among the highest paid in the world. With almost no natural resources to benefit from.
If you are unwilling to progress, there will be no progress.
So a roofer will be able to put on more roofs if they work less hours?
Yes! And the closer you get to zero the more we approach infinite roofs per hour, because that's the way it works with humans, you simply multiply and divide and add and subtract, it's really that easy, I wonder why people make it so complicated and add in completely unnecessary stuff like health and well being? /s
You can be snarky if you wish, but I am just pointing out the flaws in the idea that if you lower hours people will be as efficient.
What I'm saying is you can't just count the beans.
Fewer work hours are recouped in a number of ways, like less sick leave and higher efficiency, maybe not 100%, but experience seems to show that a pretty significant part is. So "as efficient" is not true.
Of course you can't do this indefinitely, but you can increase efficiency most places by going down from 40.
I think you can count the beans. You’ll have less injuries better quality work and a better product or service overall.
One workplace injury over the life span of a business would save all the costs of the lower hours / same pay
Edit: I work in a large organization. Someone hurt themselves. The payout was so large that the bosses realized they could pay for more than hundreds of dollars of safety equipment per worker per year for the entire organization and still save money if it avoided one accident.
I could agree with you if we are talking about 80 hours/ week , but 40 hour is totally doable and not really even many hours to work.
As far as efficiency goes, that is an issue with companies that are enable to be inefficient by government controls and influences.
Yes, many labor jobs would have large quality improvements if their workers worked less hours
You clearly do not have an economics degree, nor do you know what you are talking about
Bernie: Here’s a bill that will help literally everyone. People waste less of their lives at work, and productivity goes up massively for the corporate overlords. There is no downside here for anyone.
Everyone: Shut up, hippy.
They've been telling him that since he was being arrested for protesting for civil rights and Joe Biden was fighting against school busing...
Their stupid bullshit hasn't stopped him yet
Bernie is still the only politician I have donated to but to be fair to Biden, bussing was met with violent protests and even black activists criticized it for weakening black communities. There were good reasons to be against that method without being against desegregation.
That's not a fact, it's an opinion.
One that Biden hasn't been able to rationalize to Dem voters for decades.
If you want to try, give it a shot. I legitimately believe you might do a better job at it than Biden.
But you're gonna have to do more than say there was "good reasons" besides people of Bidens age being completely ignorant of psychology.
School busing sped up integration by decades, and when kids grow up in multiracial environments it changes their ingroup determination to not just be "people who look like me".
We can only change that at a very young age, but it sticks with you for life. Even with busing, the effects were decades away.
If we didn't have busing, generations of people would have suffered.
So if you and Biden want to argue with that, you're going to have to put in a lot of effort to throw the last 30 years of psychology
It's not my opinion. It is the opinion of many black civil rights activists at the time. They argued that spreading out the kids would weaken the ties to the black community. They wanted to make black schools better rather than move kids. They argued that strengthening the black community would be the most effective way to pursue civil rights. Given that black children still get inferior education to whites and black communities are impoverished, they might have been right.
Lol.
You can't try to defend Biden...
So you make up hypothetical Black people and say they didn't want their kids to go to school with white kids?
Like, you just honestly tried to say it was the Black people being racist, and what's the implication?
That Biden knew that, lied about why he was against busing as a cover job?
Why not just stop replying instead of that shit you typed?
https://www.history.com/news/desegregation-busing-schools
Has it been so long that you forgot which side eyounwere arguing?
Or do you legitimately think that backs up your opinion from almost a day ago?
Those are the "hypothetical" black people you were talking about. My point was always that there are legitimate reasons for not supporting busing.
Black supremacists...
So Biden wasnt against school desegregation because he agreed with white supremacists...
You think it was because he agreed with Black supremacists so it's fine.
Fucking ridiculous man, but if you can't just take the L this has definitely been worth a block., doesn't even matter at this point if you're trolling or legitimately incapable of understanding this shit.
Don't listen to them, when they tell you that. As far as you know, might even be an astroturfer, trying to kill this in the crib.
Call your House of Representative member and let them know that you want this bill to become law.
If we citizens don't apply the pressure, nothing will happen.
And if your cynical about doing that, try it anyway, just as an experiment, to see what happens. Hell, even make a YouTube video about your experience doing so, for content.
Just say "Please let my representative know that I am in favor of the Bernie Sanders bill (Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act) for a 32 hour work week."
It's just a phone call. A 32 hour work week is worth a single phone call, right?
We need this so fucking bad. As a species, not just America or the wealthy nations only. Everyone.
And this should just be a transitionary period down to a 24 or less hour work week. Fuck slaving away at shit jobs just to make billionaires.
Of course we do, so do the corporations, though they don't realize it. With happier workers you get more profits.
Call your House of Representative member and let them know that.
If we citizens don't apply the pressure, nothing will happen.
And if your cynical about doing that, try it anyway, just as an experiment, to see what happens. Hell, even make a YouTube video about your experience doing so, for content.
Just say "Please let my representative know that I am in favor of the Bernie Sanders bill (Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act) for a 32 hour work week."
It's just a phone call. A 32 hour work week is worth a single phone call, right?
"but more hours means more productivity %%"
I'm going to go with you forgot to add the /s to your comment.
The quotes provide the same meaning, basically that you are parodying the other side.
Quotes are usually reserved for actually quoting someone else (for example), and not making a statement about parodying the other side.
It's a pretty commonly used format on many parts of the internet, I think most people would interpret it that way, especially when everybody reading will see that what is being quoted is obviously untrue.
Well I guess I'm being nuanced here, but I don't think in this specific case that works out that way, considering what it's replying to.
In other words I would agree with your interpretation if the reply was parodying something I said directly. Otherwise it just seems something of a non sequitur.
Anyway, I get what you're trying to communicate towards me, I even agree that sometimes it is using the way you describe. I would just think that's done the minority of the time, and the majority of the time quotes are used to actually quote someone.
I felt like "/s" gives the "joke" away so I opted not to have it and have people actually think critically, especially since the statement is false.
Do you think the joke matched the comment it was replying to, which was about calling your house representative?
It's what a wealthy conservative business owner might say upon reading the first sentence of your comment, I think it fits.
Fair enough, and that's the answer I was looking for.
