Two California Lawmakers Want To Mandate 32-Hour WorkweeksIt’s great when innovations let us work less, but top-down, inflexible government demands are not the way to get there.
SCOTT SHACKFORD
4.11.2022
There's no crisis that lawmakers can't make worse, and in California, a state that already has pretty high taxes and minimum wages, two lawmakers have introduced a bill mandating 32-hour workweeks for the largest employers.
State Reps. Cristina Garcia (D–Downey) and Evan Low (D–Cupertino) have introduced A.B. 2932. The bill would require all businesses in the state with 500 employees or more to alter the definition of a workweek to 32 hours instead of 40 hours, meaning that any work over 32 hours would be compensated with overtime.
The bill doesn't stop there, though. A.B. 2932 also requires that the compensation levels for people covered by the bill remain the same. So, an hourly employee currently working 40 hours a week would have to receive the same amount of pay for working 32 hours a week, essentially forcing employers to raise all their wages.
If the bill is passed into law, it would affect more than 2,600 companies within the Golden State and more than 3.6 million workers. Unsurprisingly, the California Chamber of Commerce is describing the bill as a "job killer." Ashley Hoffman, policy advocate for the California Chamber of Commerce, notes in a letter to Low that the bill acts as though companies can simply adjust hourly wages with a simple calculation to account for the change from 40 to 32 hours. But that's not how wages work. An employee's "rate of pay" as described in the bill includes not just wages but can include commissions and various other bonuses. Hoffman writes:
* * *
Source:
https://reason.com/2022/04/11/two-california-lawmakers-want-to-mandate-32-hour-workweeks/
