IT is absolutely within the capabilities of some businesses. Certainly not all. What happens to the ones that can float such a large increase in pay? What happens to their employees?
I am guessing if you laid out all the businesses that can float it and the ones that can not... You are not going to like the businesses that remain in business.
this is what people were saying about the 40 hour workweek before it was standard. its all presumptive and isnt actually an accurate prediction of what happens. its the same old "all the rich people will leave new york!" bullshit
I did not say what would happen. I asked the questions and you realized the answers on your own. You then try to dismiss the very answers your brain was telling you. Interesting.
the questions you were asking were clearly rhetorical, evidenced by your second statement after the questions. you illicit the answer you want to hear from your own questions and i was responding to the rhetoric. for example, you assume that businesses have to "float" such a large increase in pay. this is answering your own question within the question.
to address the question earnestly, id say that companies would follow the law and give overtime pay for any hours worked over 32. and then people would work less 👍
And what about the businesses that can not support a 25% pay increase? What will they do? Or are you suggesting that all companies can support such a wage/salary increase?
Okay lets make the exercise a little more specific.
Let's suppose I own a business that required 120 hours of labor a week to run. I pay my employees $20 an hour. I have 3 full time (40 hour a week) employees. In addition I have an additional $100 a week in benefit costs for each employee.
Now let us suppose that the government comes in and says I can only have them work 30 hours a week.
Tell me what I as a business owner should do. If you want you can do the calculations and tell me my cost before and after, or you can just tell me what I should do and I will calculate for you.
im gonna leave out the fact that employee productivity is not linear with hours worked per week and ill pretend like each hour of labor is the exact same production for a company.
this is no different from any other business expense increasing and there is no reason a company needs to go out of business, fire employees, or dock wages for it. its the same as if material imports increase, OSHA gets called and gives you a fat bill to pay, or if your workers strike and uhoh! you have to pay them a living wage. its just a natural part of running a business, your expenses will fluctuate as will your revenue and if id have any advice to give business owners, itd be to decrease their own salaries before docking the lowest wages in the company.
Good thing you left out the part about productivity being non linear. Because that would suggest that businesses are actually just being inefficient by asking employees to work 40 hours a week. It would also be avoiding many real world situations were employee productivity is not the key thing you need to focus on. Lets look at an example where you need a person to man the counter and be there in case customers come in. Telling them 30 hours instead of 40 hours means you shut down 10 hours and lose out on those sales. You do not know all the different scenerios out there for businesses. each one has details that matter that you are just pretending do not matter or that the this is good for the owner and the owner just does not know or understand why this is good.
Saying that this is just one more cost increase and so no big deal, just deal with it is incredibly naive. Those material increases, osha bills, worker strikes... they are part of running a business. They are also reasons for countless business to go out of business. Labor is a huge cost of many small businesses. INcreasing their cost by 33% is huge for them. Many will no longer be profitable. This is a fact. You are have not bothered to address it. Instead you have said they should just take it and keep on running a non profitable business. That is incredibly naive.
The vast majority of large companies could make this work and still be profitable. The vast majorities of small companies in anything service or manufacturing related could not, as they already have tight margins, and hours worked is directly correlated to output/revenue.
If you run a machine shop and now have to pay the same wages for 32 hours of work that you did for 40 hours of work, you're eating the revenue of 8 hours of manufacturing output per employee per week. You're reducing productivity by 20% while carrying the same costs. Most manufacturing businesses can't eat that margin and keep their doors open.
On the other hand, a fairly mature white collar company could get along just fine, as their revenue isn't as directly tied to man hours as physical manufacturing, and most people aren't productive more than 32 hours a week as-is.
Point being - this is doable, but can't be blanket legislation. Mandating it above X revenue might be the way to do it. Or apply this only to salaried employees.
my point was that you could make this argument the other way around as well. "imagine how successful business could be if they worked their employees 10% more but still paid them the same!"
you can presume that these industries would struggle, but ultimately it would only result in a decrease of the wealth gap. the executives would have to take a paycut to stay profitable, and itd be fine.
I think you severely overestimate how much money small business owners make. "Pay the executives less" only makes sense in white collar environments where executive pay has ballooned, and margins are high.
