Reviving the Struggle for a Shorter Work Week

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A shorter work week with no cut in pay: an idea whose time has come. With everyone working fewer hours, there would be more jobs.

This article is part of a series in our initial October 19, 2025 release of Daily Struggle. Read more in our introductory editorial, A Class Struggle Vision: Why UAWD is Launching Daily Struggle.

  • Work life balance: shorter work week without loss in pay. Imagine keeping your current schedule, but with one paid day off a week for: your family, your health, whatever you want. With sweeping tariffs and electric vehicle policy reversals meaning uncertainty, layoffs, and disarray for workers, a shorter work week would increase job protections and help workers be stable through a changing industry. It would be paid for by cutting into the profits employers extract from us, the workers. The 40 hour work week wasn’t given to us. Working more than 80 hours a week was common after the Industrial Revolution; it took organized labor striking to push back and win the eight-hour day. Many wanted to go further. In the 1937 Flint Sit-down Strike, the UAW called for a 30 hour work week. Around that time, a bill for a 30 hour work week almost passed in Congress. This fight is global. German auto workers today make a living wage working 35 hour weeks. The largest Why can YOU and the UAW win these demands? Past work week struggles show it will take organizing strikes, cross industry solidarity, and putting pressure on legislators to win these demands. The shorter work week should be central to the contract demands in 2028 and part of building bottom-up for a general strike when multiple contracts expire on International Workers Day (May 1) 2028. With a president in the White House who wants to destroy unions and everything we’ve fought for and won, we need to go on the offensive. This includes not only defending what we have but pushing for more, such as a shorter work week with no loss of pay and overtime pay after 32 hours of work. With everyone working fewer hours, there would be more jobs. to Daily Struggle for UAWD’s series on the history and current struggle for a shorter work week, and to trade union in Europe, IG Metall, which represents autoworkers, put a 32-hour work week at the same pay on the table in their 2023 negotiations. They didn’t win this time, but their fight shows that workers in Europe understand how much profit is extracted from their labor — and are organizing to take that back through shorter hours.

Stay tuned to Daily Struggle for our series on the history and current fight for a shorter work week, and check out UAWD’s program for building a worker-led EV transition to learn how we can get organized.