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.

But yesterday, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders announced that he would introduce Senate legislation to establish a standard thirty-two-hour workweek, with no loss in pay, across the United States. Sanders’s Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act is being cosponsored by Democratic California senator Laphonza Butler in the Senate, and Representative Mark Takano, also a California Democrat, has introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives.

Experiments with a shorter week are now being pursued in several European countries. In Germany last month, forty-five companies began a six-month pilot of a four-day workweek; Germany currently has an average workweek of 34.2 hours. (One of the organizations supporting the pilot, 4 Day Week Global, has also endorsed Sanders’s bill.) A similar test run is currently underway in Portugal, and one concluded in the UK at the end of 2022.