Bernie Sanders Advocates for 4-Day Work Week in Light of AI Productivity Gains

Bernie Sanders says that if AI makes us so productive, we should get a 4-day work week | TechCrunch

As AI companies rave about how their products are revolutionizing productivity, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wants the tech industry to put its money where its automated mouth is. In a recent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Sanders argued that the time saved with AI tools should be given back to workers to spend with their families. "Technology is gonna work to improve us, not just the people who own the technology and the CEOs of large corporations," Sanders said. "You are a worker, your productivity is increasing because we give you AI, right? Instead of throwing you out on the street, I'm gonna reduce your work week to 32 hours." It's a concept that would be a relief to most people, and an abject horror to anyone who has ever been to Davos. What's the point of life if you don't take every moment you can to drive shareholder value? For the tech elite, the promise of AI-driven increases in productivity means that companies can do even more, since their workers will be freed up to take on even more tasks -- or, they can save money by just slashing their headcount. But for workers, this boost in efficiency could mean completing their existing workloads in less time with no loss in pay, so maybe if they're lucky, they can make it to their kid's Little League game. "And by the way, not a radical idea," Sanders said. "There are companies around the world that are doing it with some success." In the United Kingdom, for instance, 61 companies (around 2,900 workers) piloted a four-day work week in the latter half of 2022. Out of 23 companies that shared financial data, the revenue from the beginning to the end of the trial remained about the same, rising by 1.4% on average. Kickstarter has operated on a four-day work week since 2021, while Microsoft Japan piloted a four-day work week in 2019, which led to a reported 40% increase in productivity. "Let's use technology to benefit workers," Sanders said. "That means give you more time with your family, with your friends, for education, whatever the hell you wanna do."

Bernie Sanders says productivity-boosting AI should mean 4-day workweeks, not layoffs

A hot potato: AI companies never shut up about how their technologies are making everyone super productive, supposedly allowing us to do more in less time. But Senator Bernie Sanders says if this really is the case, we should all be working 4-day weeks. During a recent interview on the Joe Rogan Experience, Sanders pointed out that the extra time that workers save through the use of AI tools should be given back to them - not filled with extra work. "Technology is gonna work to improve us, not just the people who own the technology and the CEOs of large corporations," Sanders said. "You are a worker, your productivity is increasing because we give you AI, right? Instead of throwing you out on the street, I'm gonna reduce your workweek to 32 hours." "And by the way, not a radical idea," Sanders added. "There are companies around the world that are doing it with some success." Some of those countries Sanders is referring to include the UK, France, Japan, and Germany, where companies and government organizations have been experimenting with four-day weeks without reducing worker pay. An aggregated global study found that company revenue was up 8% during these four-day weeks, while among workers, fatigue was down 10% and stress was down around 35%. The study also found that overall productivity stayed the same or even increased - by 40%, in the case of Microsoft Japan. But most companies care little about employees' work-life balance or mental health, as illustrated by so many of them ending fully remote work, demanding staff get back in the office or find another job. In their eyes, the best way to take advantage of all the free time created by AI use is to lay off workers - something we're seeing all the time in the tech industry. Last week, it was reported that Microsoft is preparing to lay off thousands of employees next month. It comes as the company invests an estimated $80 billion into AI infrastructure over the next fiscal year. "Let's use technology to benefit workers," Sanders concluded. "That means give you more time with your family, with your friends, for education, whatever the hell you wanna do." But for many people, the only way AI gives them time away from work is when it takes their job.

Bernie Sanders: If AI makes you more productive, then you deserve a 4-day work week

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders recently returned to the Joe Rogan podcast, where he argued that if artificial intelligence makes workers more productive, then the obvious trade-off should be a lighter work week. To be specific, he argued for shifting the work week to just four days. Sanders made the comments during a June 24 episode of Joe Rogan's podcast. "You are a worker, your productivity is increasing because we give you AI, right?" Sanders said. "Instead of throwing you out on the street, I'm going to reduce your work week to 32 hours." He added: "By the way, not a radical idea. There are companies around the world that are doing it, with some success." Sanders has regularly advocated for a four-day work week and noted the United Auto Workers union pushed hard for it in their latest contract negotiation. Last year, the senator introduced the Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act, which emphasized that moving to a shorter work week should occur "with no loss in pay." "Let's use technology to benefit workers," Sanders said in the interview. "That means, give you more time with your family, with your friends, for education, whatever the hell you want to do -- you don't have to work 40 hours a week anymore." It seems unlikely corporate leaders will go along with the idea of rolling back work hours for the same pay, but perhaps one day AI will grant us all more free time.

