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Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

takano.house.gov

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Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#61

Post by ceejayoz »

sokoloff wrote: post #48
supportlocal4h wrote: post #19

Decades ago the U.S. tied healthcare to employment. It had some big positives at the time. I think it has proven to have more negatives as time has unfolded. Here is one of them. If you reduce hours per worker by, say, 10% you just pay each worker 10% less and hire 10% more workers, right? It's not so simple. If you try to cut the health insurance premium of each worker by 10% the policy becomes unattractive. If you…

It’s slightly worse than that. If you have 90 units of work to be done you might hire 9 workers at 10 units each. If the standard work goes down by 10%, you now need 10 workers at 9 units each. Your workers have increased by 11.1% (given by 1-1/(1-0.1)) A reduction from 40 to 32 would reduce hours per worker by 20% but increase workers and total health care costs by 25%.

The research around shorter work weeks and productivity indicates "units of work" don't work that way.

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/06/1013348626/iceland-finds-majo...

> Now, research out of Iceland has found that working fewer hours for the same pay led to improved well-being among workers, with no loss in productivity. In fact, in some places, workers were more productive after cutting back their hours.

Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#62

Post by mcot2 »

aerosmile wrote: post #50

I've been wondering what stops politicians from gaming the democratic system by introducing legislation that has short-term benefits for the electorate and long-term negative consequences for the country as a whole. I know that I wouldn't vote for someone like that, but I can't think of many people around me who wouldn't. I suppose many would think of it this way: "what's good for the long-term future of the country…

Have you not noticed corporations and the very weathy fund almost all candidates? What you are saying only happens when we get money out of politics.

Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#63

Post by abeppu »

bigmattystyles wrote: post #10

For manual labor this would make a big difference. For intellectual work, I suspect it would probably not lead to much less work being done. Just because people are at the office 8 hours a day, doesn’t mean they’re getting 8 hours of work done. I would be curious if people would get as much done and waste less time sitting there or if the sitting there time is the same, percentage wise.

> For intellectual work, I suspect it would probably not lead to much less work being done.

I think the other big thing is, hasn't overtime only ever applied to people below a given salary level? I wonder, if this passed would it actually change norms at places that have institutionally always had people working a lot of hours? I'm thinking not just of some tech companies, but e.g. lawyers racking up billable hours etc.

Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#64

Post by skyfaller »

bigmattystyles wrote: post #10

For manual labor this would make a big difference. For intellectual work, I suspect it would probably not lead to much less work being done. Just because people are at the office 8 hours a day, doesn’t mean they’re getting 8 hours of work done. I would be curious if people would get as much done and waste less time sitting there or if the sitting there time is the same, percentage wise.

Something to take into account for manual labor is a great deal of it happens outside. Due to climate change, many parts of the USA will experience dangerous heat in the middle of the day, and even some indoor locations like Amazon warehouses have inadequate cooling. https://gizmodo.com/amazons-new-safety-crisis-could-be-heat-...

If workers took a siesta in the middle of the day, they would avoid the heat to some degree, which would be better for the workers' health and may not greatly change how much work gets done. Workers operating in dangerous heat will either reduce their physical exertions in order to moderate their body temperature, take frequent breaks, or collapse (in which case they are getting no work done, and depending on how badly injured they are, they may need to be replaced, which requires training etc.).

In other words, depending on the weather/climate in the future, reducing the work week to 32 hours may not negatively affect results from manual labor either.

Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#65

Post by Mountain_Skies »

supportlocal4h wrote: post #19

Decades ago the U.S. tied healthcare to employment. It had some big positives at the time. I think it has proven to have more negatives as time has unfolded. Here is one of them. If you reduce hours per worker by, say, 10% you just pay each worker 10% less and hire 10% more workers, right? It's not so simple. If you try to cut the health insurance premium of each worker by 10% the policy becomes unattractive. If you…

It's interesting that my ACA (Obamacare) premiums are lower than the premiums were at my last employer for similar coverage (using COBRA numbers for comparison). This might be because my last employer was bad at negotiating but I think it's mostly because they had an aging Rustbelt workforce and lots of people in roles that were unhealthy long term (linesmen and call centers). Because rates are set based on the pool's group risk, the risk in the public ACA pool is lower than the employer's pool of employees. So even though my job was white collar work at a desk, my premiums were based on an unhealthy pool of workers. If I went to work for a startup made up mostly of 20 somethings, I (and my employer) would likely be paying less than my old employer and less than ACA.

So this is another way that tying health insurance to employment creates pockets of unfairness and undesirable outcomes. While I'm not sold on having a government run healthcare system (the pandemic only reinforces this), there are plenty of hybrid systems out there in other industrialized nations that might (must recognize each country's situation is unique) have better outcomes.

Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#66

Post by swalsh »

With the political realignment, I guess it's not surprising that some politicians are trying to bring back the glory days again with New Deal ideas. Most people can probably agree the 40 hour workweek is an outdated idea. But a 32 hour workweek is just a modification of an outdated idea. Not a modernization of it. I'm not quite sure what the modern version of a 40 hour workweek is, but it's not a shortening of it. I'd guess it's a change in default pay maybe ownership structures, and probably scheduling.

Honestly in my opinion, gig apps are a great start, but they suck at the moment in a similar way jobs before the new deal sucked. The worker needs more rights, they need more control of their pay. A New, New deal in my opinion would probably be giving employee rights to gig workers, who control their own time, and pay. And probably adding a basic income floor to prevent a race to the bottom.

Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#67

Post by sokoloff »

ceejayoz wrote: post #61
sokoloff wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s slightly worse than that. If you have 90 units of work to be done you might hire 9 workers at 10 units each. If the standard work goes down by 10%, you now need 10 workers at 9 units each. Your workers have increased by 11.1% (given by 1-1/(1-0.1)) A reduction from 40 to 32 would reduce hours per worker by 20% but increase workers and total health care costs by 25%.

The research around shorter work weeks and productivity indicates "units of work" don't work that way. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/06/1013348626/iceland-finds-majo... > Now, research out of Iceland has found that working fewer hours for the same pay led to improved well-being among workers, with no loss in productivity. In fact, in some places, workers were more productive after cutting back their hours.

If the task is coverage-related (“be available to run a cash register” or “answer any phone call that comes in” or “watch this area for security purposes”), it’s exactly that ratio.

Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#68

Post by mattficke »

thayne wrote: post #26

I wonder if this will have any impact on jobs that are exempt from overtime, such as software development (see https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17e-overtime-co... ).

This bill doesn’t appear to do so, but I hope the exempt occupations are revisited at some point. Companies like law firms and software consultancies have no trouble billing out many of these exempt jobs at an hourly rate. I don’t think there’s a great argument that the workers shouldn’t get the same labor protections as other employees.

Re: Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours

#69

Post by savanaly »

tudelo wrote: post #59
thoughtstheseus wrote: post #25

Somewhat of a tangent but related to labor: tell your reps to abolish personal income taxes and replace it with a consumption tax. We should not be taxing labor…

Every road having a toll is your idea of the future? Or am I misunderstanding something.

I'm pretty positive on this idea. Driving on roads imposes an externality on other people, why shouldn't we attempt to make drivers/companies internalize that cost by charging a toll? I'm not so positive on it that I would support it if it were clunky and imposed a big transaction cost (having to stop and pay). But if it were automatic like the tolling via camera that happens with a certain bridge near me then I would support it.

Of course it's probably low in importance compared to certain other modes of travel that have big externalities that aren't tolled/taxed appropriately...(air travel).

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