According to many economists, most workers follow a similar pattern: they become less productive as the day goes on. While there are several reasons to explain this phenomenon, one question remains. Should other countries follow Sweden's lead and cut the length of the working day to 6 hours? http://www.ecnmy.org/engage/why-people-should-work-six-hours-a-day-and-no-more/
The worst are 12 hour shifts, graveyard, split shift and 7 day work weeks. I've worked all of them. At this time I'm working 7 hours a day. Still, I would gladly work 8 hours just to get the extra pay.
Back in the early 1900s this was studied to death, and the breakover found to be about 8 hours a day for 5 days per week. Less than that, the company gained by boosting hours. More than that, the company did not gain. That's before, not after, the common extra pay for overtime hours is figured in - that's the straight pay figure. That's where the 40 hour week came from, why that number was chosen - it was what the employers found maximized efficiency. For some reason, this common knowledge of the '50s has been lost, and corporate execs are no longer considered bad managers if their employees work more than 40 hours @ week. In the US, of course, there are such high overhead costs for hiring another employee (mostly US health care, the fuckup with a thousand faces) that the temptation to pay overtime instead is very strong. This leads to a suboptimal equilibrium trap: the lower productivity prevents increases in the wages, the lower wages bias an employee toward accepting overtime work, the various bad effects of the longer hours lower productivity.
