May 9, 2006
Articles
'Entrepreneurial' Workforce is Growing
"U.S. workers increasingly are giving up on traditional employment in favor of alternative arrangements, with 20 million workers telecommuting and 10.3 million working as independent contractors, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a May 4 report. In its report, titled Work, Entrepreneurship, and Opportunity in 21st Century America, the business group, citing government estimates from the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, said there are about 10.3 million independent contractors in the United States, making up 7.4 percent of the U.S. workforce.”
Gas Prices Fuel Telecommuting
"Every time Laurie Shannon makes the 160-mile round- trip drive between her home in Belchertown, Mass., and her office in suburban Boston, she uses five gallons of gas and shells out $5.10 in tolls. With prices at the pump skyrocketing, she has devised a partial solution: fewer commutes.”
Frustration Against Video Game Firm Grows Into Crusade Against Overwork
"Erin Hoffman's heart was breaking. She hardly got to see her overworked fiance, a video game software engineer who was laboring 85 hours a week at the industry's premier company, Electronic Arts of Redwood City, Calif. Yet they didn't clash over it; she was grateful for the few minutes she could spend with Leander Hasty. And he was too exhausted to argue, anyway. So Hoffman, then 23, poured out her frustration -- under the pen name EA Spouse -- in a November 2004 Web log, or blog, that resonated so strongly with other video game developers that it helped spark an employee uprising inside EA and several of six lawsuits for unpaid overtime against three of the industry's most prominent employers.”
The Motherhood Manifesto
"A baby is born. A child is stricken with a serious illness. A spouse has a stroke. A parent falls ill. These are the kind of events that throw a working mother’s delicate balance between her job and her family into chaos.”