Kachin Education Centre

In a village, there were a grandpa and a grandson. During the day time when all the villagers out for works, the two killed a neighbour's goat and ate. Of course, grandpa warned his grandson not to tell anyone about their feast.

When their neighbour returned, they found one of their goats was missing. So, they went to inform village-head. Since the grandpa and child were in village for whole day, the village-head went to see them (without any sort of suspicion) but merely with a hope of getting some clues about the goat.

As the village-head arrived their home, the grandpa gave a blink of eyes to his grandson in order to remind him not tell about the event. When the child saw his grandpa's blinking eyes, he suddenly said, "Hey look! grandpa's eyes really look alike the goat's dying eyes which we ate today."

တစ္ခါက ရြာတစ္ရြာမွာ အဖုိးႀကီးတစ္ေယာက္ နွင့္ ေျမးတစ္ေယာက္ ေနၾကသတဲ့။ တေန႕ေတာ့ ရြာသူ၊သားေတြ အလုပ္ထြက္သြားခ်ိန္မွာ အဖုိးအုိႀကီး က သူ႕ေျမးေလး နဲ႕အတူ အိမ္းနီးခ်င္း ရဲ့ ဆိတ္ တစ္ေကာင္ကုိ ခိုးသတ္စား ၾကသတဲ့။ အဖိုးအိုက သူ႕ေျမးေလးကို ဘယ္သူ ကို မွ မေျပာျပရဘူးလုိ႕ေကာင္းေကာင္း တုိက္သြန္းထားတာေပါ့။

ညေန အိမ္နီးခ်င္း က အလုပ္ကေနျပန္လာေတာ့ သူတို႕ ဆိတ္ေပ်ာက္တာသိတာေပါ့။ ဒါနဲ႕ သက္ဆိုင္ရာ ရပ္ရြာ လူႀကီးေတြကို တိုင္ၾကားတာေပါ့။ သက္ဆိုင္ရာလူႀကီး ေတြလည္း အဲဒီ အဖိုအို နဲ႕ ေျမး က အိမ္မွာေန တယ္ ဆိုေတာ့ သတင္းရလုိ ရျငား သြား ၿပီး ဆုံစမ္းတာေပါ့။

သက္ဆိုင္ရာ လူႀကီးေတြလည္း ေရာက္ေရာ အဖိုးအို က သူ႕ေျမးေလးကို ဘာမွမေျပာဖို႕ မ်က္စိမိွတ္ျပလိုက္သတဲ့။ အဖိုးအိုရဲ့ မ်က္စိမွိတ္ ျပတာကို ၾကည့္ၿပီး သူ႕ေျမးေလး က - ေဟး! ဟိုမွာ အဖိုးရဲ့ မ်က္စိက ယေန႕ သတ္စားလိုက္တဲ့ ဆိတ္ေသခါနီးမွာ မိတ္တုပ္မိတ္တုပ္ လုပ္တဲ့ မ်က္စိ နဲ႕တူတယ္ လုိ႕ေျပာလိုက္ သတဲ့။

ေက်ာင္းမွာ၀န္း ကေလးတေတြ သူ႕အဖြဲ႕နဲ႕သူ ကစားေန ၾကတယ္။ ရုတ္တရက္ ကေလးတစ္ေယာက္က သူ႕ကစားေဖာ္ သူငယ္ခ်င္း ကုို ေျပာလုိက္ပုံက - လြန္ခဲ့တ့ဲအပတ္က နင့္အဖြားဆုံးၿပီး မုန္႕ဟင္းခါး စားတာ ငါ့ကိုေတာင္ မေခၚဘူး၊ အခုငါ့အဖုိးလည္း အသည္းအသန္ ျဖစ္ေနၿပီ။

A story of two kids

In a kindergarden, children are playing. Among them, two children were playing together. One of them suddenly told his friend - "last week, you didn't invite me for noodle on your grandma's funeral. Guess what! My grandpa is now also seriously ill."

