Working Conditions

benefits
Waves of protesters clashed with police and set fires across France as anger intensified against government plans to raise the age for retirement benefits.

bonus
These days employees are expected to be available around the clock. If you take time off or don't work long hours you're seen as uncommitted, and can get left high and dry when bonus time comes around.

In the US, corporate executives earn about 400 times as much as the average employee, with the discrepancy in other countries only slightly less obscene.

freelance
More than one-third of American workers swing from project to project on a freelance basis, according to a new survey that finds the American workforce shifting from salaried positions to short-term gigs.

outsource
Concerned that its network was being hacked, a company discovered an employee outsourcing his own job to a Chinese consulting firm. The worker spent his office hours surfing the web and checking Facebook.

This week, Apple will rollout an interesting new perk called “App Discovery” to its retail store employees. They will have free access to popular paid App Store applications.

His career as a competitive athlete already in shambles from a doping scandal, Lance Armstrong announced he would step down as the chairman of his cancer foundation, Livestrong.

teamed up
The reality star has teamed up with MasterCard to create the Kardashian Prepaid MasterCard, which aims to help parents monitor their child's spending habits.

Maybe your co-worker accidentally let the cat out of the bag. (It happens.) In any case, your boss got wind that your last few “doctor’s appointments” have actually been interviews. Can you walk away unscathed?

Foxconn, Apple's largest manufacturing partner, is coming under renewed criticism over labor practices after reports that vocational students were being compelled to work at plants making iPhones.