UAW President Shawn Fain spoke before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee to advocate for the 32-hour work week. And in his usual style, he struck early and struck hard against the would-be naysayers.

And I know what people and many in this room will say. They'll say, 'People just don't want to work,' or, 'Working-class people are lazy.' But the truth is, working-class people aren't lazy, they're fed up. They're fed up with being left behind and stripped of dignity as wealth inequality in this nation, this world, spirals out of control. They're fed up that in America, three families have as much wealth as the bottom 50% of citizens in this nation. That is criminal. America is better than this.

So, I want to close with this: I agree there is an epidemic in this country of people who don't want to work; people who can't be bothered to get up every day and contribute to our society, but instead want to freeload off the labor of others. But those aren't blue-collar people; those aren't the working-class people. It's a group of people who are never talked about for how little they actually work and produce, and how little they contribute to humanity. The people I'm talking about are the Wall Street freeloaders, the masters of passive income. Those who profit off the labor of others have all the time in the world, while those who make this country run, the people who build the products and contribute to labor, have less and less time for themselves, for their families, and for their lives.

Fain also pointed out that the COVID pandemic brought most of this on and that people came to realize what was important to them, which was spending time with their family and loved ones. They woke up to the fact that they were no longer willing to get up and work 12-hour days and still not have enough money to even live on.

These facts are really self-evident by the number of people joining unions and the fact that 2023 saw the most people taking direct actions against their employers (going on strike) to improve their working conditions since the turn of the century.

While I don't expect the idea of a 32-hour work week to be embraced immediately by most lawmakers, it is not out of the realm of possibilities. But to get there, we will need to keep applying pressure and we will have to start electing more politicians who actually are friends of labor.