Summary Outline

This paper is divided into three main parts to address the given question. Part (1) will define Affirmative Action (AA) in historical context so that to enable us understand better why AA becomes necessary in social policies such as education and employment. Part (2) is to attempt presenting some reasons why AA can never be sufficient enough to compensate the loss of the victims of past discrimination and thus, should not be seen as compensation but rather as recognition of the past misconduct. In part (3), it is explained why implementation of AA does not violate the principle of equality. Part (4) provides few examples of AA in practice provides in some countries. Finally, part (5) concludes with a brief summary of the paper.

Part One: Definition of Affirmative Action in Historical Context

In human history, perhaps, there are more dark sides than bright ones as far as racial/gender/sex matter is concerned. For example, white people traded black people as slaves; women were treated as second class citizen, social caste system in India where people from low caste were discriminated for generations. As result, black people were dominated by white people both politically and economically for generations; women were unable to vote and access to higher education; low castes were denied for higher education. These inequalities become the source of political and social tension/conflict.

In realizing the conflicts, a new social policy called Affirmative Action (AA) was introduced in USA in the 1960s. Stanford Encyclopaedia defines ‘AA’ as “positive steps taken to increase the representation of women and minorities in areas of employment, education, and business from which they have been historically excluded. When those steps involve preferential selection - selection on the basis of race, gender, or ethnicity.”

In short, ‘AA’ can perhaps, be viewed as a social policy to offer preferential treatment to the victims of the past discrimination or disadvantaged groups with a hope of enabling them to compete with the mainstream fairly and building more equitable society.

The AA however, has never been free of controversy. Politicians, scholars, social activists have been arguing back and forth about the subject but the debate is far from over. In fact, it seems that debate over AA issue intensifies in recent years. In April 2003, The University of Michigan and The University of California were brought to The US Supreme Court by a few white students accusing the universities of being racially biased when they were rejected for admission. Their case was not only supported by many white republican congressmen but also the president, George W. Bush. However, the court allows the universities to consider racial factor for admission. The officials of the universities said that preferential treatment is the only effective measure to bring multi-ethnic students into the campus.


Part Two: Can Affirmative Action Compensate the Loss of the Victims of the Past Discrimination?

A short answer to this question is ‘No’ because the losses are so great and beyond measure that no AA is significant enough to compensate those losses. If look back history, it will be clearer.

People were sold as slaves, served as slaves for generations without any benefit, died in vain, lost their human dignity, people being treated very badly (attended in segregated school with limited and poor quality resources) and were exploited every possible ways. Women and minorities were treated as second class citizen, their basic human rights were violated and voices were silenced for generations.

For example, South Africa was ruled by minority white people until 1994. Despite they were (still is) being minority, they have total domination in all sectors from education to economy since they were the rulers. White children were able to access to best education of the country from segregated schools (White only schools) and took up all the important professions. On the other hand, black children were prevented from getting quality education and obviously they cannot compete with the whites. Consequently, they were and are still in disadvantaged position due to the past discriminatory policies.

In 2004, I was able to join in a regional conference on human rights in Asia held in Chiangmai, Thailand. I still remember an Indian conference panelist describing a typical story of caste system in Indian society. She said that if you were born to a low caste (also known as untouchable caste) family, it is extremely difficult to access to higher education and find a decent job regardless of your qualification. She added, if you were also happened to be a woman born to such low caste, it is virtually impossible to get education especially with limited resources.

The point is, there is abundance of examples how people were discriminated and exploited. The lists can go on endlessly. The losses are beyond measure. Therefore, it is very inappropriate to look at AA as compensation because no AA can and will ever be sufficient enough to be able to compensate those losses of the victims of past discriminations and ill-treatments.


Part Three: Does ‘AA’ Violate Principle of Equality?

As presented earlier, the issue of ‘AA’ is controversial. It is hard to find an outright answer to argue that ‘AA’ does or does not violate the principle of equality. Critics argue that AA is reversal discriminatory policy and violates the equality principle. On the other hand, supporters of AA argue that principle of equality is not violated in implementing AA and even if there is violation of principle of equality involved, it is fair and good for the whole society for the future. Thus, it would be fair to look at some arguments both for and against the ‘AA’.