The four-day work week gets a new booster: AI

Where it stands: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) brought it up on the Joe Rogan podcast recently. How it works: Instead of firing people, proponents argue that firms share the gains of improved technology by giving workers some of their time back. "The ability of large language models like ChatGPT to wipe out millions of good-paying positions means we need to be intentional about how we adjust to that technology," she writes in the book. "Reducing hours per job is a powerful way to keep more people employed." Reality check: Smaller firms can more easily implement a big change like a four-day week -- larger companies are likely to have a harder time making it happen, experts say. But reducing work hours to make sure a lot of people don't lose their jobs when technology advances isn't a new idea. Earlier this month, Roger Kirkness, the CEO of a small software startup called Convictional moved the company to a four-day workweek -- without reducing anyone's pay. Kirkness tells Axios that using AI accelerates writing code but it doesn't speed up everything -- teams still need to be able to think creatively to solve problems and get real work done. "(Nearly) all that matters in work moving forward is the maximization of creativity, human judgment, emotional intelligence, prompting skills and deeply understanding a customer domain," he wrote in his all-staff email. The bottom line: A growing chorus argues that workers should actually benefit from AI rather than just live in fear of it.

Bernie Sanders: If AI Is Doing Such Amazing Work, Everyone Should Get a Four-Day Workweek

In 2025, we're constantly told, artificial intelligence is bringing about a workplace revolution. Countless billionaires have waxed poetic about the "coming recession" and "unemployment crisis" that their hyped up AI chatbots are sure to bring. Bernie Sanders, the progressive senator from Vermont, has been listening. Calling the US tech industry on its AI hype -- which mostly involves generating shareholder value -- Sanders recently posed a rhetorical question on the Joe Rogan podcast: if AI is as powerful as they say, why not give workers a 30-hour week? "Technology is gonna work to improve us, not just the people who own the technology and the CEOs of large corporations," Sanders said. "You are a worker, your productivity is increasing because we give you AI, right? Instead of throwing you out on the street, I'm gonna reduce your work week to 32 hours." "That means, give you more time with your family, with your friends, for education, whatever the hell you want to do," the senator suggested. "You don't have to work 40 hours a week anymore." While a 30-hour work week may sound untenable to some, it's important to remember that the 40 hour week is less than a century old, only becoming federally law in 1940. One could look at that legislation as a concession to placate industrial workers, who in 1933 were agitating for the same 30-hour week which most of us in 2025 can hardly imagine. Even Bernie agrees. It's "not a radical idea," he told Rogan, adding that "there are companies around the world that are doing it with some success." However, the reality is that AI is far from ready to bring about optimistic labor reforms like Sanders' laudable 30-day week, or even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's guilt-ridden idea for universal basic income. Despite widespread fear of AI-fueled layoffs and a job market in shambles, AI's main function is currently to give corporations cover as they outsource high-paying jobs to lower-wage workers. As time goes on, more and more corporate executives are realizing that AI -- buggy, inefficient, and stubbornly prone to hallucinations -- is no match for human beings. Still, even in the utopian world where AI could execute tasks accurately, Sanders' idea has some flaws. Most notable is the issue of unequal exchange between rich and poor countries. Given the tech industry's growing tendency to offload laborious tasks like AI grading to low-wage workers in countries like Kenya, it's likely that an AI-powered 30-hour workweek in the US would only increase inequality in other parts of the world. We're already seeing signs of this: a 2024 digital labor study found that the AI industry helps rich countries maintain poor nations' economic dependencies on exploitative trade, at the expense of their workers. In poor countries, AI also leads to new types of economic turmoil, while worsening that which already exists. Within the US, the 30-hour concept also relies on the goodwill of for-profit companies, something they've never offered workers out of the kindness of their hearts. Even now, with today's deeply flawed AI, workers in the US report that the tech is lowering their productivity and saddling them with more work per day -- not less. Meanwhile, studies show massive AI investments have had "no significant impact on earnings or recorded hours in any occupation." These issues aside, Sanders' proposal does cut to an exciting fact: that a universal 30-hour workweek is possible, and it's up to the workers of the world to win it for ourselves. More on labor: Top Venture Capitalist Says AI Will Replace Pretty Much All Jobs Except His, Which Relies on His Unique Genius

