Now that the dot-com bubble has popped, companies have more incentive for keeping personnel costs down, while tech workers are growing more vigilant about the conditions of their employment.
Employment law tries to balance the interests of both parties, but it can get pretty complicated.
By early last year, the case of Vizcaino v. Microsoft had worked its way up to the Supreme Court. This came in spite of an industry attempt to get the 9 th Circuit Court to reconsider the case. As it turns out, Microsoft and others holding the line on employment conditions may prove to be short-sighted. However, the extended legal conflict and related fallout have done little to help it. In 1998 some of the permatemps formed the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers , aka WashTech, to bargain collectively with Microsoft for some of the benefits that they had been seeking.