Arguments against Affirmative Action

One of the most common arguments against the ‘AA’ is that ‘AA’ creates reverse discrimination against one particular group (e.g., former discriminators or of their new generation). The argument is something like ‘why should I be now punished for the crime I did not commit?’

Jain, Sloane & Horwitz (2003, p-17) also mention a series of some negative impacts of AA (a) it is difficult for civil services to maintain image as impartial and politically neutral because political decisions are constantly made base on ethnic consideration rather objective criteria, (b) AA can perpetuate and even strengthen ethnic division, (c) AA also tends to create conflicts within the preferential groups themselves because only small section of people can benefit from the AA programme, (d) it is argued that once AA is introduced, it becomes permanently rooted in the political system serving the interests of small group.

Dani and Haan (2008, p-233) point out negative impacts of AA – it is inefficient, only “creamy layer” of the few benefit from the AA, largely remain unbenefit. AA also reaffirms the individual identity as deprived or minority (people may suffer labelling effect).

Arguments for Affirmative Action

Supporters argue that it is fair to give preferential treatment to marginalized groups because they have historically been discriminated. For example, white people today in general are better off than black people because they have been historically able to enjoy institutional supports – able to go to best colleges/universities and get high value professions. They continue to be in dominating position. If the two groups are to compete openly, marginalized people will surely be left behind because of the unequal starting point. AA is to make the starting point equal/fair.

Without AA, disadvantaged/marginalized/minority people continue to remain in disadvantaged positions. Social division or class and income gap will be widened which can result social instability. Thus, implementation of AA is the best interest of all members of society.

US President Bill Clinton is among the strong supporters of AA. He asserts that the job of ending discrimination remains unfinished; strongly defends AA. "Mend it, but don't end it," he says.

Dani and Haan (2008, p-233) conclude that the effect and impact of AA is so great – people many people from deprived group accessed to education and find decent job improve their social status and boost self-confidence.

Part Four: Affirmative Actions in Practice

Nowadays, Affirmative Action (AA) is not only used as recognition of the past discriminatory policy but also as to reduce extreme poverty by providing education and employment opportunity as well as to create social harmony in society in order to reflect cultural and social diversity. In another word, it is used to give equal opportunity to formerly marginalized groups in order to enable them compete with the mainstream. Scholars describe this as nation building or state formation policy – intends to include all members of society into the mainstream. AA may be controversial but many governments are adopting it. The followings are some of the real examples.

Northern Ireland: Schapper and Burns (2007, p-369) Northern Ireland was torn apart for decades by the civil war between Protestants and Catholics. British Prime Minister, Tony Blair orchestrated peaceful settlement programme between the two communities. In order to maintain the fragile peace, it is imperative to draw Catholic candidates into the (Protestants dominated) police force and other civil services. It enables Catholics to find jobs much easier.

South Korea: On 30th October 2008, BBC reported that a South Korean law which states that only the visually impaired can be licensed masseurs has been upheld in the country's Constitutional Court. The Court’s reason is that "Massage is in effect the only occupation available for the visually handicapped and there is little alternative to guarantee earnings for those persons." Such kind of state intervention/ preferential treatment should be welcome because it recognizes the needs of visually impaired and gives them a sense of hope and shows that they are still part of the society. In addition, the law gives blind people a chance to make their living, without such law, they would have extremely hard time to find job in other business fields.

India: Indian constitution guaranteed equal opportunity. Dani and Haan (2008, p-230) “The State shall promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people and, in particular, of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, and shall protect them from social injustice and all forms of exploitation” (Directive Principle of State Policy, article 46).

However, people from untouchable class (low caste) were left behind for generations. In 1990, the government launched ambitious reform – preserving and reserving places in government jobs and state fund colleges and universities.

Currently, 22.5% of the seats in state-funded educational institutions are reserved. With an additional 27% of seats set aside, the total caste-based educational quota will be raised to 49.5%.

Currently, 27% of government jobs are reserved. Prime Minster Manmohan Singh has now suggested that companies too should take up this action plan and extend the percentage .

