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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

#61
This bill affects only hourly workers, which means that Walmarts and other companies will just cut their work week and pay employees less. They are not going to pay them overtime if they work more. And poor people will need to find an extra job to keep up with bills.

The only poeple who might benefit are hourly gov employees - but that depends on budget constrains.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#62
There's no English equivalent, so please excuse the use of Google translate:

https://de-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Auseinanderse...

This is the German wikipedia entry on the conflicts that trade unions and employers' associations in Germany have fought over the reduction of weekly working hours since the late 1970s.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#63

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…

Because there's really no reason to question whether government should reasonably limit standard business practices – we've seen, in spades, how business practices are driven entirely and only by concerns of profit while the labor market has very little flexibility that would allow workers to "vote with their feet" and move to "better" employers without outside influence.

Put another way: Of course it's a good thing to force businesses to make work more humane and sustainable for the humans who have to do it.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#64
post #52
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This! 40 hours workweek with mandatory overtime pay (usually double per hour) with a minimum duration. Reducing the workweek below that would be considered unnecessary government intervention and is liable to be bad for business and workers. No one wants a pay cut that goes with it.

The proposal isn't a paycut right? As written employees keep the same pay but work 32 hours instead of 40.

One, there are a lot of businesses that operate on margins well under 20%. Some percentage of these would absolutely go out of business if you somehow mandated 80% of the current hours for 100% of the current pay. Now you can argue they should go out of business anyway, and maybe you're right, but it's still the government passing a law to intentionally put a lot of people out of business and make a lot of people lose their jobs.

Two, FTA "the proposed bill would require these employers to compensate employees who work in excess of 32 hours per week at 1 ½ times the employee’s regular rate of pay" - it's unclear to me how this impacts exempt vs. non-exempt workers. If you're salaried in California and you work 50 hours a week it's not like you get paid any more. Those are 10 hours of unpaid overtime. This doesn't seem to change that concept. If they're only talking about hourly workers, then it's a pay cut no matter what. In the "Disadvantages" section of the article it further implies that these changes would mostly impact hourly/non-exempt workers.

Three, why the differentiation between 500 workers? If I'm an hourly worker someplace with ~490ish employees who works 40h/wk I'm going to have to worry about my hours being cut because of hiring I have nothing to do with. If I'm consistently getting overtime for a larger employer at ~40 hours a week, I'm going to receive a pay cut if they downsize and that work is no longer considered overtime.

Four, and perhaps most importantly, this is never getting signed into law. It's a publicity/donor stunt by some politicians and nothing more.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#65

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…

The definition of the length of the work week and who it applies to is already a concept defined by government.

Unfortunately. People should be able to negotiate between themselves without interference from the government.

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#67
post #35

What we need is more enforcement of existing labor laws. A 40-hour work week with teeth. No "unpaid overtime". No "time shaving". Out of hours phone calls count as work time, with a minimum time for a call. (3 hours in the movie industry).

Yes, I mean we should also have a 32 hour work week but the laws surrounding it need teeth for sure. We should hold executives/managers criminally liable with the potential for jail time for repeat offenses. It's absolutely fucking absurd that shoplifting, especially when performed by disadvantaged folks carries harsher penalties than systematic wage theft. It's upside down clown world out there, abusing your positio…

Are you saying the punishment for shoplifting should be less if you're disadvantaged compared to if you're not?

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#68

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…

Eh whether government should have the right to do this takes a backseat to the fact that the government is the only way we can do this. The government is the only coordinating mechanism we have to enforce something like this, otherwise everyone is playing the prisoner’s dilemma.

By prisoners dilemma, do you mean that people are free to negotiate amongst themselves as they see fit? Oh the horror…

Re: Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours

#69
post #35

What we need is more enforcement of existing labor laws. A 40-hour work week with teeth. No "unpaid overtime". No "time shaving". Out of hours phone calls count as work time, with a minimum time for a call. (3 hours in the movie industry).

What I’d like to see is less government power, which means they stay out of my life, which means more freedom and less coercion, which means I can negotiate my life as I see fit like a grown up who is responsible for himself.
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