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Comment by nshepperd | Hacker News Reader

A much less awful non-marxist take on the subject: http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/will-ever-able-enjoy...

IIRC, a related issue that came up on HN a while ago is unpaid overtime. As any employee programmers surely know, giving employers unpaid overtime when projects are behind schedule is especially bad, because it creates moral hazard (incentives to set excessively tight schedules). But everyone does it, because it's expected (if you won't do it, they'll hire someone who will, right?).

Regulation -- punishing employers who accept unpaid overtime, and somehow widely enforcing these rules -- is one of very few approaches that seem theoretically able to make any difference to this situation.

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"...this experiment owes its intellectual roots to the industrial organization of cereal baron W.K. Kellogg, who replaced the rotating eight-hour shift schedule at his plant in Michigan with six-hours periods, resulting in an explosion in hiring and lowered production costs."

In Sweden, this is a no-brainer. In the US, for salaried workers, it's an interesting possibility. For factory workers? They were probably only paid for 6 hours, given a 36 hour work week to avoid "full time" status so paying for benefits could be avoided, etc.

I wouldn't be so fast to praise US businesses for lowering hours in the work week - there was an explosion of this practice after the ACA passed, so employers could avoid paying for healthcare.

Factory workers were paid salary in the US until much later than you'd expect.

Full time "benefits" (vs part-time hours) didn't exist in 19th Century USA wen Kellog practice changed.

This isn't true at all. I am fairly "in demand" in my local development circles. There are a few companies that regularly call me up or email me when they need some work done. In the last year I've worked over 40 hours 3 times, none over 50. Most weeks I work between 35-40. Do good work and set appropriate boundaries.

The easy way fight this is Schindlers List style: just fail to deliver quality when you work overtime. They won't fire you, because a priori they can't find anyone better.

> They won't fire you, because a priori they can't find anyone better.

They'll fire you anyway for insubordination, and hire equivalent or worse employees that are easier to intimidate.

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