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Bernie Sanders Champions 32-Hour Work Week With No Loss in Pay

www.commondreams.org Bernie Sanders Champions '32-Hour Work Week With No Loss in Pay'

"Needless to say, changes that benefit the working class of our country are not going to be easily handed over by the corporate elite. They have to be fought for—and won."

Bernie Sanders Champions '32-Hour Work Week With No Loss in Pay'

As part of his Labor Day message to workers in the United States, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday re-upped his call for the establishment of a 20% cut to the workweek with no loss in pay—an idea he said is "not radical" given the enormous productivity gains over recent decades that have resulted in massive profits for corporations but scraps for employees and the working class.

"It's time for a 32-hour workweek with no loss in pay," Sanders wrote in a Guardian op-ed as he cited a 480% increase in worker productivity since the 40-hour workweek was first established in 1940.

"It's time," he continued, "that working families were able to take advantage of the increased productivity that new technologies provide so that they can enjoy more leisure time, family time, educational and cultural opportunities—and less stress."

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  • Do you all have the Congress app installed on your phone?

    Can you name your House of Representative member?

    Can you name your Senators?

    This will go nowhere the same way that smart gun control went nowhere, despite the vast majority of the citizenship wanting it, despite even after a room full of elementary school kids were killed. Lobbying stops what the vast majority of the citizenry want.

    The only way to affect change is to lobby Congress, that's what the corporations do. Corporations lobby Congress, so you have to as well.

    You need to get involved, you have to let your Representative and your Senators know that you want a four-day work week. You should even throw some donation money their way for their next election cycle.

    Just commenting about it on an Internet forum isn't enough. Just waiting for somebody else to do the work isn't enough.

    You are the citizen.

    • Working within the system will never give us what we need. The system is made for them. All we get are concessions that then get taken away when we're no longer a threat. No company, no matter how much popular support, is ever going to allow this. You'd have far bigger chances of making far bigger changes if you joined an org. Any org.

      • Louis Rossman on YouTube hired a lobbying firm to help farmers to be able to repair their own tractors and won, so there's proof right there it can be done.

        If there's grassroots lobbying of politicians by regular people, change can happen.

        That's what corpos are really afraid of, being out lobbied.

        • As I said, the things you don't get by fighting are purely concessions so you shut up. When you do shut up, they get taken away. Every single fundamental working right we have was fought for with blood, not votes.

          What corpos are really afraid of is us organizing. They have always been. That's all we have to do. Advocating for people to send emails (since none of them are going to have the money to hire lobbying firms) will just feed them back into the system, the same way voting does. Makes you feel realized when it never fundamentally changes anything for good.

          • As I said, the things you don’t get by fighting are purely concessions so you shut up.

            Why would you 'shut up'?

            That seems like a nonsensical sentence / opinion.

            When you do shut up, they get taken away.

            Passed laws just don't evaporate into thin air after they're done being passed, they continue to exist.

            Every single fundamental working right we have was fought for with blood, not votes.

            That's not true, at all. Not everything was about slavery. I'm sure you can find some that were, and some that were not.

            Our society wouldn't exist if everything was anarchy 24/7.

            • Why would you ‘shut up’?

              Concessions are given, the radicalization stops as the standards of living improve. People are satisfied and don't pursue the deeper systemic issues. Once the radicalism has died down, efforts are made to remove those concessions. Sometimes it does not work, a lot of the times it does. The rise of neoliberalism was one of these efforts, the most succesful so far.

              Passed laws just don’t evaporate into thin air after they’re done being passed, they continue to exist.

              They don't evaporate, they get repealed. Tons of things do. Roe v Wade, police defunding, literal underage labour laws got repealed this year. The Paris Agreement almost worked, but thankfully protesting brought it back.

              Not everything was about slavery.

              I'm not talking about slavery. Every fundamental working right we have comes from fighting. The 40-hour work week and 8-hour work day, the abolition of child labour, the minimum wage, pensions, sick leave, paid overtime, the right to strike... even weekends are thanks to fighting. Look it up if you don't believe me.

