[HN Gopher] H.R.1332 - Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act
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H.R.1332 - Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act
Author : cebert
Score : 28 points
Date : 2024-03-14 22:19 UTC (42 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (www.congress.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.congress.gov)
| ianai wrote:
| Unfortunately many congresspeople routinely file such bills only
| to never get consideration.
| Simulacra wrote:
| I was curious about this, and so I found that the entire time
| that Bernie Sanders has been in the Senate, only two pieces of
| legislation he has sponsored has actually become law.
|
| When he was a member of the House of Representatives, he only
| sponsored one bill that became law, which was to rename a post
| office
|
| Source:
|
| https://www.congress.gov/advanced-search/legislation?congres...
| emestifs wrote:
| Still in the "Introduced" stage. Given the amount of lobbying
| in the US, and isn't the US senate Republican controlled(?),
| and lack of bipartisan cooperation, seems impossible for this
| to go anywhere.
| Mo3 wrote:
| With 40 hour pay? That's the real question
| jedberg wrote:
| Yes it includes a bit about no reduction in pay. Basically just
| changes overtime to anything after 32 hours.
| jedberg wrote:
| It's actually a decent bill. It basically says overtime starts at
| 32 hours instead of 40, and says that you can't cut salary
| because of this bill.
|
| I suspect if it actually passed (highly unlikely) that it would
| lead to wage stagnation for a few years as companies would say
| "well you got a 20% raise because of this law so you're good for
| a few years".
| avarun wrote:
| The other issue is that most white collar careers are already
| considered overtime-exempt, so it doesn't really matter if the
| cutoff is 32 hours or 40 hours. Given employment structure in
| the US a company can require you to work 100 hour weeks and the
| only thing employees can do is quit.
| Kluggy wrote:
| I'd be fine with wage stagnation for awhile if I got a day back
| a week.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| I suspect people will work two hours less on Monday-Wednesday
| and one hour less on Thursday and Friday. Meanwhile wage theft
| by way of "long lunch breaks" and "volunteer" hours will
| increase by eight hours per week.
| enlyth wrote:
| Feels like it would be worth it, at least eventually. Time is
| worth so much more than money
| joshribakoff wrote:
| If you are on salary, normally you don't get overtime. If you're
| on hourly, this potentially just means less hours
| alphazard wrote:
| Doesn't this just make it harder for humans to compete with
| machines and automation? If you had a job that was on the cusp of
| being done by an LLM, now it's definitely gone.
| sabellito wrote:
| You think that 8 extra hours would be the solution for humans
| to compete with machines and automation?
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _If you had a job that was on the cusp of being done by an
| LLM, now it 's definitely gone._
|
| If you have a job on the cusp of being done by an LLM, then
| it's already imminently gone. This changes nothing.
| headline wrote:
| I feel like eight hours a day is already a bit less than
| twenty-four.
| tptacek wrote:
| This is barely even policy. It will never happen. A list of
| problems:
|
| * Fundamentally what this does is offer some workers doing a
| 40-hour non-exempt workweek an additional 4 billable hours. But
| all that does is take a snapshot of current wages and offers a
| temporary benefit; prevailing wages will adjust to capture this
| phenomenon. Remember that very few full-time workers in the US
| make the minimum wage.
|
| * The economy is not set up to run on a 4-day workweek, most
| especially for the non-exempt employees who are the only people
| this bill applies to. A doctor's office is not going to shift
| from 5-day weeks to 4-day weeks to accommodate this, so either
| the non-exempt intake person is going to get converted to two
| non-exempt part-time intake people, or they're going to work a 40
| day workweek anyways.
|
| * There is a huge swath of the economy that is in the same
| economic class as the median non-exempt worker but makes a
| salary, and, for no reason anybody backing this has explained,
| they get no benefit from this at all.
| hereme888 wrote:
| How about government mind its own business and let the free
| market hash it out?
|
| Most of the world keeps working harder and harder, catching up
| more and more to the US. Keep it up and Americans will become
| uncompetitive relative to foreign labor.
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