My already soul-sucking job that has me carving out 9 hours a day just announced that going forward we’re supposed to be dedicating an extra half hour and that this will be rigorously enforced with a clock-in/clock-out system (we didn’t have one before), and I’m livid. Naturally, there’s no mention of a pay increase or any such because apparently “this is what we should’ve been doing all along”, even though we’re paid peanuts and there’s next to nothing by way of incentives or anything of the sort.
I worked my way up here precisely so I wouldn’t have to be subject to this sort of Big Brother scrutiny and this is just beyond annoying.
/end rant
Unfortunately, many of us experienced something similar.
Spent some years in a consulting company that used the same strategy, small sacrifices by the employees from time to time whilst they were declaring record profits year by year. Although the methodology is despicable, reality is that it works. Not only the law allows it (and if they get a fine it’s still worth it since the system is rigged) but also there will always be people that will stay no matter what (not wanting to get out of the comfort zone, peer pressure…). If you think about it, there are many companies that become viable just because they exploit their employees.
In my experience, if they are already doing this they will never stop pushing forward this type of policies, so my suggestion is that, in case you can’t avoid the extra hours, do the barely minimum to not get fired and start looking for a new job (bonus points if you convince other employees to do the same)