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Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

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Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#171

Post by qeternity »

hollasch wrote: post #39

Increasingly, American political parties are most interested in seizing and wielding power, and I feel like most citizens are occupied with surrendering and assigning that power to their preferred political party. How in the world did we get here? Is there any way we can turn back? Most of the discussion here is about whether mandating business practice would be a good or a bad business move, but hardly anyone is que…

I agree with your comment, but it has nothing to do with Americans.

Your comments sounds very much like an American with limited experience outside of the US. The scary part is that especially post pandemic, this is a very global phenomenon.

Source: American expat

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#172

Post by exabrial »

I really hope this passes, just so we can see how stupid defining these things in legislature. This should be decided by employers, not politicians. If employers have too much power then you have a monopoly problem and you should do something about it, not rake small businesses over the coals.

I would love a 4 day work week, but only if it meant my job is secure. This is the worst way to go about it.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#173

Post by rufus_foreman »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #156
rufus_foreman wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> somehow California’s economy keeps doing well California has the nation's highest poverty rate when cost of living is taken in to account. If the worst poverty rate is "doing well", what would doing poorly look like, in your opinion?

Mississippi?

Mississippi is one of the states that has a lower poverty rate than California when cost of living is taken into account.

There are 48 others, can list them for you if needed.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#174

Post by dragonwriter »

eigen wrote: post #134
chaostheory wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California had just had its net population change going negative for the first time recently. There is a threshold where more businesses leave that it’s starting to reach. The cost of living doesn’t help along with crime. Climate change will also make the situation worse in the coming years, where we eventually lose temperate weather in exchange for forest fires. We’re already experiencing failing infrastructure like…

> California had just had its net population change going negative for the first time recently. based on 2020 census, California is still growing. 2020: 39,538,223 2010: 37,253,956 6.1% increase https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/popchange...

The decrease was in estimated 2021 vs 2020 population, not census 2020 vs 2010.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#175

Post by abeppu »

As with the bill that Rep Takano introduced in Congress, I feel like the media are not discussing this in at all a reasonable way. It is _not_ a bill to shorten the workweek. It's a bill to change the line at which employers pay overtime ... to workers who would get overtime.

In California, for employers of the size mentioned here, workers become exempt at around ~$62k/yr. The BLS has stats for California which annoyingly give the median hourly wage, and the average annual comp (~$65.5k), but not the median annual comp. But certainly large fraction of workers are above the 'exempt' line, possibly more than half.

Add to that a lot of workers are:

- working for employers smaller than 500 staff in CA

- some form of contractor

- working multiple jobs (perhaps less now than a few years ago)

What's the proportion of workers who would be impacted by this?

And how many workers are not yet exempt, but are close enough to the exempt line that employers will be better off giving them a raise to an exempt salary and then demanding more hours per week?

https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/labor/wage-and-hour/salary-laws... https://www.bls.gov/oes/2020/may/oes_ca.htm#00-0000

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#176

Post by proc0 »

qeternity wrote: post #171
hollasch wrote: post #39

Increasingly, American political parties are most interested in seizing and wielding power, and I feel like most citizens are occupied with surrendering and assigning that power to their preferred political party. How in the world did we get here? Is there any way we can turn back? Most of the discussion here is about whether mandating business practice would be a good or a bad business move, but hardly anyone is que…

I agree with your comment, but it has nothing to do with Americans. Your comments sounds very much like an American with limited experience outside of the US. The scary part is that especially post pandemic, this is a very global phenomenon. Source: American expat

Are you saying these laws are common elsewhere? I don't recall any other country passing a 4 day work week law. Either way, these type of laws being uncommon in America is not a bad thing.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#177

Post by carapace »

hollasch wrote: post #39

Increasingly, American political parties are most interested in seizing and wielding power, and I feel like most citizens are occupied with surrendering and assigning that power to their preferred political party. How in the world did we get here? Is there any way we can turn back? Most of the discussion here is about whether mandating business practice would be a good or a bad business move, but hardly anyone is que…

> hardly anyone is questioning whether this is a good or legitimate role for those in government to decree and mandate.

That's because it's been discussed and the current status quo is the result. Check out the history of the labor movement.

> The nature and power of organized labor is the outcome of historical tensions among counter-acting forces involving workplace rights, wages, working hours, political expression, labor laws, and other working conditions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_St...

> More and more, I see governments mandating changes that already appear to be underway, but in a way that accrues the praise and rewards to themselves.

That's pretty much the definition of "politician", eh?

> Most Americans seem to be complicit in this transformation,

What transformation?

> continually voting greater and greater control and authority away from the people and toward government powers.

Without concrete examples it's difficult to say anything useful.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#178

Post by dragonwriter »

ceeplusplus wrote: post #96
kelnos wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seriously, just check out downtown SF if you don't believe me. It feels dead. Wouldn't we attribute this more to COVID, though? This thread is talking about a hypothetical poor economy due to businesses leaving because of employee-friendly labor laws. In early 2020 downtown was pretty vibrant. > There are more beggars than tourists. I get that you're exaggerating for effect, but c'mon. I saw plenty of tourists/shop…

> Wouldn't we attribute this more to COVID, though? It's been my anecdotal experience that hot areas in other cities like New York and Chicago are not dead like SF and the East Bay are. Nor are they as sketchy - I'd feel comfortable walking around Millennium Park at night and be pretty confident I wouldn't get robbed. Can you say the same about the Embarcadero? > hypothetical poor economy due to businesses leaving be…

> It's been my anecdotal experience that hot areas in other cities like New York and Chicago are not dead like SF and the East Bay are.

The Bay Area experienced a massive internal-to-California (largely to the Sacramento area) outmigration during the pandemic, which removed a lot of support for businesses from locals, and tourism hasn't recovered from the pandemic and related restrictions.

This has been (on paper) great for me as a Sac area homeowner, but more to the point here it makes judging California economic health by looking at Bay Area brick-and-mortar business district vitality potentially very misleading.

> In any case, it was certainly a lot worse than a few years ago when it would be more like 95% tourists.

Federal COVID-related domestic air travel restrictions (other than masking, which continues) only just ended, and federal international air travel restrictions still exist. This impacts tourism, obviously.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#180

Post by dragonwriter »

dllthomas wrote: post #34
me_me_mu_mu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think from a politics standpoint yeah I’m kind of a doomer. I identify as liberal but the people running on liberal platform are really dumb and their opponents are insane/dumb in other ways. There’s no good options to vote for. Idk how we will manage to wade through that.

I kinda think part of the problem is the pervasive expectation that there should be someone to vote for with a Platform They Believe In And You Should Too. That's fundamentally at odds with the mechanics of our system, where you need to build coalitions of people who can at least agree that this set of compromises is better than the set pitched by the other candidates. And actually, I think finding compromises is fun…

> I kinda think part of the problem is the pervasive expectation that there should be someone to vote for with a Platform They Believe In And You Should Too. That's fundamentally at odds with the mechanics of our system

Yeah, our systemic duopoly and the associated requirement for backroom coalition building (and the associated papering over of differences for marketing purposes) to build viable parties is a significant defect in our structure of government compared to many other modern democracies.

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