Nethralpal Singh, 29, is one of the millions who has benefited from the reform. He is from low caste group and has accessed to higher education through AA, and is now a lecturer in Dheli University (one of the top universities in the country). He says “people from socially disadvantaged sections are very often also financially disadvantaged. The quota system is the only way they can break free” .

Part Five: Conclusion

Affirmative Action is viewed as one of the most effective social policies in building more equitable society. Many people have accessed to higher education, enable them to have decent jobs and boost self-confidence. AA may not a perfect policy but it is widely reported it has brought millions of people out of the extreme poverty.

However, it is still divided among the supporters and critics of AA. The two groups cannot agree whether affirmative action make things better or worse. One thing is certain - the debate rages on.

References:

Anis A. Dani and Arjan de Haan (editors), “Inclusive States: Social Policy and Structural Inequalities”, The World Bank, 2008.

Ashwini Deshpande, “EQUITY & DEVELOPMENT: Affirmative Action in India and the United States”, World Development Report 2006. (Paper available at:
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTRANETSOCIALDEVELOPMENT/Resources/Affirmative_Action_India_Ashwini.pdf)

Harish C. Jain, Peter J. Sloane, and Frank M. Horwitz, “Employment Equity and Affirmative Action: An International Comparison”, M.E.Sharpe, USA, 2003.

Jan Schapper and Prue Burns, “The Ethical Case for Affirmative Action”, Journal of Business Ethics (2008), Springer 2007.

Nic Paton, “Accentuate the Positive”, Personnel Today, 4 November 2008.

Summary

Nowadays, the term ‘globalization’ is a buzzword. It is often described as a process of internationalization – easy communication regardless of geographical boundaries due to advance technologies, easy and fast financial capital flow across the globe and countries become more interdependent particularly in economy. It is believed that globalization provides consumers with variety of choices with affordable price. So, is the globalization reducing or increasing poverty? This paper will attempt to briefly answer this question in the following orders.

The paper includes (I) defining globalization and poverty (II) globalization reduces poverty, (III) globalization increases poverty, (IV) other reasons contribute to poverty, (V) roles of The World Bank, IMF and WTO in developing countries, (VI) who benefit the most from globalization? and (VII) conclusion.

(I) Defining Globalization and Poverty
“Globalization” has been defined in various dimensions. Among many established definitions, these are some of them. ‘Globalization as internationalization’ in which is viewed “as simply another adjective to describe cross-border relations between countries”; ‘Globalization as liberalization’ which refers to “a process of removing government-imposed restrictions on movements between countries in order to create an ‘open’, ‘borderless’ world economy”.

Defining poverty is controversial. Definition of poverty in developed countries may not be applicable to the one in developing countries. However, United Nations and World Bank define poverty line as living on less than a $1 and $2 a day for low income countries. Sociologists define poverty “a lack of essential items – such as food, clothing, water, and shelter – needed for proper living” .

Since “Globalization and Poverty” is a huge and very broad topic, this short paper is to attempt looking at one of the heated debate questions on whether globalization reduces or increase poverty. Numerous studies on this issue have been carried out. However, the findings are conflicting.

(II) Globalization Reduces Poverty
Neoliberal economists widely believe that globalized trade benefits not only the affluent but also the poor through trade integration. “Neoliberal economic theory––more open economies are more prosperous, economies that liberalize more experience a faster rate of progress” Wade (2004, p-567). The belief is that as countries open up their economy such as by slashing down the trade barriers for instance tariff, custom duty and quotas, price of imported goods will be affordable for the poor; foreign direct investments come in and create jobs in local economy. Consequently, this increases export growth and GDP. Millions of poor people’s living standard improves because of jobs created. China, India and Vietnam are often cited as good examples for success of globalized economy.

(III) Globalization Increases Poverty

On the contrary, many economists are unconvinced by the neoliberal economists’ view that globalization reduces poverty. Pilger (2001) in his TV report on Indonesia presents that despite investments from multinational corporations (eg. Nike, Levis, Reebok Classic, Calvin Klein Jeans, Adidas, Gap Inc.), poverty remains unchanged in Indonesia. On average, Indonesian workers are paid only slightly over Rupiah 9,000 (US$1) per day which is just over half of a living wage.

