system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: The 40 hour work week is an outdated concept and needs to be lowered to 30.

I am an hourly worker in the US, so this mainly applies to the laws here, but it can apply anywhere that has similar wage laws. The basic idea behind the 40 hour work week was great when it was adopted, and it has given us a solid foundation to build off of in regards to overtime pay. However, people seem to forget that it is an arbitrary number that is only moderately connected to how we live our lives.

The premise is that we should have 8 hours for work, 8 hours for home, and 8 hours for sleep. That, of course, doesn't take into account a lot of what goes into the wotk day. First, there's the unpaid half hour or more for lunch. Second, there's the commute that for me can average 45 minutes each way, but for some people it's even more than that. Already, that's 10 hours centered around work instead of 8, and that doesn't even take into account a lot of the unpaid work that people do off the clock like receiving calls or answering emails at home (this happens way too often and everyone is too afraid of negative consequences to refuse to be available after hours).

This is happening at the same time as people are worrying about automation and the future of the labor force. Concepts like a universal basic income are pretty radical and could be a necessity in the future, but I think they skip past a much simpler solution to keep people employed, that being shortening the work week. 

I know that France already has a 35 hour work week, but I think that it should be shortened to 30. This could mean five 6 hour days, or four 7.5 hour days, or even three 10 hour days (although I used to live in a state where anything over 8 hours was considered overtime regardless of how much you worked the rest of the week. I still like that concept but will give it up in favor of this change). Some businesses would still want workers to put in more hours than that and would pay the overtime, but others would have to hire more workers to make up the extra time. 

This would work best with a strong increase to the national minimum wage so that workers whose hours get cut wouldn't necessarily see a huge pay cut, as well as a universal health care system so that companies don't play the "cut worker's hours to avoid paying benefits" game. We also have to have a conversation about salaried employees and contract/self-employed work to make sure that companies don't circumvent hourly wage laws through those loopholes.

I'm sure this will be met with a ton of resistance from business owners, but we live in a society, and workers need to be able to live, and also have time to live. I'll change my mind on this if it's entirely economically unsound, or if there's a better way to go about it.

EDIT: For clarification, this would not automatically limit people to 30 hours, just that overtime would kick in at anything over 30 hours instead of 40. Also, thanks to the great discussion here I'm rethinking this a bit due to the vast differences there are in how, where, and when people work.
gpt
It seems you are approaching this solely from the perspective of the employee. What about the customer/client? The window to visit some businesses will now be tighter. Medical offices and lawyers will lose time to see patients and clients or be forced to higher people for ridiculously short 2 hour shifts to maintain the same office hours.