Should there be a cap on hours worked per week?

[DC Al Fine]

Absolutely. No person should be allowed to work more than 30 hours per week, and anyone working over that now should not lose any pay from going down to a shortened workweek.

Ok, I'll bite. How do you propose employers work around... life? Crap happens from time to time, and its hardly torture if someone chooses to work some overtime to cover the load and make a few extra bucks.

[DC Al Fine]

To answer the OP's question, I agree with Bedstuy. There should be a hard cap where safety is concerned. I'll leave the specifics up to the experts since I have no idea what's safe and what isn't.

To be honest, I'm not sure why so many employers encourage long hours, and some employees choose to work like that. My experience working in accounting is that most people are useless after 60 hours, and become useless after even less time if they've been working long hours consistently.

[DC Al Fine]

Absolutely. No person should be allowed to work more than 30 hours per week, and anyone working over that now should not lose any pay from going down to a shortened workweek.

Ok, I'll bite. How do you propose employers work around... life? Crap happens from time to time, and its hardly torture if someone chooses to work some overtime to cover the load and make a few extra bucks.

Hire more employees. A cap on hours worked would open up positions and allow for more people to come out of the unemployment line and into the workforce. If there are still positions open after that, then the solution is to (a) open up the borders and (b) build socialized daycare centers so that more women can enter the workforce.

You've clearly never held a job.

Have you? I mean seriously how have you been employed for as long as you have and not absorbed even the most basic facts of the workplace?

Training has a non-zero cost, and unexpected things happen. Combining those two facts with your proposal results in drastic declines in quality and rampant featherbedding.

[DC Al Fine]

I'm guessing you guys have never had to get a LOT of work done by Friday to ensure that the company's finances are accounted for on time, LOL.

If you don't want to work a lot, don't get a job that will have a lot of overtime hours.

If your company needs to overwork employees to balance its books, your comapny is either understaffed or being inefficiently managed—neither of which justifies demanding more from already beleaguered workers.

And I used to think claims that leftists know nothing of business are overblown.

Your and TNF's stance implies that a) unexpected outcomes never happen, and b) that the training and extra staff required to meet hard hour caps have negligible cost.

How is this supposed to work under the left's system. If there is a large snowstorm, are the roads to go unplowed or is each city to hire and train dozens or even hundreds of extra snow plow drivers and have them sit on their butts all winter so they can spring into action for 3 hours to avoid the cap?

[DC Al Fine]

Well, OK, that's all good for him, but I doubt most people who work over 50 hours are as happy about that as he was.

My experience in construction was that a plurality of 50hrs+/week guys were unhappy about their hours but worked them to finance an aspirational lifestyle.

e.g. My brother in-law (a pipefitter) complains bitterly about having to work to "make ends" meet, but lives in a $500,000 house, drives a $60,000 truck and parties every weekend. I suspect he could get by on 40 hours/week if he lived my lifestyle