'Artificial intelligence is going to displace millions and millions of workers' says Bernie Sanders, so might as well take a four-day week

Sanders worries about the effects of AI on the future of America. Join the club, guy. AI, specifically that driven by large language models, is a worrying bit of technology right now. Not purely because of what it is, but also because of the lack of government guidance and regulation around it. However, not all is gloomy, as senator Bernie Sanders points out there are ways it can benefit the average worker. On June 24, Bernie Sanders appeared once again on Joe Rogan's podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. Episode 2341 is dedicated to a single two-hour conversation with the 83-year-old politician. In typical Bernie Sanders fashion, this episode immediately kicks off with a critique of the control of power in America. In this, he notes income inequality, lampoons Elon Musk for "owning more wealth than the bottom 52% of American families", and condemns the funding of the American political party system. As originally spotted by Business Insider, it's Sander's reflection on AI that has really caught my attention. Rogan asked Sanders, if he were the president of the United States, how would he react to AI's role in automation and its potential effects on workers? Sanders argues that business owners implementing AI should offer a 32 work week, "instead of throwing you out on the street". But first, Americans must "Make the determination that we are not going to let a handful of CEOs make these decisions. They're going to be made by the American people." As both Sanders and Rogan acknowledge, it's "not a radical idea" to implement a four-day work week. In the UK, two hundred companies, with over 5,000 workers total, have signed up for a permanent four-day working week, citing greater productivity gains on working days, alongside a benefit to worker health and happiness. The 32-hour work week is something Sanders has championed previously, and a 2023 paper argues that 35 million workers in America could shift to a four-day work week in light of AI developments in the workplace. With trials spanning from 2015 to 2019, four-day work week testing in Iceland proved to be "an overwhelming success", so there's a precedent for its wider adoption. This is especially true in the light of AI advancements. Sanders says, "Let's use technology to benefit workers. That means give you more time with your family, with your friends, for your education. Whatever the hell you want to do." He then expresses that he has been told of the fears of generative AI on children, not only the potential effects of the internet on broader attention spans, but also of teachers afraid that all their homework is being completed by AI. "You go to the chat box, you give me a wonderful essay you know nothing about. What does that mean for your intellectual development?" AI's potential effect on workplaces isn't the only possible threat to people's livelihoods. As well as concerns about energy consumption, artists fear that generative AI models that scrape their original work will create derivative renditions of their work, and that the undiscerning will pick the cheaper, quicker option. There is, in turn, a negative feedback loop here, pushing new artists out and replacing the old art with quickly made and increasingly plagiarised copies. Both Anthropic and Meta have recently won suits concerning free use of copyright with their respective AI models. The former case acknowledges this doesn't count for pirated materials, and the latter case was won partially due to 'wrong arguments' from the plaintiffs. Regardless of the specifics, this sets the stage for continued anxiety around the future of AI. There's a back-and-forth that Sanders represents in his Joe Rogan episode. He ponders how best to counteract the negatives of AI usage, whilst taking advantage of the positives. He says he thinks "artificial intelligence is going to displace millions and millions of workers" and that "the corporate guys who are running these companies could [n't] care less about these workers". Sanders thinks "these are issues we have got to address in a bold way". A four-day work week would certainly be a good start, though stricter regulations would help too.

Bernie Sanders calls for 4-day work week, says AI boom means it's time to clock out early

