<story><title>Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours</title><url>https://takano.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/rep-takano-introduces-legislation-to-reduce-the-standard-workweek-to-32-hours</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sokoloff</author><text>It’s slightly worse than that.&lt;p&gt;If you have 90 units of work to be done you might hire 9 workers at 10 units each. If the standard work goes down by 10%, you now need 10 workers at 9 units each. Your workers have increased by 11.1% (given by 1-1&amp;#x2F;(1-0.1))&lt;p&gt;A reduction from 40 to 32 would reduce hours per worker by 20% but increase workers and total health care costs by 25%.</text></item><item><author>supportlocal4h</author><text>Decades ago the U.S. tied healthcare to employment. It had some big positives at the time. I think it has proven to have more negatives as time has unfolded. Here is one of them.&lt;p&gt;If you reduce hours per worker by, say, 10% you just pay each worker 10% less and hire 10% more workers,  right? It&amp;#x27;s not so simple. If you try to cut the health insurance premium of each worker by 10% the policy becomes unattractive. If you keep the same policy, you increase your health insurance costs by 10%.&lt;p&gt;For this and other reasons, it&amp;#x27;s time to separate health insurance from employer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ceejayoz</author><text>The research around shorter work weeks and productivity indicates &amp;quot;units of work&amp;quot; don&amp;#x27;t work that way.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;1013348626&amp;#x2F;iceland-finds-major-success-moving-to-shorter-work-week&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;1013348626&amp;#x2F;iceland-finds-majo...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Now, research out of Iceland has found that working fewer hours for the same pay led to improved well-being among workers, with no loss in productivity. In fact, in some places, workers were more productive after cutting back their hours.</text></comment>
<story><title>Rep. Takano Introduces Legislation to Reduce the Standard Workweek to 32 Hours</title><url>https://takano.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/rep-takano-introduces-legislation-to-reduce-the-standard-workweek-to-32-hours</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sokoloff</author><text>It’s slightly worse than that.&lt;p&gt;If you have 90 units of work to be done you might hire 9 workers at 10 units each. If the standard work goes down by 10%, you now need 10 workers at 9 units each. Your workers have increased by 11.1% (given by 1-1&amp;#x2F;(1-0.1))&lt;p&gt;A reduction from 40 to 32 would reduce hours per worker by 20% but increase workers and total health care costs by 25%.</text></item><item><author>supportlocal4h</author><text>Decades ago the U.S. tied healthcare to employment. It had some big positives at the time. I think it has proven to have more negatives as time has unfolded. Here is one of them.&lt;p&gt;If you reduce hours per worker by, say, 10% you just pay each worker 10% less and hire 10% more workers,  right? It&amp;#x27;s not so simple. If you try to cut the health insurance premium of each worker by 10% the policy becomes unattractive. If you keep the same policy, you increase your health insurance costs by 10%.&lt;p&gt;For this and other reasons, it&amp;#x27;s time to separate health insurance from employer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sam0x17</author><text>Not all companies are going to decrease wages in response to this legislation. In fact I&amp;#x27;d be willing to bet it&amp;#x27;s less than 50% of companies. Right now we are already in a huge labor shortage because employers aren&amp;#x27;t paying enough to attract the workers they need. Companies that don&amp;#x27;t decrease wages in this situation will out-compete companies that do decrease wages if the primary scarce resource right now is workers.&lt;p&gt;This is similar to what&amp;#x27;s happening right now with companies that try to do locality adjustments for remote workers -- they get out-competed by companies willing to pay full price regardless of location. Eventually this will cause locality adjustments to vanish completely imo.</text></comment>