(Matt Lamb, Headline USA) American workers should get paid the same amount of money but work only 32 hours a week, according to socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
Sanders recently suggested cutting the work week down to 32 hours in a Dec. 31 op-ed in the Guardian, a British publication. He also declared that “healthcare is a human right” and demanded 12 weeks of paid parental leave.
“People will live longer and healthier lives if they can spend more time with family and friends and have the opportunity to enjoy their leisure time,” Sen. Sanders wrote.
He said tech advancements should “benefit workers, not just billionaires on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley.”
Sanders also demanded a minimum wage of $17 per hour, spending more money on public schools, and combatting the “climate and environmental crisis.”
These suggestions, he said, will help “Make America healthy again,” co-opting the slogan of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
We are the wealthiest nation on earth.
There is no rational reason why we are not the healthiest nation on earth.
If we’re going to reform our broken & dysfunctional health care system and “Make America Healthy Again,” this is some of what we must do. https://t.co/y5wwjTAeqS
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 1, 2025
Sanders chaired the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in the Senate, although he will lose that position in the coming days due to Republicans gaining the majority.
He previously introduced legislation to enact a 32-hour work week, but the bill went nowhere in the 118th Congress, not even moving out of the committee Sanders chaired.
The conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy previously criticized Sanders and the United Auto Workers, which supports the bill, for their hypocrisy.
Jarrett Skorup with the Michigan-based center pointed out that jobs with the UAW require people to work 40 hours per week. Meanwhile, reviews from former staffers of Sanders’ indicate they usually were asked to work more than 50 hours per week.
“If Sanders and [UAW President Shawn Fain] believed fewer hours for the same pay makes sense, they would do it for the jobs they offer,” Skorup wrote in April.
A small business expert with the Washington Policy Center previously predicted a mandatory 32-hour work week would lead to increased prices or job layoffs.
Mark Farmsworth, director of the think tank’s small business center, said similar legislation in the state of Washington “would increase the employer wage costs by at least 12%.”
He wrote in 2020 that smaller profit margin industries like retail would see higher prices or employee layoffs.
