Can Congress create a 32-hour work week? Bernie Sanders it’s not a ‘radical’ idea

An overwhelming majority of working Americans want a four-day work week. If it survives a powerful opposition, legislation in Congress could make the 32-hour work week a reality.

On Thursday, US Senator Bernie Sanders unveiled legislation that would effectively establish a 32-work week in the US without a loss in pay, eliminating one eight-hour work day from millions of Americans’ work weeks.

The measure would lower the federal threshold for overtime pay from 40 hours to 32, and it would mandate time-and-a-half pay when hourly wage workers work more than eight hours in a day, and then double pay for workers if they log more than 12 hours in a day – moves that would likely discourage employers from keeping workers on the clock beyond 32 hours a week.

In remarks to the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Thursday, the progressive senator from Vermont and committee chair pointed to the rise in automation and artificial intelligence, explosive leaps in worker productivity, massive gaps in employee wages against CEO earnings, shrinkflation and diminishing inflation-adjusted earnings.

“This is not a radical idea,” he said in prepared remarks. “Who benefits from the exploding technology? The wealthiest people who are doing phenomenally well or working people who are falling further and further behind?”

Democratic House Rep Mark Takano of California, who introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives, called the proposal a “transformative” measure that would be “a win for both workers and work place.”

The legislation has no chance of passage in the currently Republican-controlled House, and only a slim change of surviving the narrowly Democratically controlled Senate, but the measures