How Bernie Sanders plans to help you love your job again

• Sen. Bernie Sanders is the new head of a key Senate panel on labor issues.
• He is pushing a four-day workweek, worker-owned businesses, and taxing robots that replace workers.
• It's part of his plan to improve worker satisfaction and empowerment after the "great resignation."

The new chairman of a key Senate committee on labor wants to make work less … laborious.

Sen. Bernie Sanders is pushing for a four-day workweek, worker-owned businesses, and taxing robots that replace workers. It's part of his plan to improve worker satisfaction and empowerment after the frustrations that he believes led to the "great resignation," starting in 2021.

"If you're working 40 hours a week now and you have technology that makes you more productive maybe you should be working 30 hours a week and receive the same pay," the self-described democratic socialist told me during a phone interview on Tuesday. 

Rallying for workers' rights and railing against billionaires have been a part of Sanders' agenda through two presidential campaigns and more than 40 years in public life. 

Now he's pitching his alternative workplace ideas from his new platform as Senate Health, Education, and Labor Committee chairman – and as the author of a new book, "It's OK To Be Angry About Capitalism," described as a "progressive takedown of the uber-capitalist status quo."

Sanders told Insider he plans to hold at least one hearing on the future of work, exploring how workers can benefit from a revolution in technology. To coordinate research, investments, and policy decisions, he thinks there should be a new cabinet-level agency focusing on the future of work.

He wants to hold President Joe Biden accountable on labor issues. He said the president has "made it very clear that he is pro-union" but he needs to be "more aggressive in taking on union busting activity that we are seeing." 

And he wants to stick it to CEOs like Moderna's Stéphane Bancel, who is set to testify, and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who Sanders says hasn't complied with federal labor laws. Sanders hasn't given up — "not at all"— on bringing Schultz before the committee, even though he declined an invitation to testify.

"It is an outrage that you have a billionaire like Howard Schultz engaging in vicious anti-union activity and I think he has got to explain his illegal behavior to the Senate," Sanders told me. "I am going to do everything that I can to make that happen."

Sanders, 81, hasn't said whether he'll run for reelection to the Senate in 2024. He has ruled out challenging Biden again if he announces he's running for reelection. He's also apparently ruled out achieving his dream of fundamentally transforming America's healthcare system. "Am I gonna accomplish Medicare for All? No, I will not," he told New York Magazine.

But he hasn't given up on lowering the cost of prescription drugs or ensuring technology is used to benefit workers rather than just corporations — issues that fall within his jurisdiction as chairman.

—Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) February 21, 2023

Sanders says he learned about worker empowerment in 1963 while picking grapefruit on an Israeli kibbutz. Many of the workers on that small commune were socialist, and they owned their production and elected their bosses. 

"If you are making decisions and benefiting from those decisions, you have a very different attitude toward work than if you're simply a cog in a machine and you get paid and nobody gives a damn about your point of view," he said. 

During our phone conversation, Sanders, indeed, sounded very angry at uber capitalism. He surprised me with a quick chuckle when I invited him to discuss this over a game of Monopoly, offering to even let him play the hat token. "Alright, not in the immediate future," he said.

Note to his communications director: I did not hear him say, "No."

His book at times seems to shout at the reader, starting with an introduction that describes the country's "uber-capitalist economic system" in recent years as "propelled by uncontrollable greed and contempt for human decency" and "not merely unjust" but "grossly immoral."

Sanders said he wrote the book to focus on issues rarely discussed in corporate media. He's convinced that "millions of people" don't like their jobs and work only for a paycheck or health insurance. He also worries about the impact of robotics and artificial intelligence on the workforce in the future, potentially replacing more jobs than they create. 

Among the ideas he's touting is a move toward the type of worker-owned businesses that he says have led to high worker satisfaction in Vermont. He also wants to promote workers sitting on the boards of directors of large corporations.

He points to results of a recent pilot program, testing a four-day workweek in the United Kingdom, that showed workers felt better, resignations dropped and revenues increased, compared to previous years. Most companies decided to keep the program.

"If you are producing 50 percent more, you should benefit from that," he said. "You should be able to work reduced hours."

"As technology increases worker productivity, we want to look at a shorter workweek," he said.