The 4 Day Workweek. Why Not?
NEWSLETTER VOLUME 2.13
|March 28, 2024
The 4 Day Workweek. Why Not?
There's nothing magic about a 5 day work week. It was a combination of religious days of rest, factories where people had to show up and leave at the same time to do the work, and Henry Ford's realization in 1926 that people would buy more cars if they actually had time to do stuff besides work.
Here we are a century later and we're still figuring out the relationship between time, work, and compensation. Time is not really money. But it is a limited, nonrenewable resource for humans. Work is not time either, although it usually requires some time. But how much and when depends on the person, the job, and when the work is needed. The whole idea of a 40 hour work week, or even a 5 day work week is just what we're used to. There may be better ways to manage our human lives.
There's also a divide between people who consistently work at one physical place and people who can work from almost anywhere. For the digital nomads, it's been clear for decades that if you have the right tools, information, and resources, you can get a lot done in a little time. Today, instead of getting things done, we spend our time in meetings to figure out if we have the right tools, information, and resources and how to get them.
Then there's Parkinson's law, which is the work expands to fill the time allotted to its completion. This results in procrastination, faffing about, and in my case, too much time on Twitter. I wish I had answers, but I'm still working on the questions.
In the meantime, the bill in Congress to create a 4 day workweek is not going anywhere because, well, Congress. But we can still think about what we really need to get done and whether giving people 20% less time to do it in might work out well for everyone.
Seyfarth Synopsis: A new piece of legislation introduced in Congress, if enacted, would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to establish 32-hour workweek for non-exempt employees, with no loss in pay. While the bill is unlikely to gain steam, it might trigger movement throughout the country to revisit what a “standard” workweek means for American employees.
We are posting this blog entry on a Friday, so if you are reading it today, you probably are not among those enjoying a four-day workweek. Some in Congress are trying to change that.
Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced Senate Bill 3947, a “bill to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to reduce the standard workweek from 40 hours per week to 32 hours per week…”
Also dubbed the “Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act,” the bill would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to establish a 32-hour workweek without any reduction in pay for non-exempt employees. This would lower the existing threshold for overtime compensation for non-exempt employees working longer than eight hours in a day and also protect pay and benefits of workers to ensure that this reduction in the workweek would not cause a loss in pay. The bill also proposes gradual reduction period where over the next three years, the 40-hour workweek standard would reduce by two years until the ultimate 32-hour mark is reached.
In support of the bill, Senator Sanders cites to increases in productivity by American workers as well as continued technological advancements which should be earning workers more pay for less work. He argues that weekly wages are actually lower for the American worker than they were 50 years ago, and this decrease paired with an increase in pay for CEOs and shareholders show that working class families also need to be able to benefit from increased productivity in American companies. To introduce the bill, the HELP Committee held a hearing with support of union and employee advocates, while an employee representative testified as to the negative impact the bill would have on employers and employees alike, including that it would be a “short-term success [but] long-term failure” likely resulting in operational and financial failure down the road for employers.
As seen with similar legislation, it is unlikely that this bill will gain much traction. As Seyfarth discussed recently, similar bills have quickly lost steam due to technical and practical challenges faced by employers who have for nearly a century navigated the peculiarities of a 40-hour standard. Our colleagues overseas also recently have discussed the global interest in moving to the 32-hour workweek and similar challenges employers are facing in the UK and Italy.
Although all current signs point to the bill not succeeding, with the recent rise is similar legislation––or at least discussions about it––we can expect more local interest in shortening the workweek and could see states individually try move towards a shorter workweek.
Until then, get back to work: it’s still a workday.
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