The majority of the comment was about contacting your house representative, but you're right, it could match the first sentence, I guess.
I kind of wished they would have quoted that first sentence as part of their reply with the joke, to save me some time in replying.
It's a cynical statement, lighten up
Not a matter of lightening up, its a matter of trying to understand, as it seems like such a non sequitur.
Is it really so hard to believe that somebody would want to know why somebody replied to them in such a perceived strange and unrelated sort of way?
I think if it was intended to quote someone they would put who they were quoting. Otherwise there's not really a point.
So you’ve never read fiction?
No, in all the decades I've been on this planet, I've never read one book of fiction of any type whatsoever.
/s
https://youtu.be/00npeUY_1Vg?si=rPbXUkUQjnLQb0ea
Don't get me wrong, I love me some Futurama, but you're going to have to elaborate on this reply, and how it relates to my comment about contacting your house representative.
I loved that line.
I was jokingly suggesting that unhappy workers are actually more productive but in reality I'm 100% with you.
Good idea. I have one little suggestion. Start the conversation with "Fuck Milton Friedman, and fuck your shares."
When COVID shut down my state (we were considered essential) we got furloughed one day a week. I was getting paid less so I was concerned, but it was honestly the best thing to happen to me. We started a garden, I got so much more done. I was healthier and happier.
Going back to 5 days a week, and longer commute (no more COVID clear freeways), I can absolutely feel my life shortening. I've gained a ton of weight, and increased stress significantly.
Upvote because I am Satan and I want you to suffer! /s
Yea, slaving away should be purely optional. If you love your job or you love money or you want to keep yourself distracted AND make money at the same time, by all means, knock yourself out and work 60 hour weeks.
It's a failure of the system if people have to work full time to scrape by with the very bare necessities and live in poverty, with all the nasties that come with it. America coined the term "working poor" (obligatory meme so we're on the same page)
Full Employment and Zero Protests go hand-in-hand.
As soon as unemployment figures start climbing (2008, 2014, 2016, COVID-2020) people hit the streets and cops start working a lot of extra overtime.
Imagine if people had a whole third weekend day to themselves. Imagine what they could spend their time doing that wasn't entirely predicated on enriching their bosses?
Imagine citizens actually learning how politics work and taking civic responsibilities for their own interests, instead of being chained to a job for every waking moment, and so zombified they don't even know what day of the week it is.
Happy people with stake in their own community. What a nightmare for the ownership class!
It's also very American to just fucking ignore most of the world while saying things like that.
Are you saying that the term "working poor" was coined in another country?
Looking at the productivity gains, vs income gains since 1970, I would say that we need an 8 hour work week. We are producing well over 7 times as much stuff and economic value as we were in 1970
We should produce less stuff.
The amount of shit that companies produce and then just throw away because it's cheaper than donating, is staggering. There was some report a while back about Amazon doing this. Truckloads of stuff that doesn't sell, brand new, straight to the landfill. Stuff that could be donated to public schools or whatever. Fucking gross.
Not to mention all the food we produce, then waste.
A relative of mine used to work at a private school. The owner of the place wanted to throw an extra computer monitor in the trash. Literally just put it in the dumpster. That relative saved the monitor and now I am using it. Bought a DVI to HDMI cable and it works great. It's a 1680x1050 situash.
That is on third party sellers. They have to pay for warehouse space after a certain amount of time. If something isn't selling they can pay for Amazon to ship it back or destroy it. Most sellers don't actually have a warehouse themselves, they have their products shipped directly from the manufacturer to an Amazon warehouse.
Sure, but I honestly don't care much about the logistics or details of why. The underlying concept is the unnecessary waste. Whatever the reason it's happening, I disagree with it.
Agreed. The problem is a business like Amazon getting SO INCREDIBLY MASSIVE and yet completely neglecting the obvious problems with "Eh just destroy perfectly good stuff" being the easiest, most convenient option.
Heck, they're so evil I'm surprised they don't just have a ToS that says "We sell it ourselves if you don't wanna store it and don't want it returned."
But nah, filling landfills with wrecked computers, batteries, and plastics is so much more convenient this quarter /s.
They (amazon) need to be destroyed. We don't want to store them here anymore.
Agreed. The waste factor is appalling
I hope you do correct for inflation.
I did.
that's because America shits billionaires.
Nonono don't do it!!
Just look how it went in Germany, they went from 40 to 35 and then last year they overtook Japan as the 3rd largest economy in the world.
But if they had kept 40 hour work week, they might have done that a year earlier.
I tell you 32 hour work week will be an absolute disaster, marriages will break because people will have time to spend together. This is why the christian right will oppose this tooth and nail, and you should too.
/s
The drones might have time to think and get ideas above their station. Next thing you know, they'll start objecting to being maximally exploited at every turn! Letting them off the leash, even a little, will have disastrous effects for their owners, I tell you!
Dogs and cats, living together! Mass heysteria!
Hyuck, hyuck, I get this refernce, ya fucking nerd!
I agree with the sentiment. But the case with Germany and Japan wasn't so much Germany overtaking but rather Japan sloping down (Japan's strict working hours/culture probably played a part in this though).
What I'm saying is that there are other factors than work hours that determine productivity. Job satisfaction is a major factor too.
I am in Germany, how do I get a 35 hour work week without working part time? Every contact I've ever had has said 40 hours, not including breaks, with an expectation of overtime going up to 50 hours (legal maximum) unpaid.
OK now I'm confused, because I was pretty sure Germany introduced 35 hour work week already in the 90's, just like Denmark reduced to 37.5 hours.
Here the 37.5 is actually the norm for full time work. I thought it was 35 in Germany, but I can't even find anything on the introduction of 35 hours in the 90's ???
But apparently the AVERAGE which is a completely different measure, is 34.2 in 2020.
https://blog.emerald-technology.com/working-hours-germany
I apologize if I misrepresented the situation in Germany.
Isn’t Germany the country where they’re burning wood to keep warm in the winter?
Absolutely, wood pellets and stoker furnaces are brilliant, as they work very well, and is a near CO2 neutral source of heat.
We do that too here in Denmark 7th richest country in the world, and I bet they also do in Norway and Switzerland, the 2nd and 3rd richest countries in the world.