              You may notice some of these things have been dissapearing recently, and that's exactly what I'm talking about. They were concessions given to us so we stopped being a threat. They don't perceive us as one anymore, and so they're trying to gain more power for themselves by stripping us of the things we earned. And part of this threat reduction is precisely the insisting on working within this "democratic" system, which will never meaningfully challenge them, because it is for them, by them, and controlled by them.

              • Will change is a constant, and there's always going to be some people who want to gain power for themselves for their own sakes to the detriment of others, and you have to fight back against that.

                It sounds like you're so cynical about things that you're saying it's not even trying, not worth fighting for. Sincerely if you're not just someone trying to reshape the narrative away from activism, I would suggest, as the Internet likes to say, to go outside and 'touch grass'.

                For the record I'm not saying you get to utopia and then you stop, the job is done. You got to fight for what you have to keep it.

                But to not fight that's just defeatist, and not something I'll never do, and no one else should either.

                • I'm not being defeatist at all. Quite on the contrary, I'm telling you to fight.

                  My point is that fighting within the system never works. Everything we achieve that way eventually gets taken away from us. As long as the ruling class is still in power, they simply benefit the most from granting us as little as possible, and so they will always search for ways to do just that, and to take away things they previously granted us if they think we wont be threatening enough to take them back.

                  That's why I am saying, do not hire lobbyists or email politicians or something. Or if you do, make sure it's not the only thing you do. Join an org. Join an union, a party, a syndicate, organize. That is what has brought, brings and will bring real change. Fight against the system.

                  • My point is that fighting within the system never works.

                    You know, there is a range of options available, between doing nothing, and full out anarchy/war.

                    And I've given you a real example of when it has worked. You've just ignored it, twice.

                    Louis Rossman on YouTube, go look him up, and watch his videos about helping farmers with the right to repair by hiring a lobbyist.

                    • I didn't ignore it. I said what we achieve working within the system is a temporal concession and thus it's not actually a reliable and deep change. It's good, but it shouldn't be the only thing we do.

                      • But don't you think that's the first step, to start in the system? To not ignore that option?

                        We have proof that it works (nothing is forever), that it's doable, so wouldn't that be the first step, instead of outside of the system extremism?

      • But for the love of god, don't not vote. Us not voting is a major part of that system that's made for them.

    • only way to affect change is to lobby

      Don't want to be pedantic, but not American and don't really have much else to add here.

      This is one of the few times when the correct word is "effect", not "affect". "Affect (v.)" means to alter, or have an impact on. "Effect (v.)" means to produce, and to create an effect (n.) of.

      • This is one of the few times when the correct word is “effect”, not “affect”. “Affect (v.)” means to alter, or have an impact on. “Effect (v.)” means to produce, and to create an effect (n.) of.

        Change is to alter something, not to create/produce something.

        I wrote it as wanting to affect how Congress does things, to change what Congress does, to have an impact on Congress, which is what lobbying does.

        I stand by my usage of the word affect, over effect.

        • Change is to alter something, not to create/produce something.

          It's a transitive verb. "Affect change" places "change" as the object. You're not saying you're altering the political situation or you're altering Congress; You're saying the change is already happening, and you're merely slightly altering its direction. "Effect change" means "Make a change", which is what you're trying to say. "Affect change" means "change the change", which is probably nonsensical in most cases you'd use it.

          Also, "effect change" specifically is a standard idiom. "Effect change" shows up in the English language around 8X more commonly than "affect change" between 1800 and 2000, because "affect change" is a semantically incorrect misspelling of "effect change". [1] "Effect a change" is also either explicitly defined in or given as an example usage in many major dictionaries, while the same isn't true of "affect change", because, again "affect change" is a generally incorrect usage that doesn't actually make sense or mean anything outside of potentially very specific scenarios that don't apply here. [2]

          1: Google Books Ngram Viewer.

          2: Defined in Collins. Used in example sentences by: Cambridge, Webster, American Heritage

          I stand by my usage of the word affect, over effect.

          I mean. Feel free to, I guess?

          • You’re saying the change is already happening

            If I was saying that the change already happened I would have said 'affectED' past tense, which I did not.

