Grinberg: HR 4728 and the 32-Hour Workweek

Wednesday, February 2, 2022 | 0

Boy, do businesses have something to look forward to in their Herculean efforts to keep the lights on.

Gregory Grinberg

As everyone knows, your garden variety employee can work up to 40 hours per week at a regular rate and then gets paid overtime (1.5 the base hourly rate) for hours worked in excess of 40 per week. However, that’s not good enough for some folks in Washington, D.C., so we have a bill introduced in Congress that should be titled “The Trigger Mass Business Closures and Layoffs Bill” but instead is called the “32-Hour Workweek Act.”

Rep. Mark Takano, D-California, introduced HR 4728 back in July of 2021 but has made the news recently drawing attention to the proposal. So, let’s talk about the effects.

Well, for one thing, this is a significant increase in the cost of productivity. The production captured in a 40-hour workweek would go up in cost by 12.5%. If you’re a California business already struggling to keep the lights on, how will the 12.5% increase in labor cost impact you?

Looking at it from the employee side, of course, we can anticipate many full-time employees being reduced in their work schedules to 32 hours to avoid the imposition of mandatory overtime for a 40-hour week. So, if there were previously four employees working 40 hours per week, the business must now hire a fifth to have five people working 32 hours instead of four working 40 hours. Unless of course, the business has the misfortune of being in a place that has an ordinance similar to San Jose’s Section 4.101.040, which forces employers to prioritize making part-time employees into full-time employees before hiring more part-time employees.

And what effect would such a law have on the workers’ compensation world? Besides the anticipated layoffs and business closures that would certainly follow, any applicant who worked more than 32 hours per week prior to going out on TD would likely claim that the law constitutes a wage increase and demand an appropriate increase in the TD rate.

And, of course, layoffs and economic downturns always trigger massive claims for injury, whether post-term cumulative trauma or pre-term back strains. 

Hopefully, after the fanfare and attention that the internet gives such things now and then, H R 4728 will die in committee and we will never hear of it again. As for all the employers and employees who think a 32-hour workweek is a great idea, I have a simple solution: Negotiate with your employer and work only 32 hours per week. One needs neither divine intervention nor an act of Congress to negotiate a mutually agreeable arrangement.

Gregory Grinberg is managing partner of Gale, Sutow & Associates’ S.F. Bay South office and a certified specialist in workers’ compensation law. This post is reprinted with permission from Grinberg’s WCDefenseCA blog.