What do you think the odds are that the 32 hour work week bill will get passed?

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

It would end up meaning nothing to my husband because he would still have to work most weeks, some weeks now he has lighter loads but majority he's not going to be able to accomplish what needs to be done in a shorter time like that.

Where a 32 hour work week could work so long as people still maintained benefits and pay was bumped up slightly to accommodate the loss of hours is more on structured jobs. My call center insurance company job for instance I had a specific shift and while I wasn't salaried I was hourly with a base guaranteed rate split up on my paychecks. Reducing down to 32 hours could work there, it would just lead to people working shorter shifts but coverage still being there. But the pay would need to be bumped and the benefits would need to stay there. A 4-day work week actually didn't work out there. They tried that several times and it just left coverage holes. They usually only had 1 to 2 teams per site (there were 3 sites in the U.S.) with a 4/10 work week and Mondays and Fridays were never the days you would get off.

My husband did the 4/10s work week for a while at his job several years back but the end result is he almost always went in on Fridays (the day he would have off) and would just work even if it was for half a day to 3/4 of a day. Work was there and didn't confine itself to specified hours (when you have meetings with people from various countries or you're tracking down pipes and air cooled condensers and whatnot doesn't work all the time to actually not work on your days off). They actually run into issues with projects when it comes to the countries that take whole chunks of time off (like France) where it makes it difficult to complete projects.

The problem with the 40 hour work week is it's so ingrained now in our culture, it's part of our bedrock of pay and benefits that it would be hard to drop down and people still maintain what they have going on now. On the other hand it's easier to add more benefits or protections based on certain number of hours worked. For instance with the law passed several years back even though my husband is salaried he gets overtime at 45 hours.

Perhaps what can be done instead of reducing the work week at a Federal level to 32 hours is doing things like Federally defining what full-time is as often benefits are based on full-time vs part-time. The only concern I would have there is companies doing things like specifically dropping people down below that mark so they don't have to pay/provide full-time benefits, they've def. been doing that. With this pandemic one has to wonder how much will employers do this when they already have enough trouble as is getting employees.

 

[barkley]

How do you feel about only being paid for 32 hours?

for a few years i participated in a voluntary work hour reduction program my government employer offered as a cost savings measure (VTO-voluntary time off). the ONLY reason i was even willing to consider it was-

despite reducing my hours/pay 25% i continued to receive full time employee benefits as far as health care, retirement contributions/matches and sick/vacation/pto accruals.

i had co-workers who considered it but it was too big of an income loss for them-in my case i ended up a bit ahead monetarily between tax savings but more so-i was able to eliminate after school childcare for 2 kids ($$$$).


i can't imagine how employers who are struggling to staff would deal with this. there are SO MANY places offering starting wages (unskilled/no experience needed entry level) of $18+ an hour in our fairly low cost of living area. jobs that include full medical/dental, retirement plans...no takers so days/hours of businesses being open have been dramatically slashed. my oldest just mentioned to me that her employer is down to 9 employees in her job classification which operates 24/7-with a minimum of 2 people needed on site at all times. if they reduced a work week to 32 hours i can't imagine how they would function.

 

[Minnesota!]

Love it in theory. If we made everyone salaried (so, you make 50K at 40 hours, you still make 50K at 32.). There would need to be rotation, though - M-H for some people, T-F for others, etc.

A lot of industries could do it easily...some not at all. There are a lot of school districts going to 4 day weeks...would work for those teachers, in theory.

 

[barkley]

Love it in theory. If we made everyone salaried (so, you make 50K at 40 hours, you still make 50K at 32.). There would need to be rotation, though - M-H for some people, T-F for others, etc.

A lot of industries could do it easily...some not at all. There are a lot of school districts going to 4 day weeks...would work for those teachers, in theory.

when i worked salaried positions, both for public agencies and private businesses-i NEVER managed on a 40 hour schedule to actually only work 40 hours. maybe it was b/c all fell under labor laws that exempted them from overtime but i had my job duties and i had to complete them however long it took. when i worked hourly and having me stay over resulted in time and half pay there was more of an expectation on my part that i would only work 40 hours per week-but there was a greater expectation on my employer's part that my work duties could and would be completed in a 40 hour period of time.

 

[GreatLakes]

It works for some jobs and some roles but not others and it shouldn't be legislated. If you, as an individual, can demonstrate to your boss that you can be more productive over 32 hours than 40 go for it. I have some staff members that I'd be able to do that with based on their role. Other positions that report through the organization to me have to be present at specific times. Unless some divisions are willing to be open less hours, which is unlikely since customers are requiring more availability instead of less, I need someone in those roles for the hours they are needed.

Now, where we as a society can do better is making sure we are staffed to the right level so people can be sick or take PTO without feeling like they are being reprimanded. I tell all of my direct reports I want them to take all of their PTO and I staff my divisions so we are able to accommodate PTO. If your kid is sick stay home, if it is your anniversary take a day trip with your wife, if you feel at all under the weather just work from home for your own sake and everyone else's. In some instances that required lengthy debates with my board but at the end of the day if you work for me, directly or indirectly, I want you not just productive but valued, happy, and feeling like I'm not asking you to make work a priority over your family outside of actual emergency situations. All of this needs to be organic from the leadership at your organization, not hammered down from congress.