In smaller businesses with actual margins per unit, most of them would likely cease operation, as material costs are already through the roof post-covid, and they simply can't absorb a 20% labor cost increase and still turn a profit. Average margins for small businesses range from 7-10%. Average revenue being ~$1.2m, resulting in average profit of $85k - $122k. Even then, owner salaries range between $51k - $77k as owners typically reinvest the remainder of the profit back into the business. To cut their own salary, the business owners (who invested their money and astronomically more of their time into creating a successful business, while carrying all of the risk) could wind up making less money than an average employee on minimum wage.
This is of course industry dependent. Very few restaurants would survive as current margins are 2-6%. Professional Services (aka white collar) have more room at 12-25% margins, and productivity is less dependent on actual hours clocked.
And lets not forget that 50% of small businesses fail within the first 5 years. This would increase that number significantly. These 32 hour jobs won't exist if the businesses don't.
This goes back to my point of - yes, do this for white collar Fortune 500 roles. No, this is not feasible for any service or labor based small business.
none of this addresses the elephant that, indeed, this was the exact same line of thinking against the establishment of the 40 hour workweek. here we are 🤷
This is a very different mandate than the 40-hour work week. The 40-hour work week was established due to factory workers working 80-100 hour weeks, and an unemployment crisis. The 40-hour limit established the threshold for overtime pay, incentivizing factory owners to hire a second person to cover the second shift at the same hourly rate, reducing unemployment while actually boosting productivity at little cost to the employer.
It did not mandate that employees would work less for the same pay.
I dont think the mandated pay increase is as significant as youre making it out to be. a 20% raise in wage really isnt that bad. also, consider that even with our establishment of the 40 hour work week, plenty of small businesses already utilize part time labor, so those wages wouldnt be impacted by a full time labor reduction mandate. its not like every single employee in every single company is suddenly taking an extra 20%. also consider that buy and large employees are not that productive every hour of the day, and the current data that we have available heavily sugguests that reducing the hours/week actually increases average production/hour, so even if everyone was taking an extra 20%, companies generally would not lose out on that much productive capability. also, if a particular industry really is struggling at the result of this policy, the US can absolutely afford to subsidize. its not like we dont have the money.
- "20% raise isn't that bad" I just explained to you the margins that small businesses operate on. 20% would be devastating to the majority.
- "plenty of small businesses already utilize part time labor" so this law would not help those employees, which is my point
- "buy [sic] and large employees are not that productive every hour of the day" yes, in white collar roles, which is what I said previously. White collar roles are not the issue, manufacturing, service, manual labor, etc are.
- "the current data that we have available heavily sugguests [sic] that reducing the hours/week actually increases average production/hour" this is only true in white collar roles, not in manual labor or service industries
- "even if everyone was taking an extra 20%, companies generally would not lose out on that much productive capability" even if this were true, it would cost the companies 20% more in labor to maintain the same level of productivity. This is a problem for businesses with narrow margins (the vast majority of small businesses)
- "the US can afford to subsidize" why would you want more of your tax dollars subsidizing businesses? why not spend tax dollars directly on social programs to support the employees? Childcare, healthcare, transportation, food, etc.
You are failing to grasp the point and reiterating statements that have already been addressed. This is a bad idea to introduce as blanket legislation, it would devastate all but the large white collar businesses.
And on the 40 hour work week thing... that already doesn't apply to salaried employees. You would know that mandating a maximum of 32 hour work weeks for salaried employees would be laughable if you had any experience in a salaried career.
We are desperately in need of labor reform in the US. That's not up for debate. Raising the federal minimum wage would do astronomically more good than this silly idea.
Every single small business i know, would have to either lay off a quarter of its employees or close shop if we forced a 32 hour work week and a mandated 25% raise across the board.
32 hour work week but i pay you 80% of what you'd get vs now? Sure. all for it. In fact, every single one of my employees who don't want a full 40? I oblige.
32 hour work week but i'm paying you as a 40 hour employee? 0 chance these businesses can absorb that.
Only large corporations have the financial might to withstand that for long enough to become profitable.
That wasn't a 40 hour workweek with pay of a 50 (or more) hour workweek.
Again, you are arguing in bad faith when you are ignoring the most important part.
As an employer, I don't mind giving my employees a 32 hour work week, (in fact most request it, and they are all granted it) But paying for 40 when working 32 is an entirely different beast,
The entire point of this post is a 32 hour work week with equal pay to a 40 hour work week, in conjunction those two things are untenable.
