Michael Hiltzik: The 8-hour workday was the paramount goal of unions in the 1800s. Is the 4-day workweek next?
G. Roger King, a lawyer with the lobbying organization for big corporate human resources officers, assured the members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that he and his colleagues were fully on board with the concept of a four-day work week.
His HR colleagues, he told the senators at a March 14 hearing, are "not opposed to 32-hour work weeks or other nontraditional work week configurations" ... in principle.
Unfortunately, he said, a four-day week would only exacerbate existing labor shortages, would be a "backdoor" increase in the minimum wage, and in any case should be driven by "traditional market forces," not mandated by federal law.
Are you surprised that big employers would fight a shorter work week for their employees? Me neither.
"As a general rule," says labor historian Erik Loomis of the University of Rhode Island, "employers are opposed to every labor reform. They always say it's going to be a disaster for the economy,
