Conversations around the four-day workweek have been reignited by the COVID-19 pandemic with workers re-evaluating the importance of work-life balance. And now one California Congressman wants to make it federal law.
“[My bill] modifies or amends the Fair Labor Standards Act which sets overtime pay and it sets the workweek,” said Rep. Mark Takano. “And, right now, you and I work for a certain level of pay, [with the new law] we can be entitled to overtime pay after we work 32 hours.”
Takano, who represents California’s 39th District, first introduced the legislation in 2021 but it failed to advance. Now his second attempt comes on the heels of a recently completed six-month pilot program in the U.K. that shortened the workweek.
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More than 3,000 workers at 61 companies participated in the trial. According to the businesses, the program improved productivity, revenue, morale, and team culture.
“California is a state of progress,” said Cristina Garcia, former state assemblymember. “And California can work together with the stakeholders to figure this out.”
Garcia also introduced a similar bill at the state level last year.
“They can continue to ignore this discussion or they can start to listen like other companies have who are adapting or not having worker shortages,” said Garcia.
But not everyone is on board with the concept.
“The four-day work week, all it does is it compresses the work down, and if you’re going to legislate this in, you're just giving that to everyone, no one has earned it,” said Stephan Aarstol, founder of Tower Paddleboards in Mission Beach.
Aarstol ventured into the idea of a shorter workweek years ago. His approach was different though. He kept the five-day workweek but instead reduced working hours to just five a day, with no change in pay.
“That first year, we grew another 50%,” said Aarstol. “And so after the three months, we said, we're just going to do this full time. So we did it full-time for about two years and it seemed like everything was working fine for, you know, about a year and three-quarters of that. And then within a 90-day period, I had a team of nine at the time, I lost four people within 90 days.”
Aarstol took his company back to normal work hours, keeping the shortened approach for the summer months.
“I don't think the five-hour workday is necessarily the magic bullet, you've got to work fewer hours but spread out throughout more days,” said Aarstol.
For now, the Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act remains in Congress. But regardless of whether it becomes law, the movement is gaining traction, here and around the world.
