By Wes Venteicher
Updated April 09, 2022
As workers everywhere get used to working outside an office as a result of the pandemic, two California lawmakers are proposing a more dramatic change: less work, period.
A proposal in the state Assembly would reduce California’s standard work week to 32 hours ・or four eight-hour days ・for companies with more than 500 employees.
Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, one of the lawmakers who introduced the bill, said the proposal is part of a broader focus on work-life balance spurred by the coronavirus.
“Employees are not asking for games or free food or free coffee ・those were some of the perks we saw before, especially in Silicon Valley,” Garcia said. “Employees are talking about wanting a work-life balance, wanting to be healthy mentally, physically and emotionally. And a four-day work week is part of that discussion.”
Assembly Bill 2932, which has taken only the first steps on the road to becoming law, would force companies to pay employees time-and-a-half for any hours worked above 32 in a week.
Additionally, with language saying “an employer shall not reduce an employee’s regular rate of pay as a result of this reduced hourly workweek requirement,” the proposal appears to require employers to pay workers the same for 32 hours of work as they were paying them for 40.
That would in effect raise hourly wages by 25%, while increasing the cost of an hour of overtime even more.
It would be a “tremendous cost” for employers ・even large companies, according to an opposition letter from the California Chamber of Commerce.
The business advocacy organization targeted the bill in its annual list of “job killers.” In the opposition letter, policy advocate Ashley Hoffman said the proposal forces employers to “subsidize costs in the name of workplace flexibility.”
“AB 2932’s impact on labor costs in California will discourage job growth in the state and likely reduce opportunities for workers,” Hoffman said in the letter.
Garcia countered that the change could help companies hire employees who have become more discerning about working conditions.
“I would venture to say there might be more net gain than net loss in rethinking the way our work week works,” she said.
The idea for a four-day work week is not new. The New York Times reported on labor union proposals to try to make it happen as early as 1970.
But Joe O’Connor, chief executive officer of nonprofit 4 Day Week Global, said the idea was gaining new momentum even before the coronavirus made everyone rethink work-life balance. The pandemic could push broader change, O’Connor said.
“Sometimes with big cultural and societal norms that are deeply embedded, as with the five-hour work week, which has been the standard for nigh on a century, it takes something like the pandemic to change that,” he said.
A four-day work week was even introduced recently in Congress by Rep. Mark Takano, D-Riverside.
O’Connor said his organization just launched a pilot project with 38 companies in the United States and Canada to test out four-day weeks.
The six-month trial, involving more than 2,000 employees, will take baseline measures of things like companies’ revenue, employee productivity and carbon footprints under five-day weeks and compare them to measurements taken with four-day weeks.
The nonprofit’s website says that shorter weeks, when combined with a focus on employees’ work products rather than hours logged, can help boost productivity and improve well-being ・and help hire and retain employees who will have a lot of remote and hybrid-work options moving forward.
Garcia, who introduced the proposal along with Evan Low, D-Campbell, said shifting to a four-day week would help address labor shortages.
“I think the labor shortage is not about people not wanting to work, but they want a better balance,” she said.
Todd Scherwin, regional managing partner in the Los Angeles area for labor and employment firm Fisher Phillips, isn’t so sure.
Society still operates on a five-day schedule, and consumers will still expect businesses to be open five days a week, Scherwin said.
“I really am not sure that, for the majority of workforces, this is going to mean people are going to be working four days a week,” he said. “I think for the majority of these workforces where you need people to work five days a week, this is going to increase wages, to increase costs.”
And that could lead to increasing the prices of their products or services, he said.
He raised questions about what the change would mean for workers who work less than full-time: Would part-time employees earn less per hour than full-time employees? Would employees hired after the law took effect be paid less per-hour than those hired before?
“There are lots of moving pieces that I don’t necessarily think everyone’s thought of yet,” he said.
Garcia said she welcomed input, including from unions: The proposal wouldn’t apply to employees subject to collective bargaining agreements, which cover most public employment in California.
“I think this is the beginning of a discussion and a conversation that we want to have,” she said. “We welcome individual stakeholders to come to the table.”
This story was originally published April 9, 2022 5:00 AM.