The bill would allow employees to “voluntarily choose” to give up their legally-mandated one day off per calendar week.

The bill would allow employees to “voluntarily choose” to give up their legally-mandated one day off per calendar week.

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Wisconsin state legislators have introduced a bill that would threaten some workers’ right to a weekend.

The restrictive measure was introduced by Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) just weeks after Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill that made Wisconsin the 25th state to implement union-weakening “right-to-work” laws.

Wisconsin is one of 13 states that guarantees some employees 24 consecutive hours of rest in each calendar week. But that doesn’t mean one day of rest after six consecutive days worked; an employee could still legally work 12 days in a row without a break if they rest on Sunday of the first week and Saturday of the second.

The law also only applies to people who work in certain industries—factory and mercantile workers in Wisconsin’s case—since exhaustion is dangerous for people who operate heavy machinery.

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But sponsors of the new bill want to do away with even these limited protections.

The bill would allow employees to “voluntarily choose” to give up their legally-mandated one day off per calendar week. An employer and employee under the current system can jointly apply for a waiver to the day of rest law. Not a single waiver request of this kind was denied in 2013 or 2014.

The problem with offering this “choice” without the normal regulatory oversight, experts say, is that employees could easily be coerced into giving up time off for fear of losing their job.

The proposal “completely ignores the power dynamic in the workplace, where workers often have a proverbial gun to the head,” Marquette University law professor Paul Secunda told the Nation.

“It’s a very hard thing to know whether something is truly voluntary or not,” Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, told the Huffington Post last year when a similar bill was introduced. “If the employer puts pressure on people and lets them know they will be unhappy if workers exercise their right to have a day off, that might be enough so that no worker ever does anything but volunteer to work seven days a week.”

When wage theft costs more than every reported robbery in the nation, many advocates argue that worker protections can’t depend on trusting bosses to treat them properly.

Wisconsin is expected to introduce several other anti-worker measures this legislative session, including changes to prevailing wage laws and worker compensation.