Wealth and income inequality has never been higher, says Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in an editorial for CNN, and it’s time for a major change. “The time is long overdue for Congress to stand up for the hard-pressed working families of our country,” and doing that, he writes, means implementing a 32-hour workweek with no decrease in pay.
The 8-hour workday came into play with the trade union movement as far back at 1866, when people were tired of working 12-hour days, six to seven days, a week. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation that gave railroad workers an 8-hour workday, and Ford Motor Company became the first major company to establish the same for its autoworkers.
Despite incredible growth in technology and soaring worker productivity, millions of employees in the U.S. are working longer hours for lower wages, Sanders claims, writing, “what this means is that the American people now have the dubious distinction of working far more hours per year as the people of most other wealthy nations.”
It’s time to reduce the country’s collective stress level and allow people to enjoy a better quality of life, he added. “Eighty-six years after Roosevelt signed a 40-hour work week into law, it’s time for us to move to a 32-hour work week at no loss of pay.”
