It's close enough to true, though, in the context of manufacturing. Extended shifts at overtime rates are not cost effective. And there are no good alternatives. I ran a manufacturing company (granted in California, a very employee friendly state) where everyone wanted to run 4 days of 10 hour shifts, called the 'alternative work week', instead of the usual 5 - 8 hour days. There is a regulatory means for doing this without it resulting in overtime pay. The problem is, the regulations are onerous and full of potential pitfalls and the consequence of screwing it up is that an employee sues 2 years later and all those 2 hours logged over the usual 8 hour max are retroactively deemed overtime and must be paid to the employees. So even though everyone wanted to put in an extra 2 hours each day to get the fifth day off, we couldn't do it because of the risk. In other words, it's not always just about what people are willing to do.
We don't have that in Arizona. They can work the guys 40 hours in two days and not have to pay overtime (they've come rather close to doing this). Also, only working hours count towards the 40: vacation does not. Work through Thanksgiving? Well, that just sucks. Like you say, CA is a lot more employee friendly.
That said, you're right that they avoid OT like the plague. That's what made me speculate that they were already running at maximum capacity and had to do something to boost that for a while. But yeah, it does happen. I've been there to support an 18 hour shift. Not fun.
