The whole article is about Amazon employees being on the clock while they are using the bathroom. Spending more time in the bathroom reduces the productivity/per hour on their KPIs and thus they are incentivized against spending time in the bathroom.
Typically, a salaried white collar worker can turn up to work and use the bathroom at the start of the day, and it is counted as working hours, whereas a blue collar worker will use the bathroom before starting work (for the reasons you give about KPIs) and so it is not counted as working hours. Similarly for lunch break and end of shift. As a result the white collar worker will have a larger proportion of bathroom time counted as “working hours”, given the same time spent in the bathroom.
Maybe your point is that this is a difference of degree, not a difference in kind? True, but differences of degree matter for the working hour trends being discussed. If measured working hours stay the same but workers spend more of their bathroom hours during working hours then this is an effective increase in free time.
Note that there are plenty of things that count as “working hours” when white-collar workers do them but not when blue-collar workers do them.
Can you give examples?
Using the bathroom.
The whole article is about Amazon employees being on the clock while they are using the bathroom. Spending more time in the bathroom reduces the productivity/per hour on their KPIs and thus they are incentivized against spending time in the bathroom.
Typically, a salaried white collar worker can turn up to work and use the bathroom at the start of the day, and it is counted as working hours, whereas a blue collar worker will use the bathroom before starting work (for the reasons you give about KPIs) and so it is not counted as working hours. Similarly for lunch break and end of shift. As a result the white collar worker will have a larger proportion of bathroom time counted as “working hours”, given the same time spent in the bathroom.
Maybe your point is that this is a difference of degree, not a difference in kind? True, but differences of degree matter for the working hour trends being discussed. If measured working hours stay the same but workers spend more of their bathroom hours during working hours then this is an effective increase in free time.