Jay Aldebert on WTTW Chicago Tonight

BRANDIS FRIEDMAN: How would you like to get paid the same amount but work fewer hours? That's the idea behind a new bill introduced in Congress last week by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Mark Takano. The Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act would reduce the standard workweek by eight hours while keeping wages and benefits the same. The sponsors say AI has increased productivity and allowed workers to need less time to be successful at work. But others say it's too good to be true. Joining us to weigh the pros and the cons are Jay Aldebert, chief growth officer at International Services Incorporated, a business development and management consulting company; Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer at Challenger, Gray and Christmas, an outplacement and executive coaching firm; and Richard Rodriguez, state director for Illinois Service Workers United and national policy director with the One Fair Wage campaign. Thanks to all of you for joining us. So, Richard, explain this bill for us. What would it change?

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: So the bill is a phase-in period, so it would go down periodically over four years. What it would do is give an opportunity for people to live a good quality life.

BRANDIS FRIEDMAN: So it would go down from 40 to 32 hours over the span of four years. Really what it would be doing is changing the overtime rules. Right now, anything over 40 hours is time and a half; this would reduce that down to 32 hours. Andy, if this bill does get passed, companies would pay more for labor. Could we see prices go up as businesses attempt to make up for those increased costs?

ANDY CHALLENGER: Yeah, certainly some of those costs, like increased labor costs, would affect companies. It's going to be passed on in higher prices to consumers, and in some ways paid for by workers themselves in the form of lower raises over time after that new law goes into effect. It's something we've seen a couple of countries try, in some real-world experiments. While we absolutely, desperately need to address real wealth inequality in the country, my worry is this would be a bill that's not the most effective way to do that and would have some real costs for employers that could damage companies in a way that damages the overall economy.

BRANDIS FRIEDMAN: Jay, this bill would change the threshold for overtime pay from 40 hours a week down to 32 hours a week over the course of four years. So this mostly impacts hourly workers. What impact could there be for salaried employees?

JAY ALDEBERT: There's two sides of this bill. One is obviously the 32-hour reduction in the work week. So if they go into Friday, that's time and a half. The other side is maintaining their salary and maintaining benefits but only working 32 hours. So on both sides, actually, I find this somewhat devastating for the small and medium-sized business owner, because there is an increase in costs overall. But where is the production? We're reducing the production time specifically, and that's assuming we have 100 percent production time in those four days. That's the biggest impact.

BRANDIS FRIEDMAN: Richard, what do you say to some of those concerns about the impact to productivity and to businesses?

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: Anytime we've talked about wage increases, you hear about the cost of goods and materials going up. I've had stagnation for quite some time myself, as well as many other workers who have been working very diligently and hard. The price of everything continuously rises. I don't foresee the cost of goods ever going down. So why should we not be having serious conversations about raising wages for all workers, livable wages, and really thinking about quality of life as people, as AI is coming in and transforming our economy? A lot of the workers we represent are tipped workers. They don't work a typical 40-hour week; we have workers working 20 or 30 hours a week now, and most are already carrying two or three jobs. Our members predominantly see the cost of living significantly impacting them, and they want real wages.

JAY ALDEBERT: Richard, I get your position as it relates to fair wage. In a vacuum, that's absolutely perfect. I agree with you. The position I come from is business owners themselves. We should start where they come from. They have a dream, they have a vision, they have a passion for their industry. They don't have a financial background. They don't understand accounting and all these aspects, and they're getting hit with a lot of different things right now. You look at the tariff side of things, you look at the Fed, you look at possibly this bill. They don't really know what all the true costs are, and they don't have a mechanism, even in their accounting, to see that in a proactive manner. So the question I have to ask is, where does the makeup for this come from? You said raise prices. At some point you're going to price yourself out of the marketplace. There is a market price that people will bear. So it has a reverse effect: as you raise prices, you lose sales. It can be a double hit. My costs are raised, I raise my prices, and nobody's buying.

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: Small businesses face these challenges with the cost of rent going up or the cost of materials going up. So does the single mother worried about the cost of groceries continuously rising. Our members are facing food insecurity and housing insecurity, and they need real wages to sustain their lives. As we talk about having a good quality of life and time, we also have to have the conversation about the inequities that exist in our society today.

BRANDIS FRIEDMAN: Let's talk about the impact on the job market and hiring patterns. What impact might a 32-hour work week have on those?

ANDY CHALLENGER: When we saw this same type of policy rolled out in France in the year 2000, some of the workers were able to make more money because of those changes. But there were other workers who were left out. They weren't able to enter the labor market at the high new wages set by the policy, and they were really left behind. So there's some worry that this is a bit of a blunt instrument. There are a lot of good things about the bill, raising people's wages and helping them exist in an economy where prices keep rising, but I think this bill could really use a fine-point pen. In France, the government actually paid the payroll taxes for companies to make it more digestible, and a study of that period said that without those payroll tax breaks, companies probably would have let go a lot of people. So there might be a different way to achieve this.

BRANDIS FRIEDMAN: Jay, from the perspective of the business community, what impact do you think a 32-hour work week would have on hiring?

JAY ALDEBERT: So doing the math: take wage. You're literally looking at a 10 percent increase if you get to that time and a half on Friday. When you look at reducing the number of hours and compensation staying the same, it's actually a 25 percent increase. So on the hiring side, if it's a 10 percent increase overall, if I have 10 employees, I'm essentially paying for 11. So now I've hired an individual that doesn't exist, that obviously is producing nothing for me. And that becomes the issue in hiring. I've just taken on another individual and no production. So I see that impacting hiring heavily.

BRANDIS FRIEDMAN: Andy, this is the fourth time this bill has been proposed to Congress since 2021. What are the odds it gets passed this time?

ANDY CHALLENGER: I don't think there's a very serious effort to get this through with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress. This is a pretty progressive bill that hasn't gotten support from the other side. So I think it's more of a statement bill. They want to point out that families and individuals are suffering and wages aren't keeping up with inflation. I get it as a political statement, but not so much as economic policy.

BRANDIS FRIEDMAN: Richard, we'll give you the last word here. Thirty seconds.

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: I do see it as progress. I think this is one step in a longer trail that we're facing. I believe we need a living wage for all. There's a bill right now in the House that our own Congresswoman Delia Ramirez here in Illinois introduced for a $25 minimum wage. I think we need to move that bill first, and then, as time goes on, we move to a 32-hour work week.

BRANDIS FRIEDMAN: Time will tell.