Slashdot Mirror
How the Smartphone Killed the Three-day Weekend
An anonymous reader writes "As we in the U.S. settle in for Memorial Day weekend, this article points out how our cultural addiction to technology is making it less of a vacation than it used to be. 'The average smartphone user checks his or her device 150 times per day, or about once every six minutes. Meanwhile, government data from 2011 says 35 percent of us work on weekends, and those who do average five hours of labor, often without compensation — or even a thank you. The other 65 percent were probably too busy to answer surveyors' questions.' Even for those of us who don't have any work to do over the weekend, we'll probably end up reading all of our work-related emails as they roll in, and take time out of our day to think about what's going on — to the detriment of our weekend activities: 'A study at the University of California, San Francisco, found that new experiences fail to become long-term memories unless brains have downtime for review.' I imagine it's even worse for your average Slashdotter, who's likely plugged in to more technology at home and at work. How can we make our employers understand that downtime needs to remain downtime? 'It took labor unions 100 years to fight for nights and weekends off, some say, while smartphones took them away in about three years.'"
...posting to Slashdot.
I think I'll go investigate this "outside" that I keep hearing about.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
What took away the three day weekends is having unreasonable deadlines... and wanting to keep a job.
Has nothing to do with a smartphone.
(this is NOT a troll)
As a person (senior management) who has been told by his CEO "I don't care about what happens to the employees, I care about my company making money," I don't see there is anything you can do to get 'companies' to recognize the value of vacations... other than quitting and making them scramble to find someone else they can screw over. Sadly, the perception of vacations, much like IT and paid training in general, is that it is a drain on the company (doesn't produce IMMEDIATE revenue but DOES result in IMMEDIATE costs), and if it was possible to run the company without it, most companies would do so in a heart beat. Of course, those companies are often hell-holes to work in and fail on a regular basis.
Toil is Stupid. Don't be Stupid.
Unfortunately, in the context of the American mind this makes sense but in fact it's totally incorrect. Nights and weekends off has been lost over the last 30 years or so because corporations and governments worked together to reduce labor laws that protect workers and reward offshoring of labor as another avenue to damaging worker rights. Taking away our right to unionize did not make them enough money, so they had to exploit slave labor in Southeast Asia to have another implement to control workers: threatening not only individuals but entire communities with factory shutdowns.
And then they realized that with the militarization of our police forces they didn't have to threaten anything, so now they're just taking.They take our national wealth through tax loopholes, they drain our coffers with lucrative government contracts, and yet they continue to demand more and more money because there's no such thing as enough. Apple can't afford to pay full taxes, and they can't afford to pay Americans a living wage to build their products, but somehow they have over one hundred billion dollars in hard cash. They have so much money they haven't figured out how to spend it yet, and pretty much every corporation operates in a similar fashion.
Corporations continue to take and take and the only thing that will stop them is a popular labor movement, which may or may not be around the corner. Until Americans understand the root of the problem -- corporate power far outpacing democratic will -- corporations will continue to take our rights, our money, and the inheritance of a living planet away from our children. That's not because corporate people are evil, it's because absolute power corrupts absolutely, and despite all of their protestations to the contrary, they operate as any warlord or king or priest does when they are in centers of power. If they see something they want and they can get away with it, they will take it.
Smartphones don't have much to do with it.
Being a little older its interesting to see the arc of human behavior. Younger people don't question the way it is, it's just the way it is and they rationalize why it's that way and they thing it's normal, even good. There was a time when people actually mattered as people and not interchangeable widgets in a service based industrial engine that consumes people in precisely the same way it consumes paper or water or raw materials.
When people mattered, their human needs mattered. How the company was loyal to the employee just the way an employee was supposed to be loyal to a company. My Father worked for the same company for 30 years and got a generous retirement from them. Today the shrinking bone and the increasing number of ever hungrier dogs forces us to be happy to give away all our human time, with our families, with our interests and personal joys and passions, or we are forced to do work that leads to living a life that is hungry and wanting.
The problem isn't and can't be cell phones. It is a ceaselessly ravenous industry that wants all of you, and when it is done will spit you out sans vital juice. The future bodes that human labor is coming to an end. But the industries are the only recipient of the changing world. We must begin to look at how we will deal with a human population that no longer can compete in the market place with robot labor Or society itself will unravel.
"I work in technology in Canada, and extremely few people check their work email on (long) weekends. "
Ditto here in Luxembourg.
"It's simply not expected."
Nobody would even think to do it. It would be working for free, only stupid people do that.
If you're on call you have to be paid, always, it's the law.
If you're not paid to be on call, people don't even pick up the phone if the number is blocked or comes from a company phone.
Overtime has to be taken as free time until the end of the following month or it has to be paid _and_ taken as free time..
Yeah unions are great. That steel industry sure is kicking ass and the cost/quality of American cars can't be beat!
The Germans and Japanese don't seem to have any trouble building competitive cars with union labor. So either American unions are considerably worse than their counterparts in other countries, or the problem lies somewhere else. The Big Three haven't exactly had brilliant management. In fact, their management has traditionally been crappy and shortsighted.
German workers get paid much more than American workers and even have representation on corporate boards. Yet manufacturing in Germany is thriving and the quality of their goods is among the best in the world.