I work in manufacturing. It's a hard, hot, manual labor job that we work in 12 hour shifts. We have a short week “36 hours”, and a long week “48 hours,” but due to being understaffed our supervisors and management give us mandatory overtime. So here I am working five to six 12 hour shifts a week. Every week. I'm always sore, and grumpy. My family never sees me. But hey we had a record breaking year last year! We literally hit 200% of what was expected from our facility!
So yea. What happened to the 40 hour work week? Labor laws and such… we tried to unionize a few years ago, but it didn't get voted in thanks to a impressive anti-union campaign through the company.