“This is not a radical idea,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) told Congress this morning. The chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is calling for the legislative branch to pick up an issue dropped nearly 70 years ago:  changing the workweek to 32 hours without docking employee pay, or in other words, a four-day week.

Sanders spoke of successes in his opening statement that other countries have had in implementing shortened work weeks, like, of course, France, but also in specific companies across the nation. 

Get ready for a long weekend at Bernie’s!

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wants Americans to follow in the footsteps of some lawmakers in Congress and cut back on their working hours while getting the same pay.

The self-described “Democratic socialist” passionately advocated for a 32-hour workweek as the national standard while chairing a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing Thursday.

“American workers are now over 400% more productive than they were in the 1940s,” noted Sanders, 82.

Many people hate their jobs. Some don’t. But almost everyone would like to work less. And over the past several decades, American workers have worked longer hours overall as their wages have stagnated. As if that weren’t enough, they have also seen their declining amount of free time disrupted by increasingly erratic schedules. It’s a dismal situation. Strange, then, that politicians almost never speak to this widespread desire.

At least half of American workers say they're “quiet quitting” — performing only the tasks they’re required to, giving up on going “above and beyond," according to a new Gallup survey.

Why it matters: The pandemic made nearly all work harder to perform and that extra labor has taken a toll on employees — especially younger workers. They're responding by putting more and more distance between themselves and their jobs, or looking for new jobs.