 

[Keli]

I don't think it would stand a chance in passing and if it did it wouldn't affect me personally at all. I routinely work 50-60 hrs a week as part of my workload. My workload isn't going anywhere just because the workweek before overtime was reduced to 32 hrs. I don't receive overtime pay so there is no incentive for my employee to decrease my workload either.

My team would suffer because they would only receive 32hrs a week pay instead of 40hrs and we would hire one or two part time people to pick up the slack. It would probably save the company money because the part time folks wouldn't make as much an hour as our full time people do because of years of service. Honestly, I think most of my team would be forced to get a side hustle of some sort, whether is was a part time job or driving for uber, etc, in order to make ends meet.

 

[Kennywood]

Laissez faire

 

[Jennasis]

I work 15 hours a day, 7 days a week.

 

[JimMIA]

Odd to me are zero.

Agree. In fact, most bills introduced in Congress are only introduced so it looks like the legislator is actually doing something. They know they will never even be voted on in subcommittee, much less passed into law.

 

[luvnwdwgal]

I don’t see it passing.

 

[mrs. magoo]

I was going to say - I work in a school. A 4 day week can’t happen.

There are some districts in Colorado who have a 4 day week but it can be a nightmare with childcare. The students attend school for longer days. I teach in the inner city and the thought of having kids walking to and from school in the dark in the winter would keep me up at night. This year has been exhausting so far. My students have not been in school full time for 18 months and many did not attend in person at all last year. The 9th graders act like 7th graders and many of the juniors are acting like freshmen. The skills are so low. I have 5 years to go until retirement but who is counting.

 

[Skippy918]

When pigs fly,
While nice in theory, sounds impractical.

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

It's pretty much meaningless in a legal environment where one can drive a truck through the loopholes of salaried employees (that they can work OT without OT pay, contractors( when they're really employees) and the like.
How bout we close up those loopholes first and then eliminate the sub minimum wage. Then we can talk about 32 hour work week.

As for the chances, they're in the back stretch now. It's almost a match race. Slim and None have opened up 10 lengths on the rest of the field.

 

[neverlandsky]

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/06/1013348626/iceland-finds-major-success-moving-to-shorter-work-week
I think it can be done.

 

[OhDannyBoy]

How exactly would it work anyways? Now every hour worked over 32 is OT?

I mean for me that's wonderful as i work 50 hours a week and get paid hourly. More than that some months. And for my company paying the overtime is still cheaper than hiring someone new.

 

[Lumpy1106]

My company went to 32 hour weeks as an emergency cost-saving strategy when we all got sent to WFH because of COVID. The problem with that is those of us that were busy still had +40 hours of work to do every week in order to meet deadlines that did not change. Those who were not busy ended up being laid off anyway. IME, work-life balance is a total fallacy when you exempt status, WFH and are truly busy. 50-60 hour weeks get to be the norm and a government imposed 32 hour work week will not change that.

A little follow-up from my company; I believe largely due to tax implications, they ended up giving us back the 8 hours a week pay as a "bonus" at the end of the year. That would have been very generous if we had not all been working +40 hours a week to keep up. One little detail they left out; PTO was also cut 20% temporarily due the emergency. We did not get that back. Nobody was going on vacation at the peak of COVID restrictions anyway so at least my PTO balance did not get obliterated.

 

[ronandannette]

I work 15 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Aren't you a business owner? Not sure how anybody can legislate any relief for you on that.

 

[tvguy]

So, they expect employers to accept paying for full time benefits with the employee working 20% less? Not sure that would fly.
My mom was an RN. Until the last few years of her career a normal work schedule was 8 hours a day 5 days a week. The last few years she worked 10 hours a day, 4 days a week (she retired in 1985). Now the normal work day is 12 hours, 3 days a week. There employers are willing to consider someone full time with only 36 hours, but in this case, they save 33% on benefits since they are now having two people do the work three people used to do (two shifts a day versus three shifts a day)

 

[dez1978]

I am a teacher and I work way more than 40 hours a week. I am physically in the school building from 6:15 to 3:15 and then do an additional 2 to 3 hours at home every night. The amount of paperwork that is expected of us this year is insane.

I was going to ask how this would affect schools. Would schools go to 4 day weeks too? or just shorter hours every day? Child care is hard enough to find right now. This wouldn't help. With the number of places that are staffed 24/7 this would add to the number of parents needing before and after school care or care 1 day a week.

 

[ronandannette]

Agree. In fact, most bills introduced in Congress are only introduced so it looks like the legislator is actually doing something. They know they will never even be voted on in subcommittee, much less passed into law.

Ah yes, it's ever thus in all systems I think. Here stuff like that is called a "Private Member's Bill" (a piece of proposed legislation introduced by a random Member of Parliament. There are hundreds a year proposed and they are mostly all just virtue signaling of one sort or another that nobody actually ever expects to debate or vote on.