Bernie Sanders suggests a four-day work week due to AI advancements. He believes AI benefits should give workers more free time. Sanders says technology should improve lives, not just profits. Some companies globally already use a four-day week. A UK trial showed revenue stayed similar. Microsoft Japan saw productivity rise with shorter weeks.As artificial intelligence transforms the way we work, Senator Bernie Sanders is urging companies to rethink how productivity gains should benefit workers by giving them more free time, not less pay, as per a report. During a recent conversation at 'The Joe Rogan Experience' with podcaster Joe Rogan, Sanders argued that the time saved because of AI tools shouldn't just boost corporate profits or pile on more work, according to a TechCrunch report. Instead, it should be passed back to employees in the form of shorter work weeks, as he urged for a four-day work week, according to the report. Sanders pointed out that, "Technology is gonna work to improve us, not just the people who own the technology and the CEOs of large corporations," quoted TechCrunch in its report. He emphasised that, "You are a worker, your productivity is increasing because we give you AI, right? Instead of throwing you out on the street, I'm gonna reduce your work week to 32 hours," as quoted in the report. TechCrunch wrote in its report that Sanders's push for this concept "would be a relief to most people, and an abject horror to anyone who has ever been to Davos. What's the point of life if you don't take every moment you can to drive shareholder value?" ALSO READ: Google unveils Gemini CLI for developers - 5 critical features of the open-source AI agent However, for many tech companies, AI-driven productivity gains often translate into expectations for workers to handle more tasks or risk layoffs, as per the report. But Sanders envisions a different path, finishing current work faster without cutting pay, freeing up workers' time for their personal lives, like catching their kid's Little League game, as reported by TechCrunch. He also highlighted that, "And by the way, not a radical idea," and added that, "There are companies around the world that are doing it with some success," as quoted in the report. ALSO READ: Gas relief coming? Oil now cheaper than it was before Iran-Israel war -- what it means for your wallet TechCrunch cited the example of the United Kingdom, where 61 companies (around 2,900 workers) piloted a four-day work week in the second half of 2022. It was found that out of 23 companies that shared financial data, the revenue from the beginning to the end of the trial remained almost the same, increasing by 1.4% on average, as reported by TechCrunch. Other examples include Kickstarter, which has operated on a four-day work week since 2021, while even Microsoft Japan piloted a four-day work week in 2019, which led to a reported 40% increase in productivity, according to the TechCrunch report. Sanders said, "Let's use technology to benefit workers," adding, "That means give you more time with your family, with your friends, for education, whatever the hell you wanna do," as quoted in the TechCrunch report. ALSO READ: McDonald's dumps Krispy Kreme -- no more Doughnuts with your fries? Fans react to abrupt breakup What is Bernie Sanders proposing? He's calling for a 32-hour, four-day workweek, without cutting pay, due to time saved by using AI tools, as per a TechCrunch report. Why does he think AI should lead to shorter workweeks? Because if workers are getting more done with AI, they should be rewarded with more time for themselves, not just asked to do more.

Bernie Sanders Slams Job Cuts, Says AI Should Give Workers More Time Off: 'Instead Of Throwing You Out On The Street...' - JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN)

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is advocating for a 32-hour workweek, citing the potential for advancements in artificial intelligence and automation to provide workers with more personal time. What Happened: Sanders, in a recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, outlined his vision for a future where AI and automation drive increased productivity and efficiency, leading to reduced working hours for employees. "Instead of throwing you out on the street, I'm going to reduce your workweek to 32 hours," Sanders stated. The Vermont senator underscored the potential benefits of technology for workers, suggesting it could offer more time for family, friends and education. Sanders introduced the "Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act" last year, which mandates overtime pay for any work beyond 32 hours in a week. The proposed change would be gradually implemented over a four-year period. SEE ALSO: Trump's Move To Gut Financial Protection Agency Could Cost Consumers $15 Billion A Year, Say Advocacy Groups Why It Matters: The proposal comes at a time when the impact of AI and automation on the workforce is a hot topic. Just days before Sanders' podcast appearance, Microsoft MSFT announced its third round of layoffs for 2025, primarily targeting the sales team and other customer-facing roles. This move was attributed to AI-driven workforce shifts. Similarly, Amazon AMZN CEO Andy Jassy recently warned that AI would reduce the company's corporate workforce due to efficiency gains, sparking backlash from employees. Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase JPM CEO Jamie Dimon admitted that U.S. companies are short on workers who can code software, secure networks and run complex projects. READ MORE: Bernie Sanders Says Working-Class Americans Die 10 Years Earlier Than the Rich -- Blames 'Enormous Stress of Living Paycheck to Paycheck' Image via Shutterstock Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. AMZNAmazon.com Inc$214.200.67%Stock Score Locked: Edge Members Only Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Unlock RankingsEdge RankingsMomentum53.86Growth97.10Quality65.73Value50.09Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewJPMJPMorgan Chase & Co$282.020.27%MSFTMicrosoft Corp$489.83-0.06%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs