The Senate Committee on Health Education labor and pin hits will come to order. This has been a shortened week so i think youre going to see there are hearings taking place all over the place i think you i want to thank all of our panelists for being with us. This morning, we issue that is very rarely discussed in the halls of congress or the senate. That is the need to reduce the standard work week in the United States. In fact, the last time as we understand it the senate held a hearing on the subject was in the year 1955. So i think maybe the time is now to renew that discussion. At that hearing, the senate heard from at that point workers and the congress of industrial organizations and roofers, regarded as one of the great labor leaders of his time. This is what he said at that time. He said, we fully realize the potential benefits of automation are great. If properly handled, if only a fraction of what technologists promise for the future is true, within a very few years, automation can and should make possible a four Day Work Week. The reduction of the work week to 35 or 30 hours in the coming decades can be an important shock absorber during the tranti use of automation. In 1886, 1 of the planks was to establish an eight hour work day, eight hours work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what you will. That was back in 1886. Americans of that era are sick and tired of working 12 hour days for six or seven days a week with very little time for rest, relaxation or quality time with their families. They went out on strike, they organize, they petitioned the government, and they achieved real result after decades of struggle. In 1916, president Woodrow Wilson signed legislation into law to establish an eight hour work day for railroad workers. Six years later, the Ford Motor Company became one of the first major employers in america to establish a five Day Work Week heres something i believe that most people in our country do not know. In Senate Overwhelmingly passed legislation to establish a 30 hour work week by a vote of. That was 1933. While that legislation ultimately failed as a result of a decision from corporate america, a few years later, president Franklin Delano roosevelt signed the fair labor standards act into law and a 40 hour workweek was established in 1940, my friends, in 1940. Unbelievably, 84 years later, despite massive growth in Worker Technology in worker productivity, millions of workers are working longer hours for low wages. I hope people hear this because this is not an issue we talk about enough. Today in america, 28. 5 million americans, 18 of our workforce im in now worked over 60 hours a week, and 40 of employees in america now work at least 50 hours a week. We were talking about a four hour work week 80 years ago and thats what people today, despite the explosion of technology, working today. The sad reality is that americans now work morhours than the people of any other wealthy nation. We will talk about what that means to the lives of ordinary people. In 2022 in the United States and i hope people hear this, logged 204 more hours per year than employees in japan279 moren the United Kingdom and 470 germ. Despite these long hours, the average worker in america makes almost 50 a less then he or she did 50 years ago after adjusting for inflation. No let thasink in for a moment. Think about all of the extraordinary changes in technology that we have seen over the last 50 years. Computers, robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and the huge increase in worker productivity th achieved during that time. In factories and warehouses, robots and sophisticated machinery did not■ exi then or were only used in primitive forms. There were no checkout counters that utilizedas a result of they technological transformations that we have seen in recent years, American Workers are now over 400 more productive than they were in the 1940s. Extraordinary. Telopeople far more productive,d what has been the result of all that productivity inease for almost all of the economic gains of that technological transformation have gone straight to the top while wages for workers have remained stagnant or even worse. While ceos today are making 350 times as much as their average employees, workers throughout the country are seeing their family life fall apart as they are forced to spend more and more time at work, and missing their kids birthday parties, little league, baseball games and just the time they need with their families. Stresses them out even further is that after spending all of their time at work, many paychecktopaycheck and cannot take care of their basic needs. At a moment in history when Artificial Intelligence and robotics, and i hope we all understand the jobs that people have today aint going to be there in many cases in 15conomye transformed by Artificial Intelligence and robotics. The question we are asking today is a Pretty Simple question, do we continue the trend that technology only benefits the changes benefit working people, and one of the benefits must be a lower work week, 32 hour workweek. This is not a radical idea. Friends, the seventh largest economy in the world, has a 35 hour work week and is considering a 32 hour workweek. Norway and denmark are working about 37 hours and belgium has already adopted a four Day Work Week. What we are going to hear work week. What we are going to hear today is there a cthat have adopted t0 hour work week. You know what they found . They found that productivity actually went up because workers were able to focus on their work. They were happy to go to work. So the issue that we are talking about today is of enormous importance. Full benefits and the exploding technology. The wealthiest people who are doing phenomenally well or working people who are falling behind. With that, let me give the mic over to