It's not "unpaid work" if you're classified as an exempt employee, which is never explicitly addressed in the article. That's why you get a certain salary regardless of sick leave, holidays, etc - you are being paid to apply your professional skill to a task, not conduct menial labor for a certain number of hours. I would never work unpaid overtime when I was working as a retail clerk. That's why they had a time card system which I had to punch in and punch out of. If a customer kept me late by even 15 minutes, I'd be compensated for all of that time. Now later in my career I'm an exempt professional, and I don't mind crunching when it's crunch time. That's part of why my salary is so much higher now: I understand that I have a job to execute at any cost. If a deadline is in danger of being missed I will put in the extra hours necessary to achieve success regardless of being asked to or not. That's why managers award me crucial projects and that's the kind of employee I would lean on when I have a crucial project of my own to manage. That's also the first employee to be put up for promotion and the last one to be expendable during hard times. This isn't the least bit surprising.