It is 1 o’clock on a Thursday afternoon at the gates to the State Enterprise for Electrical Industries, and the workers have gone home. What about the managers? Out. Is even one technician left inside? The guards shake their heads: of course not.

Granted, it’s 110 degrees outside, and the one-day weekend — Friday in Iraq — is just around the corner. But knocking off work early is routine in postwar Baghdad. At the sprawling plant, the day begins at 9 a.m., and the workers who do show up are out the door by noon….At the Electrical Industries plant, employees estimated that a third of their 3,000 co-workers perform no meaningful labor, signing in only to be eligible to collect their monthly pay from the coffers of the U.S. occupation authority