More Americans working weird hours: study

A new study finds a growing number of us are working weekends and overnights, even while we're putting more and more hours in at the office during the week.

According to a National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, about a third of Americans regularly do some weekend work and one in four people now works overnight, while in most European countries, only one out of every 14 people works through the evening and until the wee hours of the morning.

Lew Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute in Princeton, isn't surprised by the findings.

"Europe has laws restricting the number of hours your boss can make you work," he said, "but in the United States there's no restriction. Your boss can make you work 24 hours a day if he wants to."

Maltby said unions in other countries are very strong, but here in the United States "they are nonexistent these days. That's one more reason why we get worked the way we do. I don't know if the laws encourage employers to work us like slaves, but they certainly allow it."

He said the fact that more and more people are working weird hours is incredibly disruptive to families.

"You can't hold a family together by magic," Maltby said. "Families do well and stay together because parents spend time with their kids."

He was quick to add even if you don't have to work overnights, the situation is becoming ridiculous.

"You get home and you've finally got a couple of hours to spend with your family," Maltby said, "and now you can't even do that because you've got the boss calling on the phone or you have to send emails."

He believes part of the problem is that there is a sort of fantasy notion that you and your boss are able to sit down and work things out when it comes to your workload.

"The reality is, you don't have any ability to work things out with your boss -- he's got all the power," Maltby said. "In the United States, we stick with this fiction that you don't need the law to protect you; you can always quit and go get another job."