Boy, do businesses have something to look forward to in their Herculean efforts to keep the lights on.
As everyone knows, your garden variety employee can work up to 40 hours per week at a regular rate and then gets paid overtime (1.5 the base hourly rate) for hours worked in excess of 40 per week. However, that’s not good enough for some folks in Washington, D.C., so we have a bill introduced in Congress that should be titled “The Trigger Mass Business Closures and Layoffs Bill” but instead is called the “32-Hour Workweek Act.”
Rep. Mark Takano, D-California, introduced HR 4728 back in July of 2021 but has made the news recently drawing attention to the proposal. So, let’s talk about the effects.
Well, for one thing, this is a significant increase in the cost of productivity. The production captured in a 40-hour workweek would go up in cost by 12.5%. If you’re a California business already struggling to keep the lights on, how will the 12.5% increase in labor cost impact you?
Looking at it from the employee side, of course, we can anticipate many full-time employees being reduced in their work schedules to 32 hours to avoid the imposition of mandatory overtime for a 40-hour week. So, if there were previously four employees working 40 hours per week, the business must now hire a fifth to have five people working 32 hours instead of four working 40 hours. Unless of course, the business has the misfortune of being in a place that has an ordinance similar to San Jose’s...
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