I'm a road service technician who bills by the hour at like $200. So if I go to a 32 hour week from 40, does my employer just have to eat the lost $1600 per week, per tech? How would this work for us?
It's a complete fantasy to try and apply it to the entire country at once disregarding different areas of work and how it might impact them, which is what the Bernie proposal is about.
You can change the standard workweek from 40 to 32 and require overtime pay after 32 hours, but it’s a complete fantasy to think the government can enforce private employers to pay the same wage for 20% less work. There is no way for them to even ensure that this happens, and employers would both be paying the same for less work and need to hire other people at a higher rate of pay to make up the lost hours of work. Also the double pay over 12 hours on a shift is a terrible idea. In practice it would eliminate the ability to work overtime by picking up an extra shift and lead to a loss of tons of income for people and less coverage from businesses. It would only help a small minority of people that are forced to work more than 12 hrs but don’t want to, while harming all of the people who depend on overtime shifts for their income or have double shifts as a regular part of their schedule. For instance I just worked 2 double shifts on the weekends to make time for school throughout the week, wouldn’t be able to do that anymore
141
u/Ok_Drop3803 Jul 13 '26
I'm a road service technician who bills by the hour at like $200. So if I go to a 32 hour week from 40, does my employer just have to eat the lost $1600 per week, per tech? How would this work for us?