Harrison (2006) finds similar situation in Mexico. Mexico is a member of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed in 1993 with Canada, Mexico and USA. If trade integration is to reduce poverty and benefit the poor as neoliberal economists suggest, poverty in Mexico should be declined. But, Harrison (2006, p-7) concludes that “poverty rates in Mexico in the year 2000 were higher than they had been ten years earlier.” This reinforces that neoliberal economists’ view on decline of poverty is unconvinced.

(IV) Other reasons contribute to poverty

Wade (2004, p-571) states that more than 1.2 billion people are still living on less than US$1 a day. The followings are some of the most recognized reasons contribute to poverty: lack of natural resources, natural disaster – long period of draught, corruption and sanctions imposed against specific country.

For example, according to United Nations, Cape Verde is one of the most stable democratic countries in Africa and the government is relatively mild in corruption. It ranks 49 out of 179 in Transparency International’s “2008 Corruption Perceptions Index ”. But due to cycles of long-term drought, lack of natural resources, shortage of water supply and lack of foreign investments, the state is still among the poorest nations on earth despite its good governance.

Countries with rich endowment of nature resources also remain in poverty due to wide spread corruption, bad governance, political instability and economic sanctions imposed by powerful countries. For example, my country, Myanmar (Burma) is still among the world’s poorest countries despite rich endowment of natural resources from oil to various gem stones. It is due to political instability, severe corruption, lack of reliable judiciary system, basic infrastructures and economic sanction imposed by The US. Consequently, unemployment rate is remarkably high and chance of economic success for big majority of population is slim unless economic and political reform take place.

(V) Role of World Bank, IMF and WTO on development in poor countries

The World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organization are widely known as driving forces of trade liberalization. Pilger (2001) interviews several former executive officials of The World Bank and IMF in his TV report on Indonesia. Those officials explain that the roles The World Bank and IMF have played in Indonesia’s economy and various criteria a country to comply with order to get loan from them.

World Bank and IMF are supposedly to help poor countries. In reality, powerful countries use the two institutions as tools to suck up resources from developing countries via multinational corporations, according to the TV report. To get loans from the institutions, a country has to reform its economy which mainly means to open up markets and allow multinational corporations to access to country’s resources and privatize industries. Thus, complying with the criteria implies serving the best interests of multinational corporations.

In addition to opening up markets for multinational corporations, the loans also come with so called ‘technical experts’ or ‘consultants’. So, significant sum of the loans go back to developed countries as salaries of those ‘experts’.

To get loan from the institutions, a country also has to have a good relationship with the US because it controls 16.77% of total votes in IMF and 16.39% of The World Bank’s total vote. For instance, N-Korea and Cuba cannot get loans from the institutions because of sour relationship with The US.

World Trade Organization (WTO) is another driver of trade liberalization. It forces member countries to open up their markets and eliminate trade barriers. New members are also required to fulfill these criteria. Members are required to comply with intellectual property laws which were mainly written by the big corporations.

WTO is widely criticized for being ineffective to protect the interests of developing nations. When trade disputes occur, chance of getting success in legal battle for poor country is very slim even if it has a good ground because the mechanism is so expensive and complicated. Besides, it cannot force developed countries to stop subsidizing agricultural industry because farmers from poor countries are unable to compete with those heavily subsidized farmers in developed countries. Thus, poor countries always have less advantage in global trading system.

(VI) Who benefit the most from globalization?

There is no doubt that globalized trades/economy benefits all the parties concerned. However, various studies show that advanced countries are benefiting from the trades more than poor countries. Yotpoulos and Romano (2007, P-21) state that free markets and free trade work best if there are supported by extensive institutional structure such as business infrastructures, reliable legal system and political stability. Thus, globalization is more likely to favour the countries which are wealthy and institution rich, at the expense of those that are poor.

On the other hand, developing countries with strong infrastructure base, political stability, dependable legal system and abundant labor forces also benefit from globalization. China, India and Vietnam are often cited as ideal examples. Furthermore, United Nation (2007, P-23) asserts that countries with bargaining strength are more likely to benefit more from bilateral trade agreements and impose more onerous terms on the weaker parties.