We have both stoker furnace for central heating and a windowed stove in the living room for traditional firewood. The brilliance with the stove is that it has higher energy utilization than any other heat source. And it creates hygge in the living room in the long cold winter evenings.
Let's make a point that has nothing whatsoever to do with the original point so i can maintain my bullshit opinion.
I don’t see a path forward that doesn’t start with the US government making the change first. They are one of the only employers that don’t have market competition.
Some departments in the US government give you a paid time off day every week to use however you want. A lot of people would take every Friday off, or some would stash them for a longer vacation.
It's wild to me how internally the government offers the kind of benefits politicians should've pushed into law a long time ago. It really is "for Me, not for Thee".
Source: worked in one of those departments
I work in the Federal Government, and this isn't true. You have alternative work schedules (4/10s, 5/4/9, maxiflex, etc.) but you're still going to work 80 hours unless you take leave. You gain annual leave every pay period and the amount is dependent on how long your federal service has been. But when you start (1-3 years) you only get 4 hours per pay period.
Maybe you're seeing people who have long federal service (15 years) that gain 8 hours/pay period use their leave. That's their choice but they're still working 40 hours on paper regardless.
Which jobs give you four day weeks as of now?
Literally everything US politicians and billionaires do is "rules for thee, but not for me". Even running for president.
Giving a benefit to government workers only requires a president to write an executive order.
Making a benefit into a law that affects all workers requires the House, Senate, President, and SCOTUS to all get on board.
Definitely true, but you never hear conservatives complaining about all the paid leave they get or the healthcare benefits they enjoy.
If some conservative president really wanted to walk the talk, they'd axe all those benefits for everyone.
They are walking the talk; they do not believe all people deserve equal treatment. Their worldview is inherently hierarchical.
wow, that's like two and a half months of vacation
Nope.
If you did, you had no idea what was going on.
An agency can't just "give" someone twice the leave accrual as the max. People were probably doing 4 days a week, 10 hours a day.
And you just didn't understand
Bullshit. Fake news. Made up.
I had a US colleague that was ranting to me (a European) that people would still take calls just before having surgery and the moment the anastatics would have worn off work again. So I asked why not root for Bernie as he wants to do a more Scandinavian model (did not use the world socialism because reasons). Answer was no, would not be able to vote for him. Well........
Man, you're talking about a "radical", "extremist" politician who self-identifies as a (democratic) socialist.
Here in the US, most people from the poorest, least-educated states will simply never vote for a Democrat. That's not an exaggeration. The only reason Nikki Haley got so much attention despite never being viable is because with our 2-Party system she was considered the only non-Trump option for many people in these flyover states. Add in the outsized influence they have in the Senate and the undemocratic Electrical College... We're fucked.
I hear you my internet friend. Add to the fact that republicans want to keep their supporters dumb by further undermining education and it starts to look quite grim. Reforming the current 2 party system and electoral collage would be a common sense thing to do, but I fear this is only wishful thinking. Large corps with infinite money will keep driving the direction of a country and the politicians are just the workforce for them to execute on it. Same goes for the foreign influence (read Putin's clerk boy Trump).
Now more paries does not mean better either. I mean I look at how things go in my country where we have over a dozen parties, ans now 4 of them trying to form a coalition, takes months. And unfortunately also here we are going further to the right and slowly embrace fascism.
Time for a new french style revolution I guess...
A good third of Americans are subhuman. They are proud to be stupid, abused, and evil.
Sometimes I imagine what America would be like if Bernie had enough votes to pass his bills.
I always vote for him when he's at the polls, since 2 decades ago. But the oligarchy of this nation will never allow him in position of power to implement these changes.
The reality of America is that our owners have no interest in making life better for the us, the common man, their only interest to bleed us as much as they can for their own selfish agenda. And the American people are collectively still too stupid to understand how it all works.
He also spoke earlier about Israel breaking the US law by disrupting Us Humanitarian Aid.
So that's two things the rest of the party will ignore him on?
Everyday until closing time, forever.
Incomplete article by The Hill... Actually, the more I look at it this is a bad article. The only current bill introduced to the Congress is from last year by a different Representative. Bernie put out yesterday (the 13th) that he will be introducing a bill on Thursday the 14th (2024-03-14). It's only 0600 local time Washington, D.C. so it hasn't happened yet. And it would be very strange to he is introducing another act in the same session (118th).
H.R.1332 - Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act since they couldn't even link to the bill.
Congress.gov has the sponsor as Rep. Takano, Mark [D-CA-39] (Introduced 03/01/2023).
Long title: Official Title as Introduced
To amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to reduce the standard workweek from 40 hours per week to 32 hours per week, and for other purposes.
I've noticed that I get the same amount of work done working 5 days a week as if I plan to only work 3/4 days and know I'll have some free time to enjoy life. My work is really project based so as long as it gets done no one cares.
My wife has also noticed that I'm a lot more stressed when I work 5 days a week and need pretty much the whole weekend to recover.
It's LONG overdue. Been saying this for years. Reducing the stress, increasing free time (and therefore things like family time, innovation time, etc.) would vastly overhaul our society. Productivity has risen for decades while wages remain stagnant and work-life balance, if anything, has worsened.
Wages are determined by balance of power.
I don't believe that(but that's just my gut feeling). I think its fair to say that demand of work-life balance has increased though.
Depends on the field but since the pandemic I see folks being"connected" to work in unimaginable ways where they are constantly answering emails or working from home to complete work in their evenings and weekends. Just logging into teams at anytime on a weekend I can see at least a few people online working. This wasn't the case pre pandemic.
Logging in on the weekend reinforces this norm. If people see you are online, it lessens any cognitive dissonance they have with the voice in the back of their head saying "this is some bullshit, this is my day off."
There was a time when if someone wanted to reach you after hours they had to call your house and leave a message on your answering machine. now you have "bosses" that get pissy if you take 5 minutes to respond to a text in the middle of the night.
Bernie is an example of what a progressive politician actually looks like.
American politicians (Republicans AND Democrats) have been moving steadily to the right for the last 40 years. So now, Democrats are where the Republicans were in the 1980s, boring corporatists and friends of banks, pharmaceutical and insurance companies.