senator cassidy. A 32 hour workweek with no loss in pay, my staff has volunteered to be the test case for that. Who wouldnt want it . No loss of pay but you work a lot less. But in reality there is no free lunch. Workers would be the one who pay, not get paid extra. The government mandating a 32 hour workweek requiring businesses to increase pay at as hour would frankly destroy some employers. They would ship those jobs overseas, or they would automate to replace those workers for whom they have an increased expense. Or they would dramatically increase prices to make them stay afloat. We talked about the biden economics leading to inflation. This would be napalm upon the fire of inflation. If this policy is implemented, it would threaten millions of Small Businesses operating on a razor thin margin because they are unable to find enough workers. Now theyve got the same workers but only for three quarters of the time, and they have to hire more. Fact, there is even incentive for them to dip down so they make everybody parttime and th penalties or certain requirements which are required for full time. If a business wants to voluntarily try a 32 hour workwe for themselves, several laws allow it. We dont have to mandate it. We will hear today from a business that does that. So if an is good for their business, go for it. But i will note that the chair has not done that with his staff. Ere is a certain amount of work required for the continuity of the work. Thats just basic. Now the Business Needs to maintain a 40 hour workweek to remain competitive, not just locally, but globally. Government mandated 32 hour workweek would be catastrophic. Government should not be in a business of undermining their employers ability to■l keep ther doors open with unreasonable and perhaps unconstitutional mandates. The chair frequently says the United States is the wealthiest nation in the world. We are. How did we achieve it . American workers. Second to none. And we have a balance. We dont have people as they do in china working 80 hours a week, but we have that balance. This disrupts that balance. And we wont maintain the status of being the worlds wealthiest nation if we need cap the economy will something that purports to be good for the American Worker, but will lead to shoring the workforce. There is a reason nor the country has a mandatory 32 hour workweek. When japan shortened its workweek from 46 to 40 hours, economic output plummeted 20 . Belgium has a four Day Work Week but those workers work 40 hours within those four days. Ai and other technologies have the potential to dramatically increase economic productivity. I think we should have a bipartisan hearing on the potential impact of ai on the american economy. If we have this, i am ecstatic. You are nodding yourwe need to. My Office Published a white paper last year on how this committee should ai and the impacts upon health, education, and labor. And we are working on next steps based on that feedback. But a momandpop restaurant is not really seeing increased productivity from ai. They are having trouble finding enough to fill shifts, and if we were car them to pay for a 40 hour workweek for 32 hours of work, how will it turn out for that momandpop restaurant . Hospital staffing shortages threatening public health. Why are we passing along to exacerbate that shortage . Uaw pushed for a 32 hour workweek and it didnt happen. Ik the federal government should mandate it to placate a Democratic Political base. Frankly it seems and exercise to help the uaw lay the gun furnite negotiations. They should discuss it at the bargaining table. Eithapologize if this hearing gives anyone false hope, but a mandatory 32 hour work week is bad policy. Not even democrats unanimously support this. But it may give us an understanding where the biden is heading. They are up for a tough and they may be willing to use executive authority to do something which actually has bipartisan opposition. E has been a concerning pattern from democrats in prioritizing policies to help politically connected uon worked businesses themselves. Recently the Biden Administration proposed a new ov pay threshold by 55 . That will result in layoffs and it will result in more inflation. The Biden Administration released a new joint employer rule threatening the viability of the franchise model that employs over 9 million workers and has empowered people who had a dream of becoming a Small Business person to become a Small Business person and otherwise would not have. The■■fbors new independent contractor rule jeopardizes the ability of 27 million americans work as independent contractors, with the ability to pick their own hours and work for multiple independence and protection from forced unionization has made restricting this freedom a top priority. These policies hurt the American Worker and contribute to inflation. As i said, i wouldve been excited to work with the chair on a hearing to discuss the impacts of ai and the new technologies in our jurisdiction. There is very strong bipartisan interest in examining this issue, but we are working instead upon ail congress and we detrimental for American Workers. With that, i yield. Sen. Sanders we thank all five panelist for being with us today. We will begin with the International President of the united automobile workers. He is a 29 year member of the uaw and started as an electrician and led the uaw in negotiating a story contract which substantially waged raised wages and benefits for the workers of that union. Thanks for being with us. Good morning, chairman sanders, dr. Cassidy, and members of the committee. Im here to talk about one of the most important isss any wors person, any us senator, any human being. And that is our time. As president of the united auto workers, i represent 400,000 working class people across induries, and 600,000 retirees. And