[mistrial9]

it might mean that you are obtusely defending a point of view that ultimately, rationalizes any amount of work for any amount of hours assigned to a helpless cog knowledge worker. "We pay you for that" turns into "you are responsible for that" turns into "do it or you are fired" and "its not done you cant leave until it is done and why did you waste time and why are you failing at this task I gave you" etc..

[beAbU]

Some countries have labour laws you know. Where I'm from, if I start a new job that bait-and-switched me into working one hour more than 40/week they will get into a lot of trouble.

I'm not saying overtime is not allowed, but if it's expected to be the norm then it very much must be in the contract. If the overtime is not a regular expectation then it must be compensated appropriately, and even then there are upper limits to the amount of overtime.