And the Republicans have moved all the way into an insane asylum. They long for the "good old days" of company towns, run by 19th century robber barons and worry that the six corporations that control all our news are the "liberal news media."
This will never pass because we aren't seen as people with families and lives. We're seen as labor. Tools to keep the machine running and making money for corporations and its executives.
While a small tangent, I agree. I used to work 4x10 each week. Had done that for over a decade. Having a 3 day weekend really helped. When I got my current position I was moved to 5x8. I'm now endlessly tired, I can't get the weekend projects done, etc. Because you're just getting out of work, or getting ready to start work again, there's no break. So if this ends up being 4x8, that would be great! Keep my hours and get my weekend back. Though I assume corporate USA will find some way to muck it up, like the RTO bullshit.
I totally feel you! I did 12h shifts 4 days a week the absolute difference with 5x8 in crazy! I've never been so tired and that's including my night time stint doing that as well!
America should make Bernie their Emperor.
It would have been really nice to have had him as a president for a term. He'd be doing all the same things he's doing now, but with more authority. It would have been really interesting to watch mainstream media have a meltdown over everything he put forward.
I often dream of that alternative universe where Bernie became president instead of Biden...
Our instead of Trump.
Should have listened to the bird...
Dammit we've been over this so many times!
This makes the election really simple later. Vote against whoever opposed or brought any friction to this bill whatsoever...which will be pretty much everyone.
“Step into my office.”
“Why…”
“BECAUSE YOU’RE FUCKING FIRED!”
Love the idea. But like free college and free healthcare I'm thinking it's just wishful thinking.
Amazing how so many people have been tricked into thinking these ideas are impossible. It’s really not crazy at all.
Oh I think it's possible, but considering our useless government and the obstructionists we all know, utterly impossible.
I think it's less useless government and more brainwashed citizens voting against their best interests. The useless government didn't elect itself after all.
So you don’t think it’s possible? Have you tried to do something, and have come to that conclusion because no matter what you do, nothing seems to be changing?
I’m not focusing on you specifically, but why people say things are “impossible “ and then you ask what, if anything, they’ve done, people will say nothing (or won’t even vote!).
You don’t need to devote your life to something you want to change…an hour or two a week. Join an advocacy group. Go to a town hall meeting. Call your congressman. If time is something you really have ZERO of, then donate so that other people can spend more time working the change you want to see happen.
“It’s impossible to change anything, so I’m not even gonna try”. Again, not saying this is you. I hear this “argument” so friggin often. It’s like people try and subconsciously excuse their own inaction and apathy.
When I said "I think it's possible" it was within the context of being able to maintain production, and economic output. Productivity per worker has increased between 30-50% within the last 40 or so years.
When I said "utterly impossible" It was in regards to corporation control and influence in the government, as well as corporation sympathy with republicans. Considering they are obstructionists that will even deadlock mutually beneficial laws and acts, they would 100% kill something they actually oppose.
Even with most Americans in support of Roe vs Wade, that was shut down.
Coming from Germany where both of this is normal it’s pretty crazy to me that this is seen as some kind of socialist utopia.
Admittedly there are a lot of problems in that country as well but the root of them is imo not in free education & healthcare.
Scotland: "Are we just wishful thinking?"
America: "We told you and the rest of your kingdom to fuck off and now we're doing it the stupid way!"
No shit. I learned that Scotland has it. Okay we have a working. Cool
Needs support. Not just from congress but from voters contacting their elected representatives. Zoomers and Millenials can complain all they want about Congress being out of touch, but if you're over 18 Then fucking vote, not just in presidential elections but midterms and local/state elections. The country isn't going to change to fit what young dreamers want it to be if the only people who vote enmass are the older generations that want it to stay the same.
Hopelessness is about the worst thing for an individual psychologically.
Written in our universes language: "Bernie Sanders released a plan that will absolutely never happen and caused literally every single person that isn't a worker to laugh until they couldn't breathe anymore."
I'm failing to see the problem here - most people are "workers" and this will benefit them. Anyone not workers will..... presumably die from laughing? Win/Win - what's the issue?
The issue is the government is run by
parasitesnon-workers and anyone who wants to even stand a chance needs funding fromparasitesnon-workers.If only they really would stop breathing, that would be nice lol
Ending a statement with "lol" always reads like nervous laughter to me. You're fine. Well, you seem to have a head full of some interesting non-information backed conclusions, but that's not the end of the world. The posibility you might change your mind exists so I'm not going to freak out over that.
Relax. Everything is going to be ok.
It's a bit of nervous laughter sometimes, but it's more to show that it's just meant as light hearted and a bit of a joke. I don't really wish death on anyone.
As for the rest, it's exasperation. Venting about the state of things and how they appear. My own ignorance and all that jazz.
I wonder how fox news spins this? Maybe commies want more free stuff from money we dont have i suppose. or maybe they just ignore it
Guess how many hours rich people have to work?
0 hours
If it's a sliding scale of leisure to labor seeing time as a resource or currency, perhaps even negative hours!
It's offset to a ridiculous degree by all those who do the labor for them, and not only alleviate their burden to contribute to society, but elevate them to lives of seeking hedonism and pleasure.
The only real work they seem to do is seeking more power...but they probably hire people for that, too.
It's not going to go anywhere, but it's good that it's being introduced regardless.
At my job (standard 9–5 office) we're on a "hybrid" WFH schedule where we each get a single WFH day throughout the week. If this passed, it would be so easy to implement for us, we'd just "lose" our WFH day and get it transferred into a weekday off-day. The inside-joke among alot of people here is that nobody is working on their WFH day anyways (which I hate the joke, people are shooting themselves in the foot with it), but it would be an easy transition.
Sometimes being available and on call is the work. If you went in to the office that day you’re not going to be more productive than if you stayed home. But people should not make that joke at work.
i don't even like looking at or thinking about this stuff, it's too depressing getting my hopes up
Completely understand feeling this way but remember: this is how they win. If they can't steal or nullify your vote, they want to discourage you from going to the ballot box bcause you feel it's all rigged or pointless. It's not. Here in the US, we still have free and fair elections and the power still resides with us if we claim it...
Yes, please.
I'm not opposed to a 4 day work week, but I am always curious as to what jobs the studies have looked at to conclude that people with 4 work days instead of 5 do the same amount or more work.
