FORAYS INTO FOUR DAYS: When the United Auto Workers started at the bargaining table with Detroit auto companies months ago, they had some eye catching demands: Historic pay raises. Job protections. And, for a moment, a shorter work week. They won some of those things, in unprecedented fashion. A 32-hour work week wasn’t one of them. The union’s negotiations thrust the idea to the top of the media’s consciousness. But if there’s a wider movement toward shorter hours, unions won’t necessarily be the only force at the forefront of it, advocates told Shift. “We should be rationally talking about policies that will take us, in an orderly fashion, to a new norm,” Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) said in an interview. Between the rise of generative artificial intelligence this year and the reckoning of work-life balance that came with the Covid-19 pandemic, efforts to shorten the workweek have accelerated. Much of the experimentation so far, though, has come from small and medium businesses, looking at pilot cases that indicate reworking the work day improved employee well-being while maintaining productivity. While still rare, four-day-a-week job postings are up on Indeed, according to the platform. In Europe, Lamborghini just last week agreed with its unions to reduce production workers’ hours without reducing pay, Reuters reported. Jon Leland, chief strategy officer at Kickstarter and co-founder of the Four Day Workweek Campaign, is one executive who took the plunge. And he sees AI as a potentially transformative force in the equation. “Does everyone just keep churning out stuff all the time and have that value accrue to shareholders?” Leland said. He would rather distribute the productive value of AI, he said, not just in the form of money, but also time. The upheaval has also inspired some state and federal legislators. Takano this year reintroduced a bill that would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to standardize a 32-hour workweek, after which overtime pay would kick in. Labor organizations including the AFL-CIO and SEIU backed it, along with a handful of Democrats. A Senate version could come next year, said Jon Steinman, another co-founder of the Four Day Workweek Campaign. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has already come out publicly in favor of the idea. Some folks are skeptical at the idea of a societal overhaul in favor of working less. Liberty Vittert, a statistician who has advocated against the four-day week, said she worries about a slippery slope that could hurt the U.S. in its competition with China. Some arrangements could also open the door for more part-time jobs as companies look to fill working hours, which don’t typically provide the same benefits as full-time work, she said. Federal legislation is highly unlikely to become law anytime soon, given that this split Congress has struggled with labor issues far less controversial than changing the entire structure of workers’ calendars. But true believers are inspired by the pace of the conversation between employers, workers, lawmakers and tech. “My bottom line is technology for the sake of human happiness,” Takano said, adding: “To make liberal democracy sustainable … we have to be sure capitalism and technology serves humanity, not the other way around.” GOOD MORNING. It’s Monday, Dec. 11. Welcome back to Morning Shift, your go-to tipsheet on labor and employment-related immigration. It’s been 272 days since the Senate received Julie Su’s nomination for Labor secretary. “Everyone should be delulu.” Send feedback, tips and exclusives to nniedzwiadek@politico.com and oolander@politico.com. Follow us on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @NickNiedz and @oliviaolanderr.
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