Who will lead the charge to a four-day work week?

Dec 11, 2023

QUICK FIX

FORAYS INTO FOUR DAYS: When the United Auto Workers started at the bargaining table with Detroit auto companies months ago, they had some eye catching demands: Historic pay raises. Job protections. And, for a moment, a shorter work week.

They won some of those things, in unprecedented fashion. A 32-hour work week wasn’t one of them.

The union’s negotiations thrust the idea to the top of the media’s consciousness. But if there’s a wider movement toward shorter hours, unions won’t necessarily be the only force at the forefront of it, advocates told Shift.

“We should be rationally talking about policies that will take us, in an orderly fashion, to a new norm,” Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) said in an interview.

Between the rise of generative artificial intelligence this year and the reckoning of work-life balance that came with the Covid-19 pandemic, efforts to shorten the workweek have accelerated.

Much of the experimentation so far, though, has come from small and medium businesses, looking at pilot cases that indicate reworking the work day improved employee well-being while maintaining productivity. While still rare, four-day-a-week job postings are up on Indeed, according to the platform. In Europe, Lamborghini just last week agreed with its unions to reduce production workers’ hours without reducing pay, Reuters reported.

Jon Leland, chief strategy officer at Kickstarter and co-founder of the Four Day Workweek Campaign, is one executive who took the plunge. And he sees AI as a potentially transformative force in the equation.

“Does everyone just keep churning out stuff all the time and have that value accrue to shareholders?” Leland said. He would rather distribute the productive value of AI, he said, not just in the form of money, but also time.

The upheaval has also inspired some state and federal legislators. Takano this year reintroduced a bill that would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to standardize a 32-hour workweek, after which overtime pay would kick in. Labor organizations including the AFL-CIO and SEIU backed it, along with a handful of Democrats.

A Senate version could come next year, said Jon Steinman, another co-founder of the Four Day Workweek Campaign. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has already come out publicly in favor of the idea.

Some folks are skeptical at the idea of a societal overhaul in favor of working less. Liberty Vittert, a statistician who has advocated against the four-day week, said she worries about a slippery slope that could hurt the U.S. in its competition with China. Some arrangements could also open the door for more part-time jobs as companies look to fill working hours, which don’t typically provide the same benefits as full-time work, she said.

Federal legislation is highly unlikely to become law anytime soon, given that this split Congress has struggled with labor issues far less controversial than changing the entire structure of workers’ calendars. But true believers are inspired by the pace of the conversation between employers, workers, lawmakers and tech.

“My bottom line is technology for the sake of human happiness,” Takano said, adding: “To make liberal democracy sustainable … we have to be sure capitalism and technology serves humanity, not the other way around.”

GOOD MORNING. It’s Monday, Dec. 11. Welcome back to Morning Shift, your go-to tipsheet on labor and employment-related immigration. It’s been 272 days since the Senate received Julie Su’s nomination for Labor secretary. “Everyone should be delulu.” Send feedback, tips and exclusives to nniedzwiadek@politico.com and oolander@politico.com. Follow us on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @NickNiedz and @oliviaolanderr.

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On the Hill

MARKUPS SCHEDULED: The two major bipartisan workforce development bills introduced last week will get a committee vote on Tuesday, the House Education and the Workforce Committee announced.

The bill reauthorizing the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, technically called “A Stronger Workforce for America Act,” and a bill that would allow Pell Grants for short-term job training programs, are both scheduled for markups.

Committee members throughout the year have suggested bipartisan consensus on those two issues would be possible, though odds are more uncertain in the full House.

Details: 10:15 a.m. on Tuesday, 2172 Rayburn.

Unions

NLRB’S DATE WITH GRINDR: The National Labor Relations Board this week will count votes of employees at dating app Grindr, deciding whether they’ll be associated with Communications Workers of America.

Refresher: The union has alleged a strict return-to-office policy announced in August — causing many employees to resign rather than relocate — was retaliation for their organization efforts. The company denies those claims, The New York Times reported at the time.

Details: The mail-in election ends Wednesday, with votes set to be counted Thursday at 5 p.m.

Around the Agencies

ICYMI: November’s jobs report — with a relatively tame 199,000 jobs added — is good news for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell as he tries to curb inflation, our Sam Sutton reports.

Also of note: The report was bolstered by a one-time shot of some 40,000 formerly striking workers returning to work, as the auto workers and actors strikes both ended last month, Sam notes. That means employers are probably adding jobs at “a relatively soft pace,” said Omair Sharif, of Inflation Insights.

In the Workplace

HEALTH CARE BUST: An abundance of mining jobs can counterintuitively damage access to health care, our Megan Messerly reports from Carlin, Nevada.

In some mining communities, “health systems have been disrupted and distorted by the industry’s booms and busts, creating ripple effects that make it harder for people to access care, deepening inequities and worsening health outcomes in populations often predisposed to poor physical and mental health,” Megan reports.

AMID UAW UNION DRIVE: “Tesla Fined After Conveyor Belt Mishap Seriously Injures Worker,” from Bloomberg.

More in the workplace: “Conservatives are suing law firms over diversity efforts. It’s working,” from The Washington Post.

Even more: “AI-Powered Drive-Thru Is Actually Run Almost Entirely By Humans,” from Bloomberg.

IN THE STATES

JERSEY JOBLESSNESS: New Jersey unemployment is on the rise — more so than any other state — amid a mismatch in industries with job losses and job openings, The Wall Street Journal reports. And the issue could reflect what’s to come for the entire U.S.

“Some of the state’s white-collar employers, such as in business and professional services, cut jobs over the past year through October. Others struggle to fill openings for certain types of skilled workers, particularly in healthcare,” WSJ reports.

One Ridgewood, N.J., woman who had previously worked in corporate communications told WSJ she had applied for more than a thousand roles since losing her job in fall 2022.

Immigration

NO WAY OUT: Older undocumented farm workers who have spent decades in the industry are struggling to leave it, as they aren’t eligible for Social Security or Medicare, The New York Times reports.

“For decades, retirement was not an issue,” as workers participated in a sort of circular migration that only brought them to the U.S. for harvesting, the Times reports.

But more recently, that system “became increasingly risky and expensive, as successive U.S. presidents, beginning in the 1990s, erected barriers and deployed technology and agents along the border to curb illegal entries,” the outlet reports.

More immigration news: “Republicans make new push for Trump-era border restrictions,” from our Myah Ward, Burgess Everett and Jennifer Haberkorn.

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