i know when my members look back on their lives, they never say i wish i had worked more. when people reach the end of their lives, they never say i wish id made more money. what they wish for they had more time. Thats what work does. We are paid for our time, and when we were, we are sacrificing time with other friends, and other things we wish to do. But time, like every Precious Resource in our society, is not given freely to the working class. Since the industrial revolution, we have seen the productivity of our society skyrocket. With the advance of technology, one market is now doing what 12 workers used to do. More profit can be squeezed out of every hour, every minute, every second. There was a time when this phenomenon was supposed to lead to workers getting their time back. Getting some of their lives back. Nearly 100 years ago, the economist John Maynard Keynes spoke of the future of workers time. His worry was that with all the gains in productivity, we wouldnt know what to do with ourselves. He predicted a 15hour work week. 100 years ago. In my own union, i go back into our archives and read of theourn idea that was alive and well for back in the 1930s and 1940s. But today deep into the 21st , century, we find these ideas unimaginable. Instead, we find workers working longer hours. We have workers working seven days a week, 12 hours a day. There are workers, not union, union or not, working multiple jobs, they are leaving to work and scraping to get by in living paychecktopaycheck. We find workers today later in their life working deep into their 60s, 70s, and 80s because they cannot afford to retire. And we find the associated deaths of despair from addiction and suicide, of people who dont feel a life of endless, hopeless work is a life worth living. We have workers who feel despair as a consequence of advances in technology, workers have been sacrificed at the altar of greed and theyve been stripped of their dignity. We have a mental healt■ih crisis we talked about a lot in this country, but we never talk about the causes of that. There have been studies done, increas a week, 12 hours a day, your sacrifice of family life and things you want to pursue, is because of increasing cortisol levels which lead to heart disease, cancer, strokes. Given all those facts, if someone is lucky enough to get to retire, typically they have worked themselves to death their entire life, they face the replacements, hip replacements, shoulder surgeries and the rest of their lives figuring out how they will survive. It is sad to say that inlegisla0 hour work week, but due to intense corporate opposition that legislation failed. But in 1940, resident Franklin Delano roosevelt signed the fair labor standards act establishing the 40 hour workweek. 84 years ago 40 hour week was established. Since then, weve had a 400 increase in productivity, but nothing has changed. That was why in our Victory Campaign we had our stand up strike, we raised the flag for 32 hour workweek. A workingclass issue and thats why 75 of americans in her contract right stood with us in that fight because they are all living the same reality. Who is going to act to fix this epidemic of lives dominated by work . Are the employees going to act . Will congress act . How can workingclass people take back their lives and take back their time . Many in this room will say people just dont want to work, or workingclass people are lazy. But the truth is, workingclass people arent lazy, they are fed up. They are fed up with being left behind and stripped of dignity as wealth and equality inequality spirals out of control. They are fed up thatica, three families have as much wealth as the bottom 50 of citizens in this nation. That is criminal. I want to close with this. I agree there is an epidemic in want to work. A people who don people who cant be bothered to get up every day and contribute to our society. But instead want to freeload o. But those are not bluecollar people. Those arent workingclass people. Its a group of people who are never talked about for how little they actually work and produce and how little they contribute to humanity. The people im talking about are the wall street fre income. Those who profit off the labor of others have all the time in the world, while those who make this country run, the people who build the products, contribute the labor have less and less times for themselves, their families, and for their lives. So our reunion will continue to fight for the rights of workingclass people to take back their lives and take back their time and we ask you to stand up with the American Workers and support us in that mission. Thank you. Sen. Sanders are next witness is an economist at boston college. She is a lead researcher for four day week global trials of companies instituting four day weeks with five days pay. She has been researching work time since the author of the bestselling book, the thank you for being with us. Thank you, good morning, im honored to have this opportunity to suppour work week act. We are here today because for 84 years, there has been no reduction in the standard workweek. Since 1950, the productivity of the American Worker has risen to 400 , yet fulltime employee hours a week. Annual hours even rose in the 1990s and have barely changed since then. These trends depart from the steady reduction in hours between 1870 in world war ii and from trends in other wealthy countries. The average american is on job n in germany, 200 more than in france and the u. K. And more than the average japanese. This is despite the u. S. Historically being the Global Leader in worktime reduction in the worlds first fiveday week country. This was the situation when the pandemic hit, which brought with it extraordinary levels of stress and burnout, resignation and historically high job vacancies. In response, an increasing