OK...let me try another angle...
I think we can agree that the "norm" is an 8-hour workday, 5 days a week, for FT employment. Yes, salaried means you are paid to "get the job done" not "put in the hours" - but lets be fair here too....depending on juristiction, most salaried employees are not legally considered overtime exempt (I know legally, I am not). So again, in theory, >40/week means time and a half for overtime.
So, lets take that 40 hour per week "norm". Now hey...I like the idea of being home when the kids get home from school as much as the next parent, so I'll run with that. Let us examine what is likely an "average" day for the person that does a standard 8:30-5 type post. Obviously, the commute time is the potential massive variable, but hey...I'll do this as my own life:
6am - wake up, shit/shower/shave
6:15-7:45 - Breakfast, help kids get their shit organized, etc
7:45 - leave for work. Drop off kids at school on the way
8:25 - arrive at work. Work all day (8 hour workday)
5:00 - leave work, drive home
5:45 - arrive home, start prepping supper
6:15 - supper
6:45 - take kid to soccer (or whatever activities happen in your household with the kids)
8:00 - Homework
9:00 - start putting youngest to bed
9:30 - hey look, I actually have 5 minutes to myself! WOOHOO! Relax, work on MY homework, watch some TV, etc
10:30 - fuck wife
11:00 - go to bed
11:00-6am - sleep
Now....lets take that same schedule, but now I'm going to be home at 3 instead of 5. Doing this will also cost me a minimum of 1 extra hour on an average day, for the "flexibility"...
6am - wake up, shit/shower/shave
6:15-7:45 - Breakfast, help kids get their shit organized, etc
7:45 - leave for work. Drop off kids at school on the way
8:25 - arrive at work. Work all day (6 hour workday)
3:00 - leave work, drive home
3:45 - arrive home, kids come home, homework
4:45 - Make up hour of work (now 7 hours on the workday)
5:45 - start prepping supper
6:15 - supper
6:45 - take kid to soccer (or whatever activities happen in your household with the kids)
8:00 - Put in an hour's work (Now at 8 hours total worked)
9:00 - start putting youngest to bed
9:30 - Make up more time at work...the additional hour I still owe (9 hour workday)
10:30 - Fuck wife
11-6am - sleep
So in that schedule I've gained ~ 2 hours of being in the same physical building as my kids, but I've lost all the free time I have to put into myself, whether much-needed relaxation, or self-improvement. Also, to gain those 2 hours in the physical building costs me 3 hours of that time effectively away from my kids doing work anyway! I've also only paid a 1 hour penalty for this flexability - TFA is suggesting a mind-boggling 2 1/2 hours daily, 7 days a week, is the price of that flexibility. So tell me...find me the extra hour and a half in the schedule above that I haven't even accounted for.
Now...would I give up SALARY to leave work at 3pm daily? Possibly. But time is already far too prescious a commonity to even consider giving up. You can't magically make more hours in the day...once that time is used, it is gone forever.
THAT is why I call people that are willing to trade time for flexability morons.
Oh, and your comment on being laughed out of court? Thank god I live in the magical land known as Canada, where there are actual laws that protect workers from being terminated without cause. God I feel for the people who live in at-will employment states.