Yes, that IS happening and very little is being published about it. It is happening in my job AND my wife's job. Little by little, the supervisors put more and more on us and yet the pay does not increase. I believe a LOT of people are severely frustrated by that specific problem at work (in addition to all of the others).
The answer is not unions stating exactly what someone can and can not do at work. A big part of the problem is excessive taxation and regulation driving up overhead costs causing supervision to look for ways to cut cost -- ergo, squeeze more labor out of the present employees for the same money. I simply don't believe it is always the employer trying to explicity take advantage of the employee, but rather other mitigating factors leading to the necessity for cutting cost.
yep if you notice the employer has to pay $5 an hour into the tax system for every $10 an hour he pays his employs (his part of social security burden) but it gets higher by gov'ts spending that money on other stuff and creating more barriers for business in order to leverage their revenue collections. For example they might need the busiensses to certify that their lumber comes from US/Can/Mex and not from non-Nafta parts and that sucks a continuous stream of money into the certifiers pockets. Then there are ordinance surcharges for the services provided ergo extra fees for using the road besides the usual real estate taxes which should pay for it. Costs for truckers going up translates into shipping costs going up which make harder to make a profit margin etcetc...