You see this in hospitals too and I believe the rational there is that you want to reduce the number of shift changes. In a manufacturing context where you might need to shut down the line in order to change shifts it might be a big money saver to only have to do that twice a day even if you're paying out overtime.
Except that rationale has time and time again shown itself to be horseshit, and doctors would be better off with more shifts (so they weren't overtired like half of their shift and therefore making mistakes) and better processes for hand offs.
I'm not talking about doctor's here there scheduling is basically hazing, I was talking about nurses where they have to do a complicated patient hand off every time the shift changes and each time they do it there is a chance some ball can drop. My kid has had some extended stays in the hospital, so I can say as somebody with skin in the game that 12 hour shifts for nurses have at least a plausible benefit.
It only makes medical error and accidents in US hospitals the 3rd leading cause of death, estimated at more than 250,000 deaths per year. But the hedge fund managing hospitals around the country save so much money by not having to hire sufficient staff and have reasonable shift turn-overs they all got bonuses, so it's all good.
