Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday introduced a bill to establish a standard four-day workweek in the United States without any reduction in pay. The bill, over a four-year period, would lowe…
I like the concept but I don’t like the hours. Nobody should ever work 96 hours in one week. That’s either seven 13.7 hour days or six 16 hour days. Add morning routine, commute, meals, chores, errands, etc. Seven 12 hour workdays (84 hour week) should be the absolute maximum and it should be extremely costly to employers to ever get close to it. I say that as somebody who has done many 84 hour weeks in his life. It’s not fucking safe. Really anything past 50 hours gets really unsafe really quickly.
There should also be federal legislation that requires OT pay past a certain number of daily hours (preferably 8, but I’d accept 10) AND guarantee some amount of PTO for workers. The US is one of the only developed countries that has no minimum paid time off requirement for employers.
96 hours are plausible if you work on a remote site (e.g. oil rig) and are practically always on the clock. Just because it is insane from a normal person’s pov doesn’t mean it does not exist.
I’m not saying that it doesn’t, I’m saying that it shouldn’t. I’ve never worked on an oil rig, but I’ve traveled to support refueling outages at nuclear plants, so I understand to some extent. Fatigue is a motherfucker. Even if you don’t make a mistake, the exhaustion and lack of sleep still will take years off of your life. Money can’t buy that back. That’s why I’m saying there should be a lower cap in the first place. 84 hours is exactly half of the week, which is why that’s the number I threw out there. Companies shouldn’t get to be exempt just because their exploitative model has already been accepted. If a proposed change doesn’t change anything, then what’s the point?
It’s meant to be an absolute cap that you’re a lunatic for even needing to get in range of, because any time past the 64th hour gets you that 2.5^2 multiplier, not the full extra 32 hours
Like I said, the time is the worker’s check in this system, it’s not the maximum they can juice you for, it’s how much they can get out of you before you get to juice them.
I like the concept but I don’t like the hours. Nobody should ever work 96 hours in one week. That’s either seven 13.7 hour days or six 16 hour days. Add morning routine, commute, meals, chores, errands, etc. Seven 12 hour workdays (84 hour week) should be the absolute maximum and it should be extremely costly to employers to ever get close to it. I say that as somebody who has done many 84 hour weeks in his life. It’s not fucking safe. Really anything past 50 hours gets really unsafe really quickly.
There should also be federal legislation that requires OT pay past a certain number of daily hours (preferably 8, but I’d accept 10) AND guarantee some amount of PTO for workers. The US is one of the only developed countries that has no minimum paid time off requirement for employers.
96 hours are plausible if you work on a remote site (e.g. oil rig) and are practically always on the clock. Just because it is insane from a normal person’s pov doesn’t mean it does not exist.
I’m not saying that it doesn’t, I’m saying that it shouldn’t. I’ve never worked on an oil rig, but I’ve traveled to support refueling outages at nuclear plants, so I understand to some extent. Fatigue is a motherfucker. Even if you don’t make a mistake, the exhaustion and lack of sleep still will take years off of your life. Money can’t buy that back. That’s why I’m saying there should be a lower cap in the first place. 84 hours is exactly half of the week, which is why that’s the number I threw out there. Companies shouldn’t get to be exempt just because their exploitative model has already been accepted. If a proposed change doesn’t change anything, then what’s the point?
It’s meant to be an absolute cap that you’re a lunatic for even needing to get in range of, because any time past the 64th hour gets you that 2.5^2 multiplier, not the full extra 32 hours
Like I said, the time is the worker’s check in this system, it’s not the maximum they can juice you for, it’s how much they can get out of you before you get to juice them.