In his 2016 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Sanders led the Fight for $15 to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. He failed on the federal level but succeeded in sparking reforms on the state and local levels that have seen minimum wage laws in several jurisdictions meet or exceed the $15 per hour threshold.
Undeterred, or perhaps emboldened by the local movements he inspired, Sanders has proposed drastic changes to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act aimed at effectively increasing wages for American workers. His bill, the “Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act,” is aimed at reducing the workweek from 40 hours to 32 hours. He’d accomplish this by:
- Requiring that non-exempt employees be paid time and a half for working more than 32 hours per week rather than the current standard of 40 hours per week;
- Creating a new requirement that employers pay time and a half for work in excess of eight hours in a day; and
- Creating a new requirement that employers pay double time for work in excess of 12 hours in a day.
Sanders’s bill attempts to ensure that workers see the full economic benefit of the lower overtime thresholds by prohibiting employers from “reduc[ing] the total workweek compensation rate, including the regular rate at which the employee is employed.” The reduced overtime threshold would be phased in by two-year increments starting 180 days after enactment – 38 hours per week in year one; 36 hours per week in year two; 34 hours per week in year three; and 32 hours per week thereafter.
Quick Take-Aways
Like the attempt to push the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, it’s hard to imagine the “Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act” becoming federal law. Nevertheless, the real potential impact of this bill is the influence it could have on state and local laws.
And whether Sanders’s bill has any chance of becoming law, it seems unlikely to have any real effect on overall wages for lower-wage workers. The bill says that employers cannot “reduce the total workweek compensation rate,” but it says nothing about how to enforce that requirement or how to hold employers to a total workweek compensation rate for hourly employees. In other words, non-exempt employees entitled to overtime benefits under the FLSA typically do not have a total workweek compensation rate. Their wages usually are stated in terms of an hourly wage. So reducing the overtime threshold to 32 hours likely will have the effect of lowering overall wages for hourly workers.
Employers should continue to monitor developments on this issue and should ensure the wages of their non-exempt employees are stated in terms of hour wages and not weekly wages or annual salaries.
