LOS ANGELES — It’s easy enough to dismiss a recent California At this point, the legislation is highly unlikely to pass. Business interests are resolutely opposed, while relatively few residents appear to even be aware of the proposal. The legislation is highly targeted — affecting only non-unionized companies that have more than 500 workers. Yet even with its narrow scope, the bill raises a broader issue, one that affects workers nationwide.
A four-day workweek is an audacious but necessary ask, a way of deepening the conversation about how overwhelmed and overworked Americans can achieve desperately needed balance.
As Cristina Garcia, the Democratic state Assembly member co-sponsoring the legislation, told me: “It’s in our DNA to want better. This is a state of big dreams.”
California has long made life better for the people who labor within its borders. It was the first U.S. state to legislate paid family leave. The Golden State generally bans employee non-compete agreements, meaning workers are free to up and leave their employer for competitors. Last year, the state enacted protections for many warehouse workers, requiring larger employers to reveal their work quotas and banning them from penalizing workers for taking bathroom breaks.
Meanwhile, no other state is more central to defining leisure and free time — for surfing, hikes, time with family and friends — as part of the American dream. In California, temperate weather in most areas year-round and copious access to nature permit an indoor/outdoor lifestyle, one that almost screams, “Take a break!” (It is perhaps not a coincidence that a federal effort to cut work hours was introduced last July by Democratic Rep. Mark Takano, of Riverside, Calif.)
A reminder: Pre-pandemic, Americans put in more hours on the job than people in other comparable nations. When millions of positions went remote in the spring of 2020, the length of the U.S. workday increased by almost 50 minutes, with many workers putting in time in the evenings and on weekends. This has led to epic levels of burnout — and greater willingness to address unhappiness, as seen in the wave of departures known as the Great Resignation and the reluctance of vast numbers of office workers to return in person full time.
The California initiative is an attempt to provide hard-working Americans some long-overdue help. If enacted, hourly workers would receive their same 40-hour-a-week pay — for working four eight-hour days. Anything more, and they would collect overtime. (Unionized businesses are exempt, the legislation’s sponsors say, because they are governed by collective bargaining agreements.)
Source: The Washington Post
