http://cmdept.unl.edu/drb/Reading/overtime2.htm Here is a pretty comprehensive study on several industries. Yes OT work diminishes rapidly in quality. Hire more workers and maintain or improve your quality.
The study I originally referred to was done internally at GM. They gave it to us in a conference office and it was clear that it was for our eyes only. I remember":do not distribute" on each sheet.
It also was over 30 years ago.
I should have said all non exempt employees. The 40 hour work week also applies to non exempt salaried employees. Being salaried does not make an employee exempt.
There are things called “reasonable expectations”. It’s clear that some of us have different values for “reasonable” here.
Me? My employment contract DOES say 2080 hours/yr, because that’s sane.
Are you saying that you honestly think that there is a basic expectation from the vast majority of workers that the work year is anything OTHER than 2080 hours?
All I’m going to add is that if you want another stupid law for me to break, go ahead and enact this one. :rolleyes:
I work from 8-6 and, many times, will come back to work @ 9pm to do a number of long-term planning things that don’t get done in the workaday rush (or I will work from my home computer). I also will come in during the weekends to “get some things done”.
This is my preference and, despite the GM study that Gonzo produced, lots of good work gets done despite the horror of working more than 8 hours a day.
Yeah, I bet you envy the hell out of those slave laborers in China! And you won’t have anyone restricting your right to spend all your waking hours working!
They should switch and be lawyers… at least ther, there’s the potential of promotion to partner, where you can leech off the profit earned by that 3000 hours per year of your underlings.
And I’m pretty irritated by ** Absolute’s** comment:
I have a son on the way, and I’ll be damned if I miss his games and recitals, etc… for work. Six months later I won’t recall what I may have supposed to have been working on, but he and I would remember me skipping his event for it. I’m not going to do that, and I’m not a “lazy shit” for it either. I’m not a workaholic asshole, is what the truth is.
Ah, at last we get to the point! We keep reading in the news about how hiring and middle class incomes remaining flat in the US because productivity has gone up! One worker now does the work of 1.5 workers! And here we have stories about workers forced to work 60 hours a week, 20 of it essentially unpaid! My my my! What a coincidence!
Why it seems to me that a severe crackdown on this practice might force employers to you know … hire people … and since the unpaid overtime is among salaried workers mostly, you have to figure, for higher-wage jobs. Could cut way back on unemployment and raise wages in general, both at the same time! Good things! Unless you’re a greedy, evil employer or a workaholic. In which case … fuck you, you’re messing the whole economy up, assholes!
I’m assuming this solution is too reasonable to be accepted in America …
It’s more insidious than just saying “you must work a 60+ hour week”. It’s more like “finish this project by this date or you get ‘laid off’” (fired without the company having to deal with human resources issues) for failing. Of course, the only way to meet the deadline is to work massive unpaid OT. But, it’s your ‘choice’. You can ‘choose’ to fail at your job.
I am an engineer that works for a consulting company and I have always been compensated for every hour I work (straight time). The company is billing the clients, so I would not accept not being payed as well. I know not all companies do this, but I have always been able to find one to hire me that does. I also get bonuses and profit sharing based on company performance, so I am motivated to work very hard when necessary to ensure the successful completion of projects.
My take is that the government should stay out of mandating employment conditions for exempt employees and they should be free to negotiate whatever terms they want. I think the current rules for hourly workers are appropriate and should be enforced. There is much more potential for abuse with less skilled workers who are typically payed hourly. I know skilled craftspeople are also payed hourly, but they are probably not the ones that really need protecting.
Basically your post boils down to, ‘I got mine Jack, fuck you.’ However, if taking advantage of salaried workers for unpaid work is commonplace, you don’t have much of a voice here. So … back atcha!
The problem is how to distinguish workaholics like you from people like, well, my entire company last job–none of whom wanted to work constant 80-hour weeks, but with the job market in collapse had no recourse but to sacrifice their entire lives on the altar of that company or get fired. (well, then they got fired anyway, when the CEO decided to recoup his investment and sell to a larger firm in the same market).
What - if you work a 40-hour week, that also implies punching a clock and working a set schedule?
This must be new. I’ve worked schedules with set numbers of hours, both in the private and public spheres, but the last time I punched a clock was when I was working as a security guard.
And in my soft government job, which hours you work are pretty flexible, even though the number of hours is fixed.
Look, you’re missing the point here. It doesn’t matter whether the computation starts from 40 hours, or zero: the incentive is for your boss to get as much work out of you as he possibly can. If you can typically get your work done in 50 hours a week, his incentive is to give you some more. Ditto 60, or 70, or whatever, until you start showing signs of an approaching nervous breakdown.
I suppose I could say he’s paying you a full salary for zero hours, so he’s got an incentive to maximize the number of hours of work he can get out of you in return for that salary. Same difference.