The capitalist and The Seven Day Weekend

Ricardo Semler is a caring capitalist. He is CEO and majority owner of Semco SA, a Brazilian company best known for its radical form of industrial democracy and corporate re-engineering.

For nearly 25 years, Semler, has let his employees set their own hours, wages, even choose their own IT. The result: increased productivity, long-term loyalty and phenomenal growth.

To Semler, time clocks, dress codes, security, lavish office styles and perks, constituted "corporate oppression."

In an interview on Dateline (SBS Television), Semler explained, "We don't want to know what time people came in, how many hours they work, we want to negotiate a contract with them for much more important things that have to do with our survival which is what are we going to do this month, and what do we get from them out of this salary or this value that we are paying and what do they get out of us in terms of gratification for their life, the rest to us is secondary."

In his book, The Seven-Day Weekend, Ricardo Semler explains how modern technology has stolen free time and destroyed the traditional nine-to-five workday, "People who have learned to answer e-mails on Sunday evenings also need to learn how to go to the movies on Monday afternoons."