76th Anniversary Of 30-Hour Work Week Bill

Most people in the United Stares are still forced by the White Corporate Male Power Structure to toil at least 35 hours per week at menial jobs for inadequate wages. Yet it’s been over 76 years since a 30-Hour Work Week Bill was first introduced in the United States Senate. According to the book Our Own Times: A History of American Labor and the Working Day by David Roediger and Phillip Foner:

“On December 21, 1932…Senator Hugo L. Black of Alabama introduced a simple bill for shorter hours. The measure called for a 30-hour week as the `only practical and possible method for dealing with unemployment’…

“`Hunger in the midst of plenty is the great problem,’ he declared, adding that the prompt enactment of his measure, which was known as the `30-hour Work Week Bill,” `would bring about the quick employment of about 6.5 million jobless Americans’…

“On March 30,1933, the Judiciary Committee reported the 30-hour bill favorably and urged the Senate to adopt it. In its report, the committee stated that the unemployed could not be put to work without reducing hours…

“On April 6, 1933, the Senate passed the amended 30-hour-week bill by a vote of 53 to 30…”

Unfortunately for workers in the United States, the Democratic Administration of FDR chose to not push the 30-hour work week bill through its House of Representatives during its first 100 Days. And 76 years later—although there’s still a lot of jobless workers in the United States—the White Corporate Male Power Structure’s Obama Regime is apparently still unwilling to reduce the standard U.S. work-week to 28 hours in 2009.