The workability of a 32-hour workweek was dissected during a senate committee hearing March 14 chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP).

It’s an issue that hasn’t been addressed at the federal level since 1940, Sanders said, when Congress amended the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), thereby limiting the standard workweek from 44 to 40 hours.

“One of the issues we’ve got to talk about is stress in this country; so many people are going to work exhausted physically and mentally,” he said. “To suggest we have to maintain what we put in place 84 years ago [defining the workweek] does not make a lot of sense.”

It’s not a radical idea, Sanders said. He pointed to France’s 35-hour workweek and its consideration of reducing it to 32 hours, as well as Denmark’s and Norway’s adoption of a 37-hour workweek.

A day ahead of the hearing, Sanders introduced a companion bill to Rep. Mark Takano’s, D-Calif., Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act, which would reduce the standard workweek from 40 hours to 32 hours by again amending the FLSA.

Takano’s bill amends the definition of the workweek in federal law; it does not make any changes or limit the number of hours that an employee may work in a standard workweek. His proposed legislation also would lower the maximum hours threshold for overtime compensation for nonexempt employees.

However, a mandatory 32-hour workweek is bad policy, said Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., the ranking HELP committee member. Shortening the workweek, he predicted, will hurt productivity, which could result in the U.S. losing its status as the world’s wealthiest nation and potentially lead to offshoring of jobs.

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