Dawn Addis, the Democratic member of the California legislative assembly for the 30th district, sent me an email in recognition of Labor Day. In it, she wrote:
This Labor Day holiday, let’s remember it is because of hard-fought wins that we have a five-day work week, a minimum wage and even weekends.
I think she’s only one third right. It is true that labor unions pushed for those three policies. The only one, though, for which unions can take credit is the minimum wage. More on that anon.
What was the main factor behind the five-day work week and weekends free from work? Rising standards of living. Leisure is a normal good and so as real income rises, we demand more of it. The effect of rising income, to the extent it’s due to rising wages and salaries (which it largely is), is actually ambiguous. On the one hand, as noted, there’s an income effect: we want more leisure. On the other hand, the price of leisure, which is the foregone after-tax wage, rises and so we want less leisure. It’s pretty clear, though, that the income effect has dominated. So with or without labor union pressure, we almost certainly would still have the five-day work week. The difference is that without the law, there would be more flexibility so that the (I assume) relatively small percent of workers who wanted to work for six days without time and a half for overtime would be able to work for employers who wanted them to. So the effect of unions, to the extent they were responsible for the...
The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has moved to reassure parents and learners that public schools will remain open at the end of April, dismissing widespread social media claims of a shutdown ...