            I'm advocating for something to cause change, I'm not saying that change is already in the middle of happening or has happened.

            I stand by my usage of the word affect, over effect.

            • If I was saying that the change already happened I would have said ‘affectED’ past tense, which I did not.

              I’m advocating for something to cause change, I’m not saying that change is already in the middle of happening or has happened.

              Oh my god. You're using "change" as an object noun after a transitive verb which itself has no connotation or denotation of creation or causation. That implicitly means you're saying that the thing it's referring to must already exist.

              I’m advocating for something to cause change,

              Yes! That is what "effect" means.

              I’m not saying that change is already in the middle of happening or has happened.

              Yes you are! "Affect (v.)" already means "change (v.)". "Affect (v.) change (n.)" means "change (v.) the change (n.)". That implies that the "change (n.)" must already exist.

              It's like if I said "This salt will really affect my spaghetti". That implicitly says/presumes that "my spaghetti" already exists, or else it wouldn't be able to be affected.

              I stand by my usage of the word affect, over effect.

              🙄

              FFS, I explained the grammatical reasoning, and linked to historical usage data, and linked to four different dictionaries to back that up.

              You know what, fuck it. I only mentioned "effect" vs. "affect" because I thought that was somewhat interesting and more obscure rather than annoying to point out, but if you're going to just be obtuse about it I may as well have some fun and point out the various other grammatical and semantic mistakes too…

              "The Congress app" should not have a definite article because the app you linked to is, per the app ID, developer info, and first line of its description, unofficial and unaffiliated with the U.S. Congress. "Representative" should be plural, though that's probably just a typo. The second "despite" should have a conjunction such as "and" immediately before it. "Want" should be conjugated as "wants" after "citizenry", because the noun it applies to in this case is the singular "majority". "Affect" should be "effect", because "affect change" isn't a thing and is actually nonsense. The clause right after that, beginning with "that's what the corporations", is a run-on sentence and should probably be fixed with a conjunction denoting causality or reasoning. The clause after "involved" is also a run-on sentence, and should probably either be its own declarative statement or be semicolon-delimited. The third "to" on the second sentence of your next reply needs a listing conjunction right before it. And in your latest reply, the clause after "cause change" is also a run-on sentence and should probably be delimited by either a full stop or a semicolon instead of a comma.

              Now I suppose I'll wait for you to explain why you "stand by" these other plainly incorrect (and, frankly, inconsequential) errors as well.

              It's funny how you started out pretending to champion political change, and to be against frivolously "commenting about it on an Internet forum". … I should know better.

              • You know what, fuck it. I only mentioned “effect” vs. “affect” because I thought that was somewhat interesting and more obscure rather than annoying to point out, but if you’re going to just be obtuse about it

                I'm not being obtuse, I'm just disagreeing with your interpretation of the words. I feel you're ignoring the temporal aspect of when each word should be used, per how I learned to use those words in school.

                Honestly not trying to upset you, you're just telling me something different that I've learned my whole life about. And you spewing out ChatGPT levels of text doesn't convince me, it just makes me feel like you're trying to obscure and be intellectually dishonest about the conversation.

                I may as well have some fun and point out the various other grammatical and semantic mistakes too…

                Honestly, why?

                Are you so offended with someone who would disagree with you that you have to go to such extreme measures in a public forum in an attempt to shame them?

                Would you act this way with somebody at a party who disagreed with you on something?

                Does your life have so little meaning to it that this is the only way you could gain satisfaction out of it?

                It’s funny how you started out pretending to champion political change, and to be against frivolously “commenting about it on an Internet forum”. … I should know better.

                Honestly not meaning this as a snarky comeback, but, 'touch grass', sincerely. It's just voice-to-text dictation of opinions, not written prose in the style of the great writers.

                And yes, I still stand by how I'm using the word affect, versus effect. Oh wait, sorry: I still stand by how I used the word affect, versus effect.

    • Congress app?

    • As a quick follow-up, I wish Lemmy and other online services had a bot where you can type in a one-line command that takes your zip code and then it replies with the contact information for your Senators and your Representative.

276 comments