| > 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. |