KWPro.net

If there's one thing that the recession/depression certainly will kill, it's the whole notion of work-life balance.  The mid-2000's started this buzzword as a way of empowering workers to negotiate with their companies and help define whether or not a company had a good environment.  With layoffs, you get both a shortage of workers, less talented workers (where cheap talent from across the seas are farmed out or where local students are hired at bottom dollar value) and threats of one's own job security allow companies to set nasty unrealistic deadlines, longer hours and increased requirements for jobs at lower values.

This is the death of work-life balance in American society.

Having worked in Japan, I've come to realize that I can appreciate certain laws like in California, which supposedly gives workers certain rights in terms of the hours they work.  But it seems as though those laws don't apply during recessions.

I've talked to various coworkers and friends at IT related firms, finding that hours are becoming more stretched like in Japan.  But these days there's nothing one can do about it as their own job hangs in the balance of conformity.

I've never worked outside of an IT related business so I cannot speak on behalf of people in other industries.  However, from what I've seen in IT, the hours have not grown any shorter.  It seems as though the pay barely increases and the hours simply get longer.

It's funny how in an employment application, there's a little checkbox asking you, "Are you willing to work overtime if asked?"  That's a trick question because 1) it does seem related to whether or not you get hired; and 2) It's also a legal method for company's to get away with overworking their employees in a state like California.  A question like that should be held completely illegal from any job application.

Then again this is why I'm a firm believer in starting up an IT Union.  I don't care if there's annual fees.  But there's really nothing protecting IT workers from situations like this here in the states.   As long as the union doesn't abuse its privileges, it would have a good purpose.  Until then, most people (at least in the IT world) in the states can forget about their rights and life so long as they are grunt workers at a company.