If your boss is bad, they'll abuse power no matter the system. I don't disagree. But that's true in every field. So why do IT support, paralegals, and lab techs manage to make non-exempt status work without "pervasive surveillance"?

Help me connect the dots: how do you get from "I had a bad boss who broke the rules" to "therefore we should remove the legal framework that makes rule-breaking punishable"? Because without that framework, exploitation isn't just a possibility, it's legal.

That’s like saying "people will speed, so speed limits don’t work." Sure, some people speed, but the world without those limits and the legal weight behind them is objectively worse.

Employee timesheets (salaries, not payed per hour) are never for the employee. They exist only to create a paper trail for the employer to use “as needed”. It will always say what the company or manager needs it to say.

I can’t imagine a scenario where the company creates an abusive OT environment but timesheets foil that.

Some employees will see these situations as an opportunity to show they go the extra mile. Some managers will be more than happy to allow it to reap the benefits. Everyone wins until one of them doesn’t, and that’s usually the overworked person.

P.S. In the speeding analogy the relationship between parties and the conflict of interest are very different. You’re not expected to speed to impress the police, and the police wants to catch you and make money from your mistake.

Where did you get this from: "I had a bad boss who broke the rules"?

Bosses don't just say "you need to work 12 hours today". They say: "You need to get this done by Friday or I'll put you on PIP. Also, you are not authorized for the overtime on this project."

Did this boss break any rules? If yes, which ones? Because I don't see anything how your proposed law will make it this better.

And that should also explain what's special about software engineering:

IT support people get scheduled by an hour, and it's easy to see how much they worked. Boss cannot say "work for 10am to 10pm", _that_ would be clear and obvious rule breaking any judge will understand. And vehicle speed is very simple and unambiguous, so the rules are very simple (even if they are not enforced much).

Software engineers get tasks assigned, and no one can tell how long the task will take - Is "Fix bug 12345 by Friday" a reasonable request or not? Was this engineer put on PIP because they refused to do overtime, or was this because they were genuinely not a good fit for the position? No one can tell.