I work for a contractor. Most of us do, a few people in the office are government. Our big boss is.
We have an event coming. I am a content creator, creative team. The big boss got a friend's company to make content. Gave them months and insane resources to do it. They did a weak job. Three work days before the event, we were tasked with starting from scratch. We have worked 12 hour days, some of us over the weekend, to catch u the absolute majority of the time is spent pulling teeth to get the content resources we need to even do any work. If we had it, this would be a 4-8 hour task. Instead, we are well over 40 hours logged in three work days. Yesterday, started the day at normal time, waiting for direction from big boss. We turn something in, they give a massive list of changes, we do them, repeat. We didn't get directives until 12 hours later. We're all at the office, telling our families we don't know when we will be home. I call the contractor. They have no idea. Initially they tell us “sometimes you have to work late, that is the job,” then we tell them this was a fuckup they gave someone else, paid, months to do and now we have days to fix. They ask big boss about it. We get an immediate “fine, go home, I will do it myself” from big boss. We ask contractor if we are in trouble. We are told no, but if we want to appease big boss and not be on their bad side, we should keep working. Guess what they want. Use what guidance we had. Again, 12 hours in, late at night, we haven't been told what to change or resolve. We stayed all night. We went home for maybe three hours, slept, and came back to keep working. We don't get guidance on our guesswork for several hours. We expected to work the event tonight, a 12+ hour day. Keep in mind, these are desk jobs, creative department. The contractor doesn't want to upset big boss. Every employee close to big boss is already burnt out, this is their constant.
I don't think any laws have been broken, short of their insistence we may or may not be paid or given time off for working a 70+ hour week. I have never felt this disrespected. No one is here on the side of the worker. Everyone is catering to the boss in fear of ire.