# Should the US Have a 40-Hr. Week/8 Hr. Day? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 12, 2011, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-us-have-a-40-hr-week-8-hr-day/581613 "2011-05-12T03:26:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Le\_Jacquelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Le\_Jacquelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Jacquelope)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2011, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-us-have-a-40-hr-week-8-hr-day/581613/121 "2011-05-24T06:25:43Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > I have both profit sharing and stock options. So does my husband. That doesn’t mean there has been profit to share, and our options are underwater. We haven’t made much on profit sharing or stock options for the past three years…maybe not anything. > > Stock option plans are really expensive to administer…the accounting rules for them are horrid and they are a really costly way to give employees ownership. Stock options, IMHO, should be dropped for EVERYONE as a compensation mechanism. Yeah, I know. Which is why those things tend to be outsourced… to Etrade, Ameritrade, Scottrade, etc. But if you don’t award stock options/equivalent to employees, how can you truly say that they are invested in the success of the company, much less properly compensated? The point still stands - excessive overtime costs more than just the worker, it means fewer jobs, more stress, lower tax revenues… and a whole lot of peer and employer pressure to work many hours for free. You can require salaried exempt workers to go 24/7 and fire the ones who can’t keep up. Hell, some companies are replacing them with unpaid interns, thumbing their nose at the law in the process. They got an inch and now they’re taking a light year. I retired at 40, depending on how you define it. I worked in the financial industry and it went right into total suckage as soon as I was graduated out of tech into managing techies and customer service reps… a fracking _people_ job. Now I am back doing the tech side of the family business. I work, but for my wife and me alone. And no more people jobs. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2011, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-us-have-a-40-hr-week-8-hr-day/581613/122 "2011-06-01T04:31:14Z")
> [@Una\_Persson](#): > > I don’t have much problem with that (the only problem being that I think there should be a limit on the continuous time on the job, speaking as someone who’s worked 30 hours without sleep or a break, even for an actual meal, on more than one occasion). > > The main problem is that Engineers are being forced to work 2,500, 3,000, or more hours per year for the pay and benefits of 2,080. Engineers and, it seems, anyone working on anything even remotely technical in an office. What I found in IT, and I’d be surprised if Engineering’s any different, is that having a workforce distributed across multiple continents means more late meetings which you always had to wait for. And even withing the same office, the possibility of staggering schedules to start as early as 6AM and finish as late as 7PM meant that most conference calls had to happen during lunch. I noticed, when I first started working at the place, that they had kitchens but no dining area in which to have your lunch…there was a clue, wasn’t it. ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Jacquelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Le\_Jacquelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Jacquelope)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2011, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-us-have-a-40-hr-week-8-hr-day/581613/123 "2011-06-05T06:11:48Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > Engineers and, it seems, anyone working on anything even remotely technical in an office. What I found in IT, and I’d be surprised if Engineering’s any different, is that having a workforce distributed across multiple continents means more late meetings which you always had to wait for. And even withing the same office, the possibility of staggering schedules to start as early as 6AM and finish as late as 7PM meant that most conference calls had to happen during lunch. I noticed, when I first started working at the place, that they had kitchens but no dining area in which to have your lunch…there was a clue, wasn’t it. These long hours are especially dangerous when it involves truckers and doctors. I don’t ever want a doctor that’s been working over 10 hours, seeing me. Especially a _surgeon._ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-the-us-have-a-40-hr-week-8-hr-day/581613.md?page=6)