Good luck running any kind of production with workers who show up when they feel like it.
When I started my last factory job I worked 12 hours per day, 7 days a week for the first 4 months before seeing my first day off. Its also a big part of the reason I made foreman inside of a year and a half.
Need another Ronald Regan to open up the job market to set things back in the workers' favor. 16% unemployment makes an employer cocky.
That’s a factory environment. Totally different than an information technology environment. If i’m a programmer for instance, and can be just as productive working at home as I can at the office, then why not let me work elsewhere? And whatever hours I want.
It’s about productivity...getting done what you’re expected to get done. It increasingly doesn’t matter WHERE you do it, or how many hours it takes you to get it done. If you can bust your hump and crank out 8 hours worth of work in 4 hours, then why shouldn’t you reap the rewards of a few hours of free time?
And after 25 years of working in an office environment, the amount of wasted time I’ve seen from people who are supposedly “working” 10 hour days is pretty significant.
Don’t you know? The Gen-Y or whatever expect “someone else” to actually MAKE things from the raw materials of the earth. In their little fantasy worlds, oil just jumps out of the ground as ready-to-use gasoline, trees turn themselves into paper, pulp, furniture, and food just falls from heaven, prepackedged of course.
The vast vast vast majority of people have zero idea of how anything is created. They are able to live very very well drawing pretty powerpoint charts, talking loudly, cutting “deals”, shaking hands, and getting to know the “right” people.