The Register has a story about the opposition of labour unions in the UK to the growing trend in IT departments of blocking social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. Brendan Barber, General Secretary of The Trades Union Congress is quoted as saying "It's unreasonable for employers to try to stop their staff from having a life outside work, just because they can't get their heads around the technology." I think perhaps he's missing the point a bit, the problem is workers crossing the line between outside life and work duties. Blocking sites is not necessarily the answer either, but having a clear Internet usage policy would go a long way to avoiding abuse.
