A proposal by Vermont Democrat Bernie Sanders to mandate 32 hours, instead of the traditional 40, as a legally defined work week appears to have some support in corporate America.
According to a new survey of chief executive officers conducted by the professional services firm KPMG nearly a third of those questioned said they were seriously considering adopting a 32-hour, or four-day, work week.
“We are all working to figure out what is optimal, and we will continue to experiment and pivot,” KPMH chief executive officer Paul Knopp has remarked to the site CNN Business in discussing the survey findings.
In introducing his legislation, Sanders noted that the 40-hour week was established just before World War II with the passing of the Fair Labor Standards Act. But he added: “American workers are now over 400% more productive than they were back then and continued technological advances are likely to increase the gap between worker productivity and worker gains.”
Going to a legally defined 32-hour work week, according to Sanders, would lower the “maximum hours threshold for overtime compensation for non-exempt employees.”
In the process, it would “require overtime pay at time and a half for workdays longer than eight hours, and overtime pay at double a worker’s regular pay for workdays longer than 12 hours.”
Sanders’ proposal has won the support of the AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers, and Service Employees International Union, among other labor groups. The publication New University has suggested that an official 32-hour work week would allow workers to “either reduce their hours entirely or to be properly compensated for the extra overtime they have clocking in.”
But an opinion piece published last week by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy contends that the average American worker today “works five fewer hours per week compared to the 1960s. And real household income is up by more than 30% in the last 40 years.”
Forcing employers to let workers have fewer hours for the same pay, continues the essay, “would lead to decisions that aren’t in workers’ interest. That means job cuts, benefit reductions, small business closures, and more.”
Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy has similarly criticized Sanders’ proposal, saying that it will “kneecap the American economy with something that purports to be good for the American worker, but indeed will lead to offshoring of jobs seeking a lower-cost labor force.”
Sanders’ legislation is currently under review in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
By Garry Boulard