“We must ensure that the global market is embedded in broadly shared values and practices that reflect global social needs, and that all the world's people share the benefits of globalization.” Kofi Annan .

(VII) Conclusion

In short, it is hard to find convincing data to support either globalization reduces or increases poverty. However, it is clear that globalization is more beneficial to developed countries than to developing countries mainly because of wide spread corruption, bad governance, lack of necessary business infrastructures.

Unless world leaders share Kofi Annan’s concern “We must ensure that the global market is embedded in broadly shared values and practices that reflect global social needs, and that all the world's people share the benefits of globalization.”, the following remarks are unfortunately likely to continue to be true.

George Monbiot (Environmentalist) summarizes, “Globalization is used to suggest a coming together of people of all races, all countries. It will relieve poverty and distribute wealth. What is actually happening is precisely the opposite. The Poor become markedly poorer and wealthy become staggeringly wealthier.”

United States Space Command (1997, p-6) remarks “The globalization of the world economy will also continue, with a widening between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’.”



References:

Ann Harrison, “GLOBALIZATION AND POVERTY” NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, Working Paper 12347, Cambridge, 2006. www.nber.org/papers/w12347

John Pilger, “Globalization: New Rulers of the World”, Carlton Production, 2001. (TV report)

Pan A. Yotpoulos and Donato Romano (editors), “The Asymmetries of Globalization”, Routledge, USA & Canada, 2007.

ROBERT HUNTER WADE, “Is Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality?” London School of Economics and Political Science, World Development Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 567–589, UK, 2004.

United Nations, “The Employment Imperative: Report on the World Social Situation 2007” New York, 2007.

အခုေခတ္မွာ လုိခ်င္တဲ့သတင္း၊ အခ်က္အလက္ အကုန္လုံးနီးပါးကို internet ေပၚမွတဆင့္ အလြယ္တကူ ရွာေဖြရရွိ နိုင္ပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာျပည္ေက်ာင္းသူ/ သား မ်ားအတြက္ အေထာက္ အကူ ျဖစ္နိုင္တဲ့ internet websites အခ်ဳိ ့ကိုေဖာ္ျပေပးခ်င္ ပါတယ္။ ေအာက္ပါ sites ေတြမွာ ပညာေတာ္သင္ေထာက္ပံ့ေၾကး ေလွွ်ာက္ နုိင္တဲ့သတင္းအခ်က္အလက္ ေတြကိုရရွိ နိုင္ပါတယ္။
- http://www.myanmarstudyabroad.org/
- http://www.childsdream.org/
- http://www.thabyay.org/
- http://www.prospectburma.org/
- http://www.arakanera.com/intscholarship.html
- http://www.chevening.com/

Essay ေရးတဲ့အခါမွာ သိတင့္သိထိုက္တ့ဲ (tips) အေၾကာင္းေတြကို ေနာက္ မွာ ဆက္လက္ေျပာျပသြားမယ္။

တခါက, (politician) နုိင္ငံေရးသမား, (Businessman) စီးပြားေရးသမား, (academic) ပညာရွင္ တို ့လူသုံးေယာက္ လက္ဖက္ရည္ဆိုင္ မွာ စကား၀ုိင္းဖြဲ ့ၾကသတ့ဲ။ တဦးနဲ့တဦးအျပန္အလန္ေမးၾကတာေပါ့။ "ခမ်ားရဲ့အသုဘပြဲမွာ အမွတ္တရအတြက္ လာေရာက္တဲ့လူေတြကိုဘာေျပာခုိင္းေစခ်င္သလဲ" လုိ ့ နုိင္ငံေရးသမားက စၿပီး ပထမဦးဆုံးအေမးခံပါသတဲ့။

နို္င္ငံေရးသမားက- ဒီပုဂိၢဳလ္က ရုိးသားေျဖာင့္မတ္တဲ့အေၾကာင္း၊ သိစၥာရွိတဲ့အေၾကာင္း ေတြကိုေျပာခိုင္းေစခ်င္ ေၾကာင္း ေျပာပါသတဲ့။

