Tell that to the idiots I work with. We were told, yesterday, that our hours may be reduced to 36 soon. Management blamed coffee prices due to bad weather in Brazil. The good ol' boys in the maintenance department blame Obama, of course. I think they're both full of shit.
Productivity has increased. We now get the work done in less than 40 hours, so management is reducing labor costs. Which, of course, was the whole point of pushing us to bring productivity up.
But, that fact is something that management is never going to admit and too complex for the others to understand.
Dave