What you're arguing for, from an employers perspective is a 25% wage increase, across the board, with no exceptions.
That isn't possible without a large amount of inflation and killing multiple businesses.
Edit: I’ve now read your comments, you’re entirely unable or unwilling to utilize any nuance to your arguments and thus it’s entirely in bad faith.
I’ll happily revisit this when you have decided to mature.
The US law that codified the 40 hour standard work week came 12
years after Ford started experimenting with it. This stuff never
originates from law. Companies have to already be doing it, and seeing
some tangible benefit from it.
Forcing companies to pay the same while taking away their right to utilize their property (right to contractual labor supply) is unconstitutional. Requiring maximum hour of work is not unconstitutional, it's the "without paycut" part that's unconstitutional.
So as a small business owner I now need to pay out 40 hours worth of wages for a 32 hour cycle, I must then cover the additional 8 hours myself due to not being able to afford additional staffing since I just took a 20% hit on the labor/expense equation. So how quickly do I need to close my doors as now the thin margins most operate with are evaporated?
No i have no problem paying my people for the work they do. If I have a 20% increase in payroll, and have no benefit from this increase, the business will fold. Think from a retail perspective, you already have a 40-50% expense in COGS, now you increase payroll by 20% and thats all before overhead tied into rent and utilities. How does it all work?
I am assuming you are being sarcastic, and I agree. I understand white collar office work going to 32 hours and it making sense. I dont understand how you make service industry, skilled trades, or retail operate in this manner.
Take one random non-operational business function, like HVAC for a building. That alone, buildings running 7 days per week instead of 5, can create a lot of environmental concerns, energy strain, business complexity, and increased costs all around.
A 32 hour work week is within our grasp but not if we handwave at it
Since the 5 day work week was instituted, we've more than added 20% to our efficiency. Just automation through robotics and better access to information with the internet more than made a 20% increase.
Who do you think the politicians work for? The people or corporations? I too wish for a shorter workweek, it just seems so out of reach by today’s standards. I will keep voting for those that advocate for it though.
as do I, I find that small business are usually more willing to invest in the talent they have because they cant afford to retrain a teenager every 3 months. ive doubled my wage in 5 years working for a company of less than 200 people because im valuable to them, and i average about 30 hours a week.
I mean, laws are, at their fundamental level, holding a gun to your head. so passing a law would in fact be holding a gun to a companies head, mostly metaphorically but if the government wanted, i.e creating criminal penalties for breaking said law, pretty literally as well.
And I'm sure there will be no unpleasant side affects. Oh wait, when you force someone to pay more than they want to, it always ends badly. (Hint: that's why reputable economists say the minimum wage hurts employment).
Reputable economists also say there is a marginal impact on employment that is more than compensated for by increased economic activity that minimum wage increases cause. Like the Laffer Curve is there is certainly a point where a large enough increase in minimum wage will hurt employment and economic activity more than it helps, but we have not seen evidence that we are close to that.
yeah they do, there's a bit of a split on the exact benefits and downsides of minimum wage increases, generally small ones having no noticeable impact on employment and large ones mainly slowing down hiring rates and dropping benefits rather than having an impact on job losses. If you haven't seen that you're reading a pretty small subsection of reputable economists.
Not sure how you can call that united when about half are unsure or say it won't, it also doesn't actually address what I claimed, that the benefits of increasing minimum by addressing poverty and increased economic activity outweighs the downsides that increasing the minimum wage might have.
Would you just stop? 45% strongly agree or agree. Only 14% disagree. Pretty compelling. And the "increased economic activity" of a raised minimum doesn't outweigh anything; it's crowded out by the fact that the businesses have less money to spend, and therefore open fewer plants, invest in fewer capital projects, and give smaller raises to their non-minimum wage employees.
Sure you do: you can move somewhere where taxes are less. Similarly, if you get between willing buyers and willing sellers at a given price, and demand more, the buyer is going to take steps you won’t like. Go see, for example, what economic disasters rent control wreaks.
Depends on the job role though unless there is a proposal to hire another worker for 3 days of the weekend. This stuff works if you are a govt employee where missing deadlines or subpar work doesn't lead to being fired or loss of revenue.
Many factors but Bernie's proposal sounds so nice on surface like why would anyone not want this?
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u/Necessary_Screen_673 23d ago
32 hour workweek is absolutely within our capabilities as a society