I worked in an industry that paid piece rate for a few years- basically scheduling decides how many units the group needs to finish a day/week and you go home when the run is done. One week it might be 18, the next it could go down to 16 or up to 20. Down meant you'd probably get out sooner, up meant you'd work longer but get paid more. The name of the game is moving fast and getting the run done hopefully in <7 hours. Overtime is negligible- our hourly rates were negligible and only paid for hours worked over 40. OT pay was $12 an hour. No one wants OT, if you worked a 60 hour week you might pull an extra 15% more money for the week than if you just got it done in 30 hours.
That industry took a nose dive like it does every few years when the economy slows. So I found a more stable job making roughly 70% of what I used to, hourly wages instead of rate. Holy.. So after 6 months my understanding is that mostly everyone works slow, if you work fast it only hurts you. Working fast clears out the work and drains away “OT opportunities.” What? Who wants to be doing OT? Well, if you work hourly and want a decent check- YOU do! If you work fast, you set the standard higher for everyone, including yourself. Do you get any extra money for doing extra work day in day out? Do you go home any sooner? Of course not.
I don't get it. So the workers work slow on purpose and are literally incentivized by the system to do so? You're telling me I earn more by doing less, I just have to be clocked in and inside a smelly, loud, ugly building all day? How hard can it be to align company and employee interests so when I do more of what makes the company money, the company either gives me more of the share or at least lets me spend less time there for my effort? Working hourly feels so backwards to me and I can't wrap my head around it.
Just as a quick and potentially unnecessary example to try and make clear what I'm saying, imagine 2 employees, Jim and Bill. They both make doo-dads.
Jim makes 10 doo-dads an hour but only does his basic 40 hour work weeks- no extra.
Bill makes 6 doo-dads an hour but he likes to work 60 hour weeks for the extra money.
So Jim and Bill make 400 and 360 doo-dads a week, respectively, but Bill is logging 20 hours a week of overtime for it. With the standard time and a half for hours over 40, Bill is getting paid for 70 hours to Jim's 40 and looks great for being a real company man- even though he does less work. And it just goes on like this all over, all the time.