[forca]

I agree with deleting the emails. The US is woefully behind Europe in this regard. I would like to see a French-style work week, with the added goodness of France's recent email/phone call law forbidding employers from contacting employees after a certain time.

I would like, at the very least, to see a federal law forbidding more than 40 hours max. The world has really deteriorated in regard to family life since the 80s. When everything started becoming 24-7, that's when the decline began. I remember the sanity of the 80s whilst living in a couple of countries in western Europe at the time. The pace of life was better, more family time, the fun challenge of getting a popular restaurant reservation before they closed at a sane hour. It wasn't all about profit then like it is now.

I make it clear to my current employer that I don't do nights and weekends. When I leave the office at 1700, I'm unemployed. My wife and children come first.

[chollida1]

> I would like, at the very least, to see a federal law forbidding more than 40 hours max

This seems like a nice sentiment but it comes across and being out of touch with the general public.

Many, people need to work more than 40 hours, pretty much anyone who works for an hourly wage that is around the minimum wage level, a week just to make ends meet. If your law is enacted you've just doomed a non negligible portion of the population to poverty.

How would you even enforce your no more than 40 hours a week? What about anyone with a small business, or a lawyer who can bill $400/hour, should he be told he can't make any more money this week?

We just ran a new gas line in our house, the plumber doing it was doing side jobs to save up for a Harley. Your law of not permitting anyone to work more than 40 hours a week seems to make the world a worse place than it is now:(

To clarify, the op said 40 hours should be the most anyone is allowed to work, no exceptions, I'm fine with a law that says no one can be force to work more than 40 hours. But limiting people to 40 hours just seems like a really bad law.

As to the email deletion, I like the idea but it seems like a nightmare from a compliance perspective:)

The biggest down side I can see is that most services only send out one out of office email. What if someone is gone for more than a few days. I"m likely to forget that they are out, or now I have to add everyone's holiday schedule and all correspondence I want them to know about, to the list of things I need to keep in my head so I can resend emails when they come back. I'm scared already:(

[lmm]

> Many, people need to work more than 40 hours, pretty much anyone who works for an hourly wage that is around the minimum wage level, a week just to make ends meet. If your law is enacted you've just doomed a non negligible portion of the population to poverty.

As a European what that says to me is that the minimum wage is too low and should be increased.

And equally there are people today who have to desperately hope that they get assigned enough hours this month to get out of poverty. Restrictions on maximum weekly working time would help those people.

> What about anyone with a small business

Less than 5 employees or a meaningful ownership stake and you're probably exempt, as with most of these kind of regulations.

> a lawyer who can bill $400/hour, should he be told he can't make any more money this week?

Uh, yes?

> To clarify, the op said 40 hours should be the most anyone is allowed to work, no exceptions, I'm fine with a law that says no one can be force to work more than 40 hours. But limiting people to 40 hours just seems like a really bad law.

Economic reality is that that distinction kind of disappears. If unpleasant practice X makes employers more money, and you can volunteer for unpleasant practice X, pretty soon the only way to get a job is if you "volunteer" for X, at least on the low end.

[Roboprog]

Alas, this isn't a logic problem, it's a values problem.

* I've been trained by my fascist, FOX news, libertarian upbringing that business comes first, even if it subjects 99.99% of the population to utter misery, sickness and death.

* I've been trained by my socialist, marxist, tree-hugger upbringing that people come first^H^H^H^H second (after seals and endangered fungi), even if everyone goes bankrupt and starves and our enemies overthrow and kill us.

Yeah, the "other guy's" values look pretty stupid, don't they? (pick which ever "other guy" suits your fancy)

Even if the other guy's values aren't a caricature, it's still hard to agree on what should be the outcome.

[forca]

I'm referring to employers requiring more than 40 hours, not valid personal choice. I'm all for you "choosing" to work extra, with the caveat of double time on the paycheck.

[fauldsh]

I might be wrong, UK law is different than the rest of the EU (you can opt out of the working time directive here).

That said, isn't it a 40 hour max on contracted hours? Otherwise it is completely un-policeable. The idea is that you can't lose your job for refusing to work past 40 hours (i.e. refusing to take overtime). But you are allowed to work the overtime if you so please.

[gambiting]

40 hours/week is maximum your contract in the UK can oblige you to work. Having said that, when I got my job in the games industry I had to sign a statement stating that I voluntarily decide to work over that limit(but I am not required to). And no, overtime is not paid.

[DanBC]

48 hours. http://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/faqs/workingtimedirective.htm

It is not legal to make you sign the opt out.

[gambiting]

Ok 48 hours. And yes, I was told I don't have to sign it, but it's one of these situations when not signing it is ill advised. And in the games industry if I was working more than 48 hours per week it would be because I want to,not because I have to.

[winsome]

I think the comment was geared more towards corporate America where salaried employees are often expected to work 60+ hours per week with no overtime pay or added benefits for the extra effort. At least I'd hope their idea for the law wouldn't limit hourly employees who need to work multiple jobs just to get by.

