Or 50's USA?

What is strangest about this is asking for people's passwords! They're not just asking to be friended or to have access to information, they're asking to be able to have access to control of your profile (meaning, any employee with access to this information could take someone's password and really screw around with that person's info and relationships - not to mention spy on other people in their network...so the privacy violation has a ripple effect.) Of course, the essential problem is employers thinking they own people outside of the time they rent them to do work for them. Once upon a time, for a brief moment in history, there were these things called unions that fought really hard so that rich employers couldn't actually own people anymore (through usury/indentured servitude or through wage slavery). City's used to have them to protect city workers. I'm amazed at how much people put up with in the US in terms of limitations on personal freedom and activities outside work by employers. It's only going to get uglier in the US with such high unemployment too.

The whole auto industry fiasco seems more like an excuse to union bust and drain tax payers pockets than anything else. Personally I'm appalled (but not surprised) by how brazen it's all been on both sides of the border. Though, considering the state of Canada (pun intended) and our rapid decline into swimming in the same corporate run neocon/liberal cesspool, Canadian have become complicit in our inaction and quiet submission to corporate interests that go against our own as a society and individuals.

drug testing has been the rule here for a long time now, it's all about creating castes of people - insiders and outsiders, maintaining a workable community of privileged people who comply.