I'm a construction worker. Despite the jokes about standing around, we work hard. I do not think that a 4 day work week would produce better results than a 5 day in my field.
Just for reference I've been doing home rehabilitations for lower income families. There's not a ton of heavy lifting, there's just a lot to do.
Also, a lot of guys in my line of work also work side jobs on their days off.
You don't think there's a chance that working 4 days instead of 5 reduces the physical toll to keep you going longer and working better? Wouldn't working 4 days a week reduce your stress, allow you to recover from all that heavy lifting you mentioned, and improve your physical and mental health on the long-run?
Besides, as I understand it, if your company still wants you to work 5 days, you would still have the option. This bill would require them to pay you overtime for that extra day.
I specifically mentioned not much heavy lifting. The most taxing work I've had to do in the past few months was yesterday, lifting a solid core exterior for into place. And the entire second half the day was recovery while I finger painted with wood putty on all the doors and trim.
Regardless of my personal work situation, I can't deny that there would be mental and health benefits for shorter work weeks. I just really don't think that more work would get done in less time, which is what a lot of studies on "office" work seem to say.
For your line of work, maybe not. But who cares? They can hire more employees or pay them overtime.
We aren't machines. What's the point of life if all we ever do is work? Are we working to live, or living to work? A 32 hour work week makes it a 4/3 day split instead of a 5/2 day split. Seems a lot more balanced if you ask me.
I'm much in favor of this, but it requires the regulated overhead of an employee to be reduced.
Instead of employer insurance, public health service.
Unemployment insurance should be reworked, because that also penalizes per-employee (extremely low wage caps, that start from fresh per person).
Probably various other taxes similar to unemployment insurance.
Generally speaking, there should be no difference to hire an employee for 12 hours versus 32 versus 40 hours. Currently a lot of positions get their hours capped to avoid incurring the overhead of a 'full time' employee.
Yeah, this construction worker guy doesn't get it. There were plenty of people who said a 40-hour work week was not a good idea. People were used to working 6 or 6.5 days per week.
As a construction worker, it shouldn't matter to you how quickly the work gets done. Why do you care? If you're doing it for yourself, then work as much as you want. This limitation is just on how many hours you work before overtime pay.
Ultimately speaking, it's not really about that anyways. It's about shrinking the ever growing wage gap.
The productivity angle is interesting but just a justification that even the capital has to either agree with or admit it's about control, not efficiency.
My base comment was more about the 32 hour work week studies which usually coincide with bills of this nature, showing improved productivity and so the lobbyists overlords had nothing to worry about from the change.
As much as I enjoy my work, making end meet isn't ever a simple task.
I think something people are missing when thinking less work overall will happen is that this gives opportunities for new job openings for at least part time (if not just more full time position) people to fill in the gaps, or the people already working will just get paid much better. Both are wins imo
It looks like it's about overtime - people getting paid more when they work more than 32 hours.
I like this as a concept, and since it has a low likelihood of passing, let a lone being bought up for a vote, i feel comfortable casting this critique:
We need a long-term solution that addresses the power imbalance of employer-employee relations, and all this does is places a temporary and incremental improvement on something that will inevitably be undermined.
I have a similar critique on minimum wage laws - while undeniably better for working class people, they fail to address the broader inequity and end up needing to be updated every couple years (which never happens).
This is one of those moments where I really wish Bernie would put a finer point on it - this is an issue driven by capital. The federal government wouldn't need to spell out labor laws if they could strengthen the working-class's position against capital more broadly. I would almost rather him propose a bill that strengthens union laws and the NLRB, since those are currently under attack.
I'd like to think this actually gets some consideration though. Totally agree with your points, but let's be honest: Once you start calling it like it is and openly blaming Capital, your career in American politics is dust.
Somehow Bernie has managed to have quite a career, in spite of constant opposition by the status quo machine.
I honestly wonder why there aren't incremental versions of this. Like why not advertise a 38 hour work week where Fridays are 6 hours long? Or 35 where every day starts or ends an hour early?
Fisher-Price offers half day Fridays in the summer and that's a big part of their pitch for why to work there. They are the only company I've ever heard of with anything like it and it's not even year-round. But it makes a lot of sense.
My current job does this: I work 7-430 M-Th, and then 7-12 on Friday. It's pretty cool, and the extra hour those 4 days feels negligible, with an early start to the weekend. Unlike Fisher-Price, though, mine is year round.
However, I've worked jobs that advertise as "full-time, 32-35 hrs/week," and as the system is currently set up, it's sucks big time. Like, I worked as a chef 32-hours a week and (shockingly) got benefits like health insurance and stuff. But when I went to buy a house, the mortgage company told me I either needed another 8 hours per week from my current job, or to find another that would give me at least 40 hours/wk. While the company considered me full-time, the mortgage company did not.
Worked another job for a school cafeteria as a cook, same thing, 30-35 hours per week, but the only benefits they offered were health insurance (which was expensive), and the ability to follow the school calendar. So, we'd get all the half-days and vacation days like the kids did, which was cool, but we didn't get paid for it. So if 2 days per week were an early dismissal, I'd lose about 5+ hours of pay. Any break that was 3-days or more, we had to file for unemployment, which is an absolute joke and headache in my state. The only time I tried before I quit that job, the forms required me to give:
Took me over 3 hours to put it all in, just for the system to acknowledge my bank existed, and then refuse to accept the routing number, trying to force me to get one of those temp debit cards mailed to me (that I think they charge fees on). I was so frustrated towards the end of it all I started putting "Why do I FUCKING need to tell you about a job from 6 years ago when I'm requesting unemployment for THIS FUCKING MONTH" in the comment sections.
Basically, until the laws/regulations regarding worker's rights are standardized and written in a way where workers can actually benefit from shorter work weeks, or actually enjoy the incentives that shorter days and such provide, then these corporations will continue to find these loopholes to fuck us over. It's why I'm trying to go into business for myself in the next few years: set my hours, choose my workload, and not deal with this corporate bullshit anymore.
Sorry, that turned into a rant, and I do want shorter work weeks, but unless the law is written extremely well, companies will just continue these bullshit antics.
