[hwstar]

This article is spot on. American businesses are not hanging by a thread, they are beating a horse drawing an overloaded cart, and don't care if the horse drops dead. They think they can just get another.

In today's business environment, everything seems to be both urgent and important. I think that a lot of that is due to who is in charge and what they think is pressing at the time. Everything cannot be urgent and important, only some small percentage of what needs to be done should be labeled as such.

The only way to fix this in the short term is for everyone to start saying "No" to chronic overtime. I define chronic overtime to be a work week which exceeds 48 hours over a 6 week average. Maybe then, companies will decide which tasks are really worthwhile and only direct efforts to them, or if they are understaffed, hire enough staff to get the important stuff done.

In the longer term, we need to reform the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to eliminate unpaid overtime except in unusual situations. The European Working Time Directive is an excellent example of model legislation. We just have to keep nagging our congresspersons, and beat back the US Chamber of Commerce's lobbying efforts.