Would you support legislation that makes 32 hours full time and hours over that required to be paid at OT rates?
Good lord no.
I'm conflicted on it. I agree its probably a bad idea for the government to get involved. However I like the idea on its face and think there is a lot of positive data supporting a reduced work week. The problem is that the majority of companies won't go for it unless incentivized.
The problem is you're applying the theory across the board. There are so many businesses and jobs that are production, performance, or service industry based where this model would certainly not work unless the pay is also reduced by the same rate. And even if payroll is reduced by the same rate you're not considering that the cost of overhead is remaining the same.
Everyone at this point seems to want to work less and get paid more. Of course they do. It's great, in theory. But, at some point unless other serious sacrifices are made this system is going to implode.
How did it work the other 5 times the work week was reduced?
The issue here is that as a whole, less work for the same pay is essentially "back-owed". On average productivity is up 400% over what it was when the 40 hour work week was first instituted, but inflation adjusted wages and the length of the workweek are both essentially flat (and CEO salaries and corporate profits up about a zillion percent).
If we'd done it linearly, we should all be working 10 hour weeks by now and we'd still be outputting as much as we did in 1940 when the 40 hour work week was first introduced. If we'd done it fairly and linearly and split that production increase, we'd all be working 20 hours weeks and production would still be up 200% over what it was back when we first started working 40. Instead, we've given up that entire 400% increase in production for free.
So we can say "you can't just produce less and get paid the same without sacrificing any of that pay". But we've been doing the opposite for the last 80 years. Producing more and getting paid the same, and working the same amount.
Why is it completely acceptable for corporations to get more output for the same amount of money, but completely incomprehensible that they might get less output for the same amount of money? Especially when they've already spent the last 80 years building up a surplus of extra output for no extra money?
I totally get that those numbers are a broader metric that may not apply to all fields (like restaurants etc). So I'm genuinely wondering how that worked when the work week was reduced in the past. I'm sure there were plenty of restaurant owners saying "restaurants can't exist with a 40 hour work week!" back then. Yet they still exist.