There's a bunch of smaller tech companies and ad agencies that do half day Fridays during Summer. (They call it Summer hours and it lasts from Memorial Day to Labor day.) A bunch of my friends work for companies that do this. As someone who works for a small IT company that does not, I am massively jealous every summer.
Can someone explain that "with no loss in pay"?
It's not like there is a magical way to know what you'd get paid if you worked a 40hr week, when everybody works 32hr week, and punish your employer if it's less.
It's not like wages are determined by the government either.
From the bill itself:
And yes, wages can definitely be determined by the government; see the Federal minimum-wage limit. Salary would remain the same; your hourly-wage would be increased by 1.25x.
Does the bill also include at least a 1.25x minimum wage increase to enforce this as well?
That would be logical, but still would affect only people earning close to minimum wage.
It would increase pay for some, and leave others without their jobs. Same as any other minimum wage increase.
Yes, but combined with shorter work week, which may cause some increase in the amount jobs of exactly for people earning close to minimum wage, the result may be less noticeable.
If a shorter work week results in there being more jobs, that conflicts with the notion we’d get just as much done in 32 hours as in 40.
I guess you’re saying this effect is more likely in non-creative professions that simply can’t be compressed, which also happen to be the most likely to be minimum wage?
Then what you’ve accomplished is cutting the hours of higher earners from 40 to 32, and increasing the hours of minimum wage earners from 40 to 64.
For somebody hired before the law is enacted.
EDIT: And minimum wage, if it's going to be increased, will mostly affect people earning the minimum wage. Obviously.
It means that full time is 32 hours per week.
I havent read the bull so I don't know what protections it has for hourly or salary employees.
There can possibly be none.
And most things get done in the first 4-6 hours of every day, if it's not a dumb job at McDonalds. So I'm not sure there'll be need to hire many more people.
Is there any reason that it couldn't use existing employees rate of pay as a benchmark and literally force them to pay accordingly while reducing hours? It's not like that wage data is secret its reported to the government as part of withholding. Ultimately a business would have to hire to meet needs or commit to paying overtime to all its 40 hour workers.
Yes there is at least one reason: jobs that aren’t yet defined wouldn’t exist in the Big Table of Centrally-Controlled Prices. So we either don’t apply it to those, or we prevent anyone from creating any new kind of employment arrangement without first getting government approval.
This kind of thing precedes starvation and mass murder. This is very dangerous.
Nobody suggested that a each business would have a fixed price for labor nor that new employers would have to apply to the government for a defined wage. Just that existing businesses and positions would be subject to such regulations and that businesses couldn't pay new workers less than existing.
Prices for labor are inelastic. If you have 1M people in an industry nationwide making 50k for 50 weeks x 40 hours. If you scale down year by year your workers down from 40 -> 32 ultimately you end up with 1.25M workers earning 50k plus inflation if the size of the market served remains the same. In actuality labor effects price and price effects quantity demanded so you actually end up with 50k+inflation 1.10M or some such.
In this environment you could perfectly legally start up a new outfit paying 40k x 32 hours. However the well paying outfits need new workers at 50k to keep rolling and are aggressively hiring so the logical conclusion is that folks paying 40 wont be able to meaningfully hire. Even if you do manage to get SOME useful hires you will live in fear of them jumping ship at any moment for an instant life changing raise which will happen constantly until your business closes and you cry on social media that the government destroyed your business.
Actual up and comers will start out paying similar wages as the rest of the market and the price for labor is stuck at the new level.
OK, then hiring new people they'll pay less, and after everybody's been rotated - for everybody.
Which is logical, I don't get why he adds that phrase everywhere.
Since we are playing I run the world can't I just say you can't offer less than the average you are already paying for new people? If you don't like it you can always close up shop and cede the market to someone else. Also wages are normally sticky. A large portion of your workforce works for someone else how will you ever attract them to work for you with smaller wages?
And some employers will close up shop, causing inflation, then some wages will be raised to correct for inflation and some won't. Those of people working in the same area as hit by such a law likely won't, because there'll be more people qualified and fewer jobs.
I'd wish Bernie limited this to changing the normal work week to 32hrs, and none of the other smartassery with unpredictable results.
The core idea is good.
Employers closing up shop doesn't cause inflation. Neither houses nor groceries get more expensive because a fast food joint closed. Marginal businesses who make poor use of cheap labor such that they can't even make much while paying people so little they get welfare are the assholes going down.
Good for Bernie Sanders.
That would be a great thing but I also had another idea, why can't a test be devised and codified into law, to tie minimum wage to. I know the main reasons why, obstructionist capitalists, but a test to find a living wage, average rent costs tied with other bill expenses and grocery costs. The companies raising costs feel free but the minimum wage will rise. Could something like this work? Tie wages and service/goods costs together to incentivize either livable/thrivable wages or lower costs. either way we need one of those two things, more buying power, or... more buying power.
Something to stop the decages long stagnation of worker compensation.
Of course that could work. That’s why it won’t even be considered in the current political climate.
Of course, I do enjoy the fantasy, especially on the precipice of an election that decides my right of existence.
The walls were to keep us in, not the other way around, after all.
Well not only do you deserve to exist, but I am glad you exist.
How miserable must some peoples’ lives & minds be that they need to make Kyattophobia a significant part of their political concerns and/or personality?
In contrast, I find that being Kyattophilic enhances the life and the mind!
kyattophilic?
thank you ^-^
As in hydrophilic vs hydrophobic.
I was essentially just trying to vomit positivity in your general direction, lol.
Oh I forgot I was @Kyatto here >.>
That was silly of me, Thanks Zink <3
😆
This sounds awesome. Here's what I wanna know though:
What stops your boss from then saying "You better stop at 31.95 hours or you're in trouble." Because they don't wanna pay overtime? They already do this in a lot of jobs.
So, you'd need additional pay to compensate for less hours, but now you have a two-pronged battle because that just sounds way too lovely.
And I'm guessing a lot of the "exempt" office workers that grind themselves into dust the hardest won't be affected?
I mean hey, I'd rather it just passes and we see what happens, and keep fixing it as it goes, at least it's something! But the hardest part is blocking your bosses from weaseling around laws and screwing you anyway.
having your boss say “stop” at 32 hours is the intent of the bill.
