Half days off is a brilliant idea, because it makes it easy to know when to schedule kids appointments withe doctor etc.
I thought one generally doesn't include lunch in the day length. So an 8 hour 'day' with an hour lunch is 8-5, 8 hours working + 1 hour off-time.
When they say "6 hours" in this article, they're excluding lunch.
That's up there with "You can't work remotely but we expect you to VPN in after hours to fix any issues".
Break-fix work needing to be done on-call/24x7 while requiring in-office presence for design and new feature development (a fundamentally different type of work, typically requiring a higher level of collaboration) seems perfectly reasonable to me.
I live in a northern climate and when it snows can either spend 1 hour stuck in traffic or just work from home (and possibly come in after traffic has cleared).
My previous employer was adamant about being in the building from 0830 to 1700 even if it was a blizzard. My current employer lets the employees manage whether they need to come in or not (any day not just during bad weather). I'm sure you can guess which one has happier and more productive employees!
The key there is (almost) no one will be in the office because it's a synchronized event. OTOH, if everyone worked from home 2x/week at random, it would be chaos trying to plan whiteboard design sessions.
If you have any kind of agreement on "unpaid OT" you typically have 1 more (so 6 or 7).
Being on call would mean I'd want ar least another one or two.
Interestingly, while lunch isn't counted towards the 8h, the workday normally does allow for coffee breaks ("fika") on paid time totaling 15-60minutes depending on what business.
So in reality the standard work day is 8-12 plus 13-17 so 8h work in 9h total.
This is a habit I've carried over from Switzerland and I couldn't defend it more forcefully. Full-hour+ lunches, preferably offline.
My kids' school only switched to a schedule where the kids eat at school two years ago, and I have a job in another city. But it was something quite a few parents managed to do until then.
(I'm in a city in the Netherlands)
I saw that system in some old fashioned societies (e.g Switzerland) and while it seemed good for the kids, it seemed to mean a lot of women staid home to feed kids rather than work (if they couldn't afford a nanny that is).
I think school lunches are pretty essential for getting a high workforce participation for both men and women.
In any case, lunch time is kind of a sanctuary here - deskside lunches are seen as very poor - even if people stay at work they'll go to an affordable restaurant together. I can say that this has lots of advantages, an actual real break from work really does recharge your batteries. Swiss workers are usually measures among the most productive per hour worked, and IMO a full lunch break is necessary to achieve that.
Edit: Btw women in workforce participation is 62% compared to 56% in the US, 54% in Germany and 60% in Sweden.
Spending two hours or more on lunch would be great, but I also want to eat no later than 6 (kids go to bed 7!) so it's very hard to squeeze in with two full time jobs of 8h.
I think the system is a nice idea in theory when you have great neighbors or walking distance to work - but the probability that this is the case for a whole school class is slim. I think it feels a bit like a remnant of a housewife society and something that adds pressure for parents to stop working - which isn't a bad idea per se but it tends to add more pressure on women to do so.
Now the class eats with the teacher in half an hour and there is no option to eat at hone anymore. School finishes half an hour earlier so the commuting parents still have to pay for child care.
One of the problems was that there aren't many good people available for the job of child care for one hour at lunch time, people leave when they find something better.
Of course as a salaried employee I have quite a lot of freedom to set my own hours so I sometimes work an extra half hour so that I can go home early on Friday or have some hours I can use to get things done without having to use a holiday day.