Proposal: 4-Day Workweek and Fair Pay Plan

In the United States, the standard full-time workweek will be legally lowered from 40 hours down to 32 hours for all businesses and government jobs. Employers must make this change without cutting anyone’s current salary, paid time off, or health benefits. To help keep companies productive, workplaces will be banned from making employees attend more than four hours of meetings per week. Instead of everyone taking Friday off, customer service businesses will rotate employee schedules so their doors can stay open all week. Workers will have a legal right to completely ignore work emails, texts, and calls on their days off without getting in trouble. To help small businesses adjust to this change, the government will give a special tax break to any company with fewer than 50 employees. Freelancers and gig workers will get a legally required 20% bump in their base pay so they don’t fall behind regular full-time employees. Finally, the government will run a full review of this program after two years to make sure the economy is still healthy before making these rules permanent.