Political Memes

The fact people are more efficient probably doesn't mean more efficient than working 8 extra hours to them.

Exactly, for a lot of manufacturing the bottleneck is how quickly machines run. For example right now I work in an electronics plant and our surface mount lines are limited solely by machine runtime. The operator is only there to swap out empty component reels as needed, load stacks of bare boards in ocasionally, and place the rare hand placed component. An especially slow operator can of course slow things down a bit if they can't do those tasks quickly enough, but it is very rare for the operator to be the bottleneck. There is a direct linear relationship between hours run and quantity of product produced usually regardless of operator efficiency.

There is no way my employer would ever pay the machine operators the same amount to work less. It is actually in my employers financial best interests to have the machine operators work as much overtime as possible because the amount they pay for benefits is not based on hours worked so even with overtime pay included, the amount they pay per manhour is actually slightly reduced past a certain overtime threshhold.

I absolute agree with you that that is how employers are viewing it and I agree with your disagreement with people in the industry that suggest the solution is ten hour days for blue collar workers.

(One of) The problem(s) behind this is that the capital class seemingly does not care what the evidence shows, and are only interested in what feels more productive. To them, it feels more productive to have fewer workers, for longer hours, with less safety measures, and because they feel it's more efficient, that means it must be (because it costs ~~more~~ "less"). Until we change that, or sufficiently collectivize to force them to change, it's gonna be hard to move the needle.