ထိုနည္းလည္းေကာင္းဘဲ စီးပြားေရးသမားကလည္း အလွဴဒါနႁပုတဲ့အရာမွာ အလြန္မွရက္ေရာတဲ့ အေၾကာင္း၊ ရုိးသားတဲ့အေၾကာင္း ေတြကိုေျပာခုိင္းေစေၾကာင္း ေျပာပါသတဲ့။

ပညာရွင္ရဲ့အလဲ့မွာေတာ့တမူထူးျခားစြာနဲဲ ့ေျပာတာေပါ့။ "ၾကည့္ၾကပါအုံးဒီလူအသက္ျပန္ရွင္လာၿပီ" လုိ ့ေျပာေစခ်င္တဲ့အေၾကာင္းကိုေျပာပါသတဲ့။

စာဖတ္အေနနဲဲ ့ဆိုရင္ဘာေျပာခိုင္းေစခ်င္သလဲ။

People working from home do many extra hours, and some earn just 73p an hour. Home-working is just one of the ways the work-life balance can tip in favour of work.

Whenever I work in an office, I always make sure that I take full advantage of the franking machine to send personal letters, and let's just say that I have never paid for a pack of Post-it notes or a roll of Sellotape in my life.

Of course stealing is wrong, but let's not forget that most employers - including all the ones I've worked for - "steal" from their workers on a systematic basis. How? By taking the extra time put in without paying for it.

The snatch is brilliantly simple: most people have an employment contract which stipulates an agreed amount of hours should be worked in return for a set amount of pay.

Yet a survey of 5,000 managers in the UK conducted by the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) has found that more than 91% of them work more than their contracted hours regularly, without a penny extra to show for it.

Matter of choice

More fool them, you might say, if workers put in extra hours. It is, after all, their own choice.

Homeworkers 'exploited' by firms

But it turns out that in many cases it isn't. The majority are forced to put in extra hours for nothing, according to Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at Lancaster University, who carried out the survey in his time at UMIST.

"What you find is that about one-third of all people are forced to work long hours because of the culture of their workplace. A third are clearing a backlog of work because they are given more than they can do in their contracted time, and a third genuinely love working."

Companies may establish a work culture by making "jokes" when people leave early, or by providing employees with supposed benefits like mobile phones or fax machines in their homes - effectively putting them on call 24-hours-a-day.

Then there are after-hours activities which many employees are expected to attend: these can range from entertaining clients over drinks or meals, to sitting on the company table at industry awards ceremonies or going to football or golf tournaments at the weekends.

The evidence is that this sort of "always on call" work culture is widespread. Research carried out by the Royal Mail recently found 65% of UK workers have been contacted about a work-related issue during the weekends and 48% by a colleague during a bank holiday weekend.

LOSING TIME Industry bash in the evening Booking you on red-eye flights to Europe, returning late that same day Remote access privileges to the company network for weekend working

Perhaps the biggest con perpetrated on me by an employer came disguised as a business trip to Amsterdam - a reward for some good work I had put in.

The trip turned out to involve getting up at 5am for an early flight, a full day's work, and a flight back the same day. I finally got home at 11.30pm, after 18.5 hours on duty.

I got paid my normal wage - my employer having the benefit of what would have been my breakfast with my wife and children and my evening's five-a-side football game.

Eye for promotion

Long-hour cultures help employers get workers' time for nothing, but they can also backfire by rewarding inefficiency, says Mr Cooper.

"What happens if I can get all my work done between 8.00am and 3.30pm? Someone else who does their work less well and takes more time but puts in the hours will get promoted."

Mr Cooper may have a point: Britons work the longest hours in Europe, but UK companies are not the most productive.

I'm among the many employees to have lost hours and hours over the years - yet few of us really complain.

The way I see it, there's an unwritten contract between me and my employers, and since we both understand it there have never been any problems. They are free to take my spare time without paying for it, and I don't expect to pay for stamps or Post-It notes.

Paul Rubens is a freelance journalist. He has never worked for the BBC.