[gearhart]

Your company giving you the option to auto-delete holiday emails and the government enforcing a 40 hour work week are very different things. The Daimler approach gives a socially-acceptable option for people who want absolute downtime, which most people seem to agree is a good thing; your proposed law would remove people's opportunity to work harder and in a more concentrated fashion to give themselves other options.

Your valuable time may be evenings and weekends with your family, mine may be being able to take a year out to travel or (although many European countries certainly don't seem to appreciate this), I may actually enjoy my job! In those instances, working a 70 hour work week may actually be what I want to do.

There's nothing stopping you having a corporate culture that encourages 40 hour working weeks, and if that's what works for you then by all means, find an employer who will respect that, but you can't expect everybody to be forced to follow that lifestyle, and you can't expect an employer not to take it into consideration when they decide who they want to hire.

[smackfu]

> The world has really deteriorated in regard to family life since the 80s.

How much of that is due to both parents working, rather than the wife staying home and managing the family?

[gizmo686]

That is likely part of the perceived problem, but seems lacking. When the wife stayed home to manage the family, we had the husband working 40 hour weeks. Now, the gender equalization is not taking the form of the 40 hours being shared between the spouses, but rather the 80 hours shared between them.

[mseebach]

There is overhead on jobs. Unless performing the most simple mind numbing factory assembly line work, 2 x 20hrs << 1 x 40 hrs. There's also double the time wasted on commutes.

Then there coordination overhead in the family - even if the two parents work 20 hours each, it's unlikely that it's exactly divided so one is always home. Child care costs a lot of money. Eating out costs money.

But the most important reason: People still want careers and a career on half the working time takes in extremely simple terms at least twice as long.

[forca]

My wife and I worked out a plan: we moved very close to her parents who agreed to watch our children for three days a week. I work M-F days only, no nights, no weekends. My wife works Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Together we make enough to pays the bills, save a little, and have a bit of fun. The children are taken care of first and foremost.

Sometimes you have to sacrifice to make do for your family by moving, whatever. It's always better to sacrifice money than time from your children. As long as you are making it and saving a little and have a bit for holidays, nothing else really matters. Getting rich should never be the goal.

[MadManE]

This strikes me as a justification for your lifestyle rather than a solid argument that can convince other people. There's nothing wrong with you living your life the way you want, but saying "Getting rich should never be the goal." is just plain wrong for some people.

Your tone seems to me like you once wanted to be rich, but have since given up and are now trying to convince others that they should just give up too.

[forca]

To be honest, I've never desired to be well off. I'm a minimalist by nature and the less I have to worry about, the better. I make enough to do what I need and want to do. I'm content with what I have. I am fortunate enough to have marries a woman with the same sentiments, so we neither want nor need much beyond the basics -- and decent espresso and interesting travel.

[jasonkostempski]

I don't think laws are the answer. Can anyone say spending time with family and friends are top priorities all day, everyday? I wouldn't want laws telling me they have to be. Sometimes making money to support your family is more important than spending time with them. Some people don't have a family to spend time with. Some people don't like their family or have any friends. Some people like their work and that's where they want to be more often than not.

[gambiting]

And some people have family and friends, but work 12 hours a day because everyone else is. I am very happy that in the EU there are hard limits on how much you can work in certain professions, when overworking is actually dangerous to other people - like truck drivers. You can only drive for 8 hours max before having to take a mandatory 12 hour stop - and then there is another 24 hour stop that you have to take once per week. If you get caught driving longer than limited by law the fines are heavy so everyone sticks to them, and people breaking the limits cause outrage in media as creating unsafe situations on the road. Of course you can drive your own personal car for as long as you want, it's only commercial drivers who have this limitation.

[lmm]

If one person works late then other people have to match them. So you end up with a tragedy of the commons/race to the bottom. Which is exactly the situation that calls for laws.

[gearhart]

That's a really interesting problem, but falling back on laws to protect you from it seems to be accepting a sub-par solution without having fully explored the issue. This is something that ought to be solved by measurement and corporate culture - if you can properly measure your output, this time-based race to the bottom shouldn't be an issue, it becomes an output-based race to the top, and there's nothing wrong with that, you just bow out of the race when you reach your work-life balance.

Quoting PG on HN is perhaps a bit like preaching to the choir but this is very appropriate: http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

[lmm]

> if you can properly measure your output, this time-based race to the bottom shouldn't be an issue, it becomes an output-based race to the top, and there's nothing wrong with that, you just bow out of the race when you reach your work-life balance.

True, but the assumption is false. As an industry we're terrible at measuring outputs, and sadly this causes management to fall back on measuring inputs.

And even that, you don't get a free choice of. Working 75% as long as the rest of your team doesn't get you 75% of the salary, it gets you fired.

[acheron]

I in fact do work 75% time for 75% salary, and somehow I managed to work it out as a mutually voluntary arrangement with my employer without using the coercive power of the State.

[lmm]

Good for you, but that requires an unusually enlightened employer. There were some people who managed to arrange safe jobs in the pre-OHSA days. Doesn't mean government intervention wasn't necessary.

[mseebach]

> If one person works late then other people have to match them

or risk being seen as working less hard as that person.

You missed a pretty important bit.