An Argument for an Eight-Hour Law

We sponsor an MBA program for consistent performers [with] full-day classes over the weekend. Everyone works eight hours a day, five days a week, with two fifteen-minute breaks and an hour off for lunch or dinner.” Not surprisingly, the 24/7 customer call center gets about seven hundred applications a day, but only 6 percent of applicants are hired. Here is a snippet from a recruiting session for call center operators at a women's college in Bangalore: Recruiter 1: “Good morning, girls.” Class in unison: “Good morning, ma'am.” Recruiter 1: “We have been retained by some of the multinationals here to do the recruitment for them. The primary clients that we are recruiting [for] today are Honeywell. And also for America Online.” The young women-dozens of them-then all lined up with their application forms and waited to be interviewed by a recruiter at a wooden table. Here is what some of the interviews sounded like: Recruiter 1: “What kind of job are you looking at?” Applicant 1: “It should be based on accounts, then, where I can grow, I can grow in my career.” Recruiter 1: “You have to be more confident about yourself when you're speaking. You're very nervous ...»