Correct. But that's the issue right now. People look at the equation all wrong and say "I just wish I could get more hours!" instead of fighting for reasonable pay. If hours go down but pay doesn't go up to compensate, a ton of people will actually get hit really hard by this and their lives will get worse instead of better.
Companies can use that tired, stupid line that "Washington says you don't have the eagle-screeching-freedom-right to WORK! How dare they!" and people will buy it.
We don't want that, because it'll turn workers against worker-friendly politics, and that would be a Very Bad Thing, given the level of job-simp-indoctrination we're already combating! :O
This will never be allowed to happen.
Nice, now you can go from two jobs to three in order to afford a house!
Fuck the DNC.
So let's say I run a business and I employ workers at $1000/wk and they work 5 8 hour days. Maybe I have a 10% profit margin on them and I make $1100 for each employee.
If this law passes and I need to pay my employees $1000/wk for 4 days... that means suddenly I'm losing money. Where would that extra money come from? I'd probably end up raising my prices. I'm not necessarily against this plan, I just want to understand what the proposals are to fill this gap. If I work 4 days a week but prices all go up by 20%, I'm not sure that's a good outcome.
At some point, you lose productivity and reduced work weeks have shown increases in productivity can happen.
So, basically the employees would have to cram their same workload into 20% less time for this to work. (without changing prices)
Effectively yes, however numerous studies have shown that not all work hours are actually productive. The idea is that you remove some of those unproductive hours, which makes employees happier, and productivity, employee satisfaction and retention increases naturally as a result.
The large scale trial of a shortened work week in the UK resulted in great success and 92% of companies decided to keep the new hours after the trial ended, with 30% already having committed to making it permanent.
The benefits to the employees is fairly obvious, but the employer gains by having less retraining, employees are more focused and less mentally exhausted, employees require less time off. The end result is that companies did in fact see increased productivity during the trial, and most companies reported increased YoY revenue growth.
Seems counter intuitive, but 61 companies tried it, and most liked it!
Anecdotal but i know i am way more productive when there has been or will be a holiday, for two weeks. I also noticed i feel a lot less drained working 38 hour jobs than 40 hour job, and generally do less at the 40 hour job. So i find it easy to believe this adds up. For an employer it's hard to see this of course, they just see the raw output of the one thing they've been doing.
You'd have to get rid of the least productive workload. We have work in abundance, but well paying jobs are kept tight by a minority of the population. By reducing the workweek, the medium term natural reaction of the market is getting rid of the least productive jobs, and create job opportunities that pay better all across the board to fulfill the more productive workloads that have just been left vacant, ultimately making each hour of work more productive.
This isn't a painless process: there are businesses that are going to have to rethink their finances and a few will have to shut down. But businesses aren't an end by themselves - they're useful as long as they serve to allow people to earn a living: if we're going to oppose a restructuration of the economy that benefits the vast majority of the people because businesses will suffer, we've got our priorities backwards.
I'm not necessarily opposed to this... I just expected the plan to address how the productivity gap will be filled. Looks like the plan is: "People will just work harder in the 32 hours to make up for it".
My pessimism says that if this passes, businesses will just increase their prices to cover the extra cost per hour of employee time.
I can see how this appears burdensome to some jobs/areas of employment where productivity is directly related to output such as mechanics, plumbers, veteinarians, or maybe even like food service. It's probably not an issue with many fields where productivity is achieved more through creativity/ideas/or generating more efficient workflows to save time. I suppose some fields are already at their "maximum efficiency" and will probably just need to raise prices to accommodate.
I'm actually cool with the prices of those sorts of things increasing if I get three day weekends. For one, I'll have more time to do them myself if I desire, offsetting the cost entirely. Large corporations will hopefully be forced to just eat the loss; sure, companies have no problem kicking up the prices of their services.... but I think they'll find that we won't be quite as dependant on eating out and buying garbage once we have more time to live our lives. Maybe people can learn to maintain their own cars as a swift "FU" to car manufacturers proce gouging and refusing to produce affordable automobiles for the masses.
Just throwing out some thoughts!
They will just increase prices and pass the expense on to the consumer.
Literally addressed this in my original comment. The key is not purchasing their products, which will be enabled by us having more time to do our own stuff. But obviously, it won't apply to things we can't replace or reduce the consumption of (gains, electricity, water)
But yeah, if Americans (for example) want to keep eating terrible, unhealthy food at exuberant expense from McDonald's because they can't be bothered to figure French fries out themselves, why wouldn't McDonald's raise their prices? Haha
You may be underestimating the laziness of the average consumer. I don't think people are going to use 1 extra day a week to start refining their own gas, making their own clothes or raising their own cattle.
This is a bad faith response. Of course nobody is going to refine their own gas, since it takes a multi-billion dollar refinery to refine gas. People can definitely do the two things I specifically mentioned, as well as a myriad of other things that I did not mention, which will take load off of the economy, and price gouging power away from the specific industries I mentioned.
And if not, then they can keep paying for overpriced, unhealthy food that they will continue to be price gouged on (which I also already said).
I didn't explain that very well, but my thinking was that industries such as gas where there is no 'DIY' alternative will be immune to these positive effects.
Makes sense. But traveling to the office one day less per week, one day less per week of daycare, and having one more full day per week to do things like food prep will also help cool demand for adjacent markets. Not an expert though, obviously!
True, but keep in mind this is less revenue for the daycare center, less revenue for the coffee shop around the corner from the office, etc. That money doesn't just go into a void.
when workers won the 40 hour week, the 8 hour day, there were basically no restrictions on the time workers could be required to work.
a 32 hour week is a 6 hour day.
This is weak.
I don't oppose this, but it should be done by employees themselves rather than further leaving this up to congress.
How? Maybe by electing people to some kinda group? Maybe a congress of people?
Strikes, refusing to work. Which yes, unfortunately not everyone has that luxury, which it could be argued something like a UBI(or negative income tax) could provide, or at least not as excessive housing costs.
Perhaps collectively gathering, discussing what would be good things, then kindly telling the boss they're going to hold a picket until good things get done.
But honestly, if good things come by law before that, I think it would be neat. Wouldn't want the boss to get scared by all the kindness, you know?
