Employers are out to extract the maximum work for the minimum salary.
Employees are out to extract the maximum salary for a minimum amount of work.

Case in point: Our company just went through a quarter where the amount of work we did went up 50% (!) with no increase in the number of employees, payed hours, or complaints. Basically, it worked because the salaried employees put in huge amounts of overtime (unsustainable) and everybody else busted their asses as well. (also unsustainable)

The CEO takes off immediately after this for cancer treatments - he has a probably fatal form of cancer, can't remember the name of the disease. One of the owners steps in as CEO, and first thing out of his mouth is, "you guys did so good handling the increased workload, we're not hiring any more people or increasing the hours."

Howling ensued. Owner ran with his tail between legs, and the rest of us got back to work.

Oh yeah, and new hiring has been authorized.