The platitude goes that “no man ever dies wishing he’d spent more time at the office.” At least he had a choice. U.S. employers demand more each year of their workers — more productivity, more commitment, more life-sapping time spent under the fluorescent lights.

Business innovations often seem to run a few steps ahead of legislation protecting consumers and employees. In the case of overtime pay, it was more than a few steps — until last year, regulations regarding eligibility for overtime pay hadn’t been overhauled since 1975. The White House released a plan in March 2003 with the aim of increasing the system’s fairness by substantially increasing the income threshold under which everybody receives overtime pay and making it far more difficult for highly paid employees to get the extra-time compensation.

Thirteen months later, the Bush administration has been forced to revamp those plans after they were criticized in 75,000 messages to the Labor Department and in countless unrecorded outcries. The statistics on overtime pay in the revised plan, released last week:

* All workers earning less than $23,660 annually get overtime.

* Almost no workers earning more than $100,000 annually get it, a revision from the $65,000 ceiling originally proposed.

* Police officers and firefighters would now receive overtime pay, but public relations practictioners, non-supervisory “team leaders” in factories and (heartbreakingly) journalists would lose overtime eligibility.

Even the heavily altered proposals stand little chance of getting past Congress, which, led by Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, has already moved pre-emptively to preserve overtime for anybody currently getting it.

The message there is that, while the overtime laws obviously need a lot of revision — and the higher mandatory-overtime threshold is a good step toward that end — it’s illogical to make any change that takes away a person’s time-and-a-half and makes it possible for employers to increase output, decrease costs and contribute to worker insanity. We couldn’t agree more.

Government can’t change the U.S. business climate. But government can check that climate and demonstrate that it values a 40-hour workweek.

Yes, the breadth of types of work makes complex labor and wage laws a necessary evil. It’s no excuse for not honoring the plain language of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act by making overtime a presumption.

Making a worker exempt from overtime should be a painfully difficult process for an employer. Congress is on the right track, and we implore both legislators and businesses to please consider something other than the bottom line when it comes to labor.