Is it Productivity or Indenture?

I'm sorry, but I have problems with the cult of "work all the time". Here's a quote that sums up the attitude so many people have today.

"Mobility has become ubiquitous," says Kevin Roberts, product manager with Toshiba's Digital Products division. "Businesses have come to expect the added productivity that comes from keeping workers mobile. Toshiba wants me to have a notebook because I can take it home with me and still be productive there, and we don't have to stop e-mailing just because it's after hours."

Source: 8 New Notebooks For Road Warriors - Hardware - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness

I may be old fashioned, but this doesn't seem more productive. It seems like labor being exploited by management. I know, Mr. Roberts is a manager and isn't expected to function like a mere worker, but I think it's gone way too far.

I don't see a problem working on things after you've left the office if the project requires it. I don't even see a problem staying late for the same reasons. And many different factors make working at home attractive including lowering emissions due to less driving to work, more time at home with the family and so on. But I find the concept that working extra hours is more productive to be contrary to the meaning of improved productivity. Productivity usually means:

A measure relating a quantity or quality of output to the inputs required to produce it.

Often means labor productivity, which is can be measured by quantity of output per time spent or numbers employed. Could be measured in, for example, U.S. dollars per hour.

This is pretty straightforward: An improvement in productivity over time is more work (work product?) being produced over a period of time when compared to a previous similar period. It means that more "widgets" were produced with the same number of workers over the same number of hours when compared to an earlier period. More productivity doesn't mean producing more widgets by the same number of people over a longer period of time (even if you don't pay those people extra for the extra time). While it can mean producing the same output with fewer people, in practice those fewer people are spending more time to complete the output.

This isn't an increase in productivity. It's simply worker exploitation.

It's exploitation, even if the worker is complicit in that exploitation. In fact, it's a worse form of exploitation when the worker is complicit, as he or she :

1. Feels or is in fact threatened with unemployment if the extra work isn't performed.
2. Believe their relationship with the company is less executive/worker and more executive/associate. They believe that the company is looking out for their interests.
3. Ignorant of the history of exploitation that was ameliorated by the success of organized labor: the 40-hour week, pensions, health coverage and job safety rules.
4. Believes that stock options exempt them from exploitation - or at least makes them an owner and thus un-exploitable.

These delusions are commonplace among the workers in the "New Economy" created in the 1990's and continue today as the lessons taught were not learned.

Not only have people not learned the lessons, I think today's worker, especially today's younger college educated worker, thinks this exploitation is normal. They even think it's desirable.

I think it's a shared delusion that one is not a serf if the noble doesn't crap on you directly and calls you by your first name.