- Bernie Sanders on Sunday voiced assist for a 4-day workweek, a demand of placing auto staff.
- On CNN, the Vermont senator blamed lengthy working hours for a decline in US life expectancy.
- “People in America are stressed out for a dozen different reasons,” Sanders stated.
This nation wants to significantly think about slicing again the hours that individuals must labor at their job, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders informed CNN on Sunday, suggesting the 40-hour workweek is at the least partly accountable for Americans’ declining life expectancy.
A 32-hour, four-day workweek — for the identical pay — is a key demand of the United Auto Workers, whose members went on strike final week after talks with Ford, GM, and Stellantis didn’t ship a new contract. The demand, partly, displays issues that the electrification of the auto trade, paired with rising synthetic intelligence applied sciences, will considerably cut back the quantity of human labor required to assemble a new automobile.
Sanders, requested whether or not he thought the UAW’s place was merely a bargaining ploy, stated he thinks it is really value having a dialog about.
“As a nation, we should begin a serious discussion — and UAW is doing that — about substantially lowering the workweek,” Sanders, an impartial who caucuses with the Democrats, informed CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“People in America are stressed out for a dozen different reasons, and that’s one of the reasons why life expectancy in our country is actually in decline,” he stated. “People are overwhelmed. They’ve got to take care of their kids. They’ve got to worry about healthcare. They’ve got to worry about housing. They’re worried.”
According to the CDC, life expectancy at start fell to 76.1 years in 2021, the second 12 months in a row that the quantity fell, largely because of COVID-19. Other contributing components included coronary heart illness, persistent liver illness and cirrhosis, and suicide, the CDC stated.
Studies of a four-day workweek, in the meantime, together with a pilot program involving some 2,900 staff within the UK, have advised workers’ time at work might be diminished with out hurting corporations’ income — and with staff reporting much less stress and anxiousness.
Sanders argued that slicing time at work would even be a simply reward for good points in employee productiveness, significantly with the appearance of AI.
“It seems to me that if new technology is going to make us a more productive society, the benefits should go to the workers,” he stated. “It would be an extraordinary thing to see people have more time to spend with their kids, with their families, to be able to do more cultural activities, to get a better education.”
It is one thing, he continued, that “absolutely we need to be discussing.”
