Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) unveiled legislation on Thursday calling for a four-day workweek, which he argued is “not a radical idea.” In essence, he said working 40 hours per week is no longer necessary due to increased productivity. Plus, the added day off would be a tremendous boost to people’s quality of life by lowering their stress levels. Oh, and in typical progressive fashion, he thinks this should happen with no change in pay. Not surprisingly, his plan faced a lot of pushback from Senate Republicans during a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing on Thursday.
“In reality, there is no free lunch,” Ranking Member Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said during his opening remarks.
“Workers will be the ones who would pay — not get paid extra,” he added. “The government mandating a 32-hour workweek requiring businesses to increase pay at least an extra 25 percent per hour, would frankly destroy some employers."
While Sanders, who chairs the committee, sees “major advancements in artificial intelligence, automation, and new technology” as producing enough financial gain to allow such a concept to work, Cassidy said instead, jobs would be sent overseas, replaced altogether with automation, prices would increase, or employers would find workarounds, like hiring more part-time employees.
"Now we've talked about the Biden economics leading to inflation, this would be napalm on the fire of inflation," he said.
“If this policy is implemented, it would threaten millions of small businesses operating on a razor-thin margin because they’re unable to find enough workers,” Cassidy continued. “Now they’ve got the same workers, but only for three-quarters of the time, and they have to hire more.”
Ranking Member @SenBillCassidy's opening statement on 32-hour workweek proposal:
— HELP Committee GOP (@GOPHELP) March 14, 2024
"The government mandating a 32 hour workweek, requiring businesses to increase pay at least an extra 25% per hour would frankly destroy some employers." pic.twitter.com/XoLuf1nqBA
