Eugene V. Debs never lived to see ChatGPT, but the socialist labor leader who fought for shorter working hours would probably recognize Bernie Sanders’ latest pitch: If AI is coming for workers anyway, it should help them spend less of their lives at work, not just make billionaires richer.
Last week, Sanders and California Rep. Mark Takano reintroduced the Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act, which would lower the standard workweek for nonexempt employees from 40 to 32 hours, thereby pushing employers to shorten schedules or pay overtime for the difference. Sanders, who has advocated for responsible AI use and, more recently, pushed for a pause on AI development, has pointed to the positive benefits he sees stemming from the technology: an ease on American labor.
“At a time when artificial intelligence and robotics will radically transform our economy, it is imperative that the financial gains from this new technology benefit working families, not just a handful of billionaires and corporate CEOs,” Sanders said in an announcement of the bill.
The bill, initially introduced by Takano in 2021, still won’t guarantee every American a three-day weekend. Instead, starting at least six months after enactment, it would gradually lower the overtime threshold for covered workers until it reaches 32 hours following four years of becoming law. Employers could still schedule longer weeks, but would owe overtime—and they can’t cut affected workers’ weekly compensation or benefits because of the change.
Takano similarly argued that labor law has failed to keep pace with nearly nine decades of technological change. “Since then, cell phones, the internet, and now AI have increased worker productivity,” he said. “Work has fundamentally changed. It’s time that labor standards caught up.”
The bill would also establish overtime after eight hours in one day and double pay after 12. Under current federal law, covered nonexempt employees generally receive time-and-a-half only after working more than 40 hours in a week, with no federal requirement for daily overtime.
The proposal arrives amid a corporate race to use generative AI to produce more work with fewer people. A 2026 analysis by Boston College sociologist Juliet Schor for the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute estimated that AI-led productivity gains could allow 35 million U.S. workers—28% of the workforce—to move to a 32-hour week within a decade. Like Takano, Sanders has also called for this in the past. He introduced a Senate version of the bill in 2024 and argued that reducing work hours was the next chapter in the labor struggle stretching back more than a century.
A century-old fight over workers’ time
Debs was one of the country’s biggest proponents of the shortened workday. In his 1890 essay “Eight-Hour Day A Righteous Demand,” Debs called shorter hours a matter of basic dignity. “By making eight hours a lawful day’s work, no man, woman, nor child is wronged,” he wrote.
Debs and other labor leaders pushed for shorter work hours when many Americans still worked 12-hour shifts six or seven days a week. (To be sure, Debs pushed for the standard eight-hour day, in a time when Americans worked six days a week). In 1926, Ford Motor Company became one of the first major U.S. employers to establish a five-day, 40-hour week for factory workers. Congress eventually cemented the 40-hour standard through the Fair Labor Standards Act, signed in 1938, which set an initial 44-hour week before phasing it down to 40 hours by 1940.
Nearly nine decades later, Sanders argues that the standard has outlived the economy that it was built on. Since 1979, net productivity has climbed roughly 90% while typical workers’ hourly pay has risen about 33%, according to Economic Policy Institute data—a gap advocates for shorter workweeks cite as part of the broader case for reform.
There is also evidence that reducing hours can benefit workers without damaging their perceived performance. In a six-country study coauthored by Boston College sociologists Wen Fan and Schor and conducted with the advocacy group 4 Day Week Global, nearly 2,900 workers across 141 companies cut their schedules by about five hours a week. After six months, they reported less burnout and better physical and mental health, job satisfaction, and work ability. For Sanders, the question is whether those efficiencies will result in layoffs and larger corporate profits—or allow employees to reclaim some of their time.
Still, moving from voluntary company trials to a federal labor standard would be a much larger test. During a 2024 hearing held specifically to consider Sanders’ earlier 32-hour-workweek bill, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy argued that the added labor costs could raise prices and threaten businesses operating on thin margins. Cassidy now chairs the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, which would consider a Senate version of the legislation.
“A 32-hour workweek is not a radical idea,” Sanders said. “It’s time to reduce the stress level in our country.”
