H.R.4728 and the 32-Hour Work Week
Happy Monday, dear readers!
Your humble blogger is happy to greet you back from yet another weekend, and boy do businesses have something to look forward to in their Herculean efforts to keep the lights on!
As everyone knows, your garden variety employee can work up to 40 hours per week at a regular rate, and then gets paid overtime (1.5 the base hourly rate) for hours worked in excess of 40 per week. However, that’s not good enough for some folks in Washington, D.C., so we have a bill introduced in Congress which should be titled “The Trigger Mass Business Closures and Layoffs Bill” but instead is called the “32-Hour Workweek Act.”
Congressman Takano (California’s 41st District) introduced H.R.4728 back in July of 2021 but has made the news recently drawing attention to the proposal. So, let’s talk about the effects!
Well, for one thing, this is a significant increase in the cost of productivity. The production captured in a 40-hour work week would go up in cost by 12.5%. If you’re a California business already struggling to keep the lights on, how will the 12.5% increase in labor cost impact you?
Looking at it from the employee side, of course, we can anticipate many full-time employees being reduced in their work schedules to 32 hours to avoid the imposition of mandatory overtime for a 40 hour week. So, if there were previously 4 employees working 40 hours per week, the business must now hire a 5th employee to have 5 people working 32 hours instead of 4 people working 40 hours. Unless of course, the business has the misfortune of being in a place that has an ordinance similar to San Jose’s Section 4.101.040 which forces employers to prioritize making part-time employees into full-time employees before hiring more part-time employees.
And what effect would such a law have on the workers’ compensation world? Besides the anticipated layoffs and business closures that would certainly follow the passage of such a law, any applicant who worked more than 32 hours per week prior to going out on TD, would likely claim that the law constitutes a wage increase and demand an appropriate increase in the TD rate.
And, of course, lay-offs and economic downturns always trigger massive claims for injury, whether post-term CTs or pre-term back strains.
Hopefully, after the fanfare and attention that the internet gives such things now and then, H.R.4728 will die in committee and we will never hear of it again. As for all the employers and employees who think a 32-hour work-week is a great idea, your humble blogger has a simple solution. Negotiate with your employer and only work 32 hours per week. One needs neither divine intervention nor an act of congress to negotiate a mutually agreeable arrangement.
And now, for no reason whatsoever, I offer the following meme…
See you on Wednesday, dear readers!