- Rep.
Mark Takano , a California Democrat, wants to make a 32-hour work week law. - He says it'd be part of building a new normal that reflects the past two years.
Representative Mark Takano wants you to work less — or at least collect a lot more overtime pay.
The California Democrat proposed legislation in July that would slash the standard work week to 32 hours. That also means anyone who works over 32 hours a week would receive overtime. The legislation is still awaiting a vote and recently $4 of the powerful Congressional Progressive Caucus.
In Takano's vision, the shorter work week would help address three of the biggest issues raging in the workplace right now: $4, how much power workers have, and how to navigate a $4 shaped by ongoing pandemic trauma.
"There's a great sort of opening for people to see it as part of a new normal, a new normal that they'd like to build," Takano told Insider. "800,000 Americans dying within a two to three year span has been traumatizing, and we have an opportunity now to look at the world with far more experienced eyes."
In December, Jobs site $4 surveyed people who had quit two jobs during the pandemic; $4 "the pandemic made them feel life is too short to stay in a job they weren't passionate about."
A record-breaking $4 in November, according to the most recent $4. But hiring remained robust, suggesting that workers — especially the record $4 who threw in the towel — are switching into different roles.
All told, the data suggests that Americans are ready for a new normal, or at least a rethink of work, particularly better-paying, more flexible work. According to Takano, that's exactly what a 32-hour workweek could achieve.
Americans are experiencing a 'Great Realization'
"This much stronger connection to human mortality has made people value their time," Takano said. "I think there was a Great Realization among a lot of Americans — how hard they're working and that they wanted to move on from the jobs that they were working at. So a four-day work week is something that connects a lot of Americans."
A four-day work week would also address another priority for Takano: Inequality in income and working conditions. His bill is a revision of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which instituted the $4.
"I care about making capitalism sustainable and more humane — and less low road and less cutthroat," Takano said.
The substance of his legislation, Takano said, is a work week where overtime kicks in once someone has worked 32 hours. That doesn't mean that all workers have to cut their hours down to 32 — but they'll be paid time and a half for any hours worked beyond that.
"What begins to happen for workers who are covered by this law is that they have greater leverage in a labor market — meaning that they are likely to be able to make more money for the hours that they do work," Takano said.
Takano said that a 32-hour work week would make employers "think twice" about cutting hours back in a tight labor market. Employers who are looking for workers would have to weigh trying to find more workers to train — a tall order as $4 and some workers remain on the sidelines for a better deal — or incentivize the current workforce by paying more for those now-longer hours.
It would help enshrine some of what's already happening in the
Four-day work weeks have started to catch on around the world
A trial of the shorter week in $4 saw that productivity and quality remained the same — and workers felt more positive and happy. Countries like $4 and $4 have said they'll test it out, and several companies have already adopted it or are $4. But experts $4 it could be harder to implement in the US, in part because the US is less unionized — and the US's obsession with ever-present employees.
Takano said that, in tandem with a shorter work week, workers need easier access to labor unions and organizing. The Build Back Better Act $4 from the $4 (PRO Act) that would do just that.
"I think we do have a chance of seeing people actually making a livable salary, a livable wage at 32 hours a week," if it's coupled with stronger unions, minimum wage, and overtime provisions, Takano said. "We want a world where there is a sustainable wage for everybody. We need workers to be able to have some leverage with regard to employers. It can't be that all the power is with employers."