By choosing the job that is best for oneself. I work Uber by choice, and I work long hours by choice, and I’m happy about it.
You know Uber only pays you the way they do because the government had to step in.
Tell me you've never worked a day in your life without telling me.
That certainly isnt Bernie
You dont get something for nothing, either prices have to rise, or the government is propping up companies that are that ineffient that workers are only doing 32 hours in a 40 hour work week.
You should probably update your economic knowledge.
Study after study over the last 20-30 years has shown that productivity remains or increases when switching from 40 hrs to 32.
No no no, hours = productivity.
Monkey types on typewriter for more time, monkey write more code. All top quality. Best code.
It's not just software engineers out there though. I work in a factory and it absolutely works that way here. More hours = more output. If the fucking scumbags like musk and whoever the fuck owns trader joes actually wins this case in the supreme court and they remove all the protections workers have gained in the last 100 years you bet your ass the owner of this factory will IMMEDIATELY go to 7 days a week 12 hour shifts as they won't be required to pay overtime and they'll more than likely be able to drop wages as far as they can possibly get away with.
It's funny because this article points out a pipe dream for Americans, while simultaneously the supreme court is about to pull the rug out from under us and have us move in exactly the opposite direction... :(
And that would be under the government is propping up companies that are that ineffient.
If you mean that the common best practice of working 40 hrs/week is inefficient, then yes.
Governments aren't pushing for 40 hr work weeks, socialists and industrialists of the early 1900s were, and the rest is conservatism.
Cool, so you think that framers get as much done in 32 hours as 40?
I don't know if there's any studies made specifically on framers, but machinists and manufacturers have been reported to, and of course almost anyone in a knowledge job.
So you think that all jobs are more efficient if they just lower the hours?
I'm saying there's independently verified, peer reviewed, and repeated research that show that many jobs keep or increase their productivity.
So then you would need to dive into why that is true. I actually agree with you because I had a job like that when I was not self employed. And the reason I could be ineffient was because it was directly government funded. The only reason a machinest and manufacturing job can be ineffeicinet is because of government involvement.
If you'd approached the conversation honestly 2-3 replies ago, I'd be happy to provide sources.
Now you seem a boorish and rude troll, and you can go be that on someone else's time.
Yes
Cool, but you would be wrong.
Your math is wrong
Dude, you have not done a real physical day of work in your life, dont pretend like you even know what framers do.
You can’t even do a cartwheel because your butt is too big. And you pick your own bugers
I nailed it, you have zero experience. Until you understand what physical work is, I recommend you just stay out of it.
You are very creepy
Many workers already only work 32 hours a week and fill a chair while bullshitting the rest of the time. Many people do that because they would burn out otherwise. Cut the hours by 25% and it's more reasonable to expect people to actually work. Right now even supervisors don't crack down on that behavior because it's just generally accepted that you can't push people that hard or productivity starts to fall. Imo 30 hours/week is the sweet spot for productivity and cutting down wasted dead time.
Most supervisors don't push that button because they don't want anyone to question how much work they do. Because it's the same as the rest of us. Or less.
The hardass bosses who do demand more typing and more hours simply don't possess self-awareness.
And that would be under the government is propping up companies that are that ineffient.
Don't know where you get that idea from. If you cut out the hours where employees sit around wasting time, you get the same productivity for less hours worked. There's no difference besides time saved. Government has nothing to do with it, as revenue is not affected.
The government creates a hedge of regulation protection for large businesses. Also the government directly gives money via contracts, between 20-25% of the GDP is government spending, and that is just on the federal level.
Pharmacist here. I definitely work the full 40 hours basically non stop and... It's awful. I don't think this is how humans are meant to live. If you have a job that absolutely requires the full 40 to be 100% effort, the rest of your life suffers. I believe the reason so many people are able to do 40+ hours is the downtime that's built into most jobs.
I did 30 hours as a pharmacist for years and it was AMAZING. Like the job was still hard, but it felt like I had a portion of my life that was hard. Now that I'm stuck back to 40 it feels like I have a hard life. I barely have energy to give to my 1 year old baby on days off because I am recovering from the day before. I do the best I can but man was I in a better place at 30 hours.
This is a different discussion, but I agree with you. I think the issue you are looking at is that the way the government manages the currency has created the issue where many people NEED to work 40 hours just to get by. The government has been devaluing our wages for generations and we are on the same side, I just think we all need to realize what the actual problem is.
Which is disproved by Germany. When you compare Germany to surrounding countries, the economy of workers that now only work 35 hours per week, has not declined by comparison to neighboring countries.
Other factors are way more significant, like wealth distribution, economic environment, and quality of public services. If you look to UK they are way worse off, because they have generally fucked up and used economic thinking similar to republicans.
Also look at Denmark, we have one of the least number of yearly work hours, yet we are among the highest paid in the world. With almost no natural resources to benefit from.
If you are unwilling to progress, there will be no progress.
So a roofer will be able to put on more roofs if they work less hours?
Yes! And the closer you get to zero the more we approach infinite roofs per hour, because that's the way it works with humans, you simply multiply and divide and add and subtract, it's really that easy, I wonder why people make it so complicated and add in completely unnecessary stuff like health and well being? /s
You can be snarky if you wish, but I am just pointing out the flaws in the idea that if you lower hours people will be as efficient.
What I'm saying is you can't just count the beans.
Fewer work hours are recouped in a number of ways, like less sick leave and higher efficiency, maybe not 100%, but experience seems to show that a pretty significant part is. So "as efficient" is not true.
Of course you can't do this indefinitely, but you can increase efficiency most places by going down from 40.
I think you can count the beans. You’ll have less injuries better quality work and a better product or service overall.
One workplace injury over the life span of a business would save all the costs of the lower hours / same pay
Edit: I work in a large organization. Someone hurt themselves. The payout was so large that the bosses realized they could pay for more than hundreds of dollars of safety equipment per worker per year for the entire organization and still save money if it avoided one accident.
I could agree with you if we are talking about 80 hours/ week , but 40 hour is totally doable and not really even many hours to work.
As far as efficiency goes, that is an issue with companies that are enable to be inefficient by government controls and influences.
Yes, many labor jobs would have large quality improvements if their workers worked less hours
You clearly do not have an economics degree, nor do you know what you are talking about