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NRLB Redefines 'Your Own Time'
Doc Ruby writes "The U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled to ban off-duty worker 'fraternization,' at the employer's discretion. So getting together for a beer after work can now be prohibited by the boss. With IT workers so commonly producing some of our best work 'after hours,' even at home or in restaurants/bars, will this ruling come back to bite employers in the IT industry? Can they really stop you from talking with your cubicle neighbor on the bus home, if they can't even stop you from reading Slashdot while on the clock?"
While I completely agree that this could be made out to imply that workers are not permitted to assemble outside of work hours to collectively unite against their employer, I'm far more disturbed by the quote at the end of the article that reads, "America's workers need more opportunities to come together to discuss vexing workplace issues, or just to make personal connections with those we spend most of our waking hours with."
What American workers need to do is not allow their personal lives to intermingle with their daily work grind. Yes, plenty of people are required to do that and some employees even thrive on it, yet it is negatively impacting our mental, physical, and family health. Why are we allowing our employers to control more and more of our lives by requiring more than 40 hours a week w/o proper compensation and *requiring* us not to have outside of work relationships with any co-workers? While *I* refuse to have any out of work relationships with any of my co-workers I don't believe that employers should have the right to mandate and legally enforce that behavior.
I do everything I can to not even mention work to friends and family. When I am outside the office walls my brain is on everything but. It's healthy to have time to yourself, your family, and your hobbies.
Please, if you believe that you can successfully collectively bargain against your employer, do so to the best of your ability, but remember that work is just something you should do for 40 hours a week - anything over that should be properly compensated and documented hourly. Try and separate your family/personal life from it as best you can. For most of you the results will be more rewarding than your paycheck.
Your mind and your personal life outside of work are your own. Don't let your paycheck fool you into thinking otherwise.
I really don't think too many employers will take the time and trouble to regulate friendships outside the office, or even inside in most cases. Most managers want to get stuff done and call it a day, not snoop around area restaurants and bars to keep tabs on employee social lives.
With the exception of substance abuse or crime..
If a company wants to tell me what I can and can't do with my free time, then I will be billing them for my free time. Since my free time is worth a lot to me, I will be expecting a raise. $20 an hour 24/7 will be just fine.
Otherwise, I reserve the right to date, have sex with, go out with, hang out with, etc, with any of my co-workers when we are off the clock.
This falls under 'human rights'. Which you cannot sign away.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
This obviously goes against freedom of assembly, so good luck to any company trying to enforce it -- just the PR backlash would sink them.
Because this ruling was very specific and in a single case, and only applied to dating or fraternization off-duty with clients or coworkers while in their work uniforms.
I find it sickening.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
first, how isn't this a violation of the first amendment garantee of freedom of assembly?
second, it's not unheard of. i was subject to a similar ban when i taught in japan. that ban was a little different, it prohibited fraternizing with students, but a similar idea. interestingly, a japanese court ruled that it wasn't legal, because employers couldn't regulate what employees do when they are off the clock
Freedom of association isn't a civil rights issue?
Now can you explain how an employers has ANY right whatsoever to tell us what to do when we are off the clock?
Sure.
When you're still in your employer's uniform, especially that of a security company wishing to maintain its reputation as a professional organization, you shouldn't be going on dates with your clients.
That help?
but this is a little excessive. I can understand that employers don't want to hire people they know are doing illegal things outside of work (see drug testing), but outside of that, if they aren't paying me for that time, I'll do what I want. I am actually having a little trouble figuring out how this is legal. Company policies that prevent two relatives from working in the same place, etc I can understand, and if two people in the workplace get married, then one has to go. But to tell them they can't date/get married/drink/etc is out of control. If the government can't regulate what I do with my time, what makes an employer think they can?
Also, companies that push this will feel the pinch, because any employee worth his salt will find somewhere else to work. That will only leave the bad employer with bad employees, and that is a recipe for disaster. The only other option I see for them is to raise their wages so high that people are willing to put up with it, but then they raise their operating cost and allow their competitors to undercut them.
With IT workers so commonly producing some of our best work 'after hours'...
Please don't read this as a flame, but what the hell is meant by this? Maybe its because I don't buy into this work-till-you-drop mentality that so many people in capitalist economies seem to have, but why on earth is this being used as a rationalisation for maintaining outside-office freedom of assembly?
This reads as akin to "How dare they stop us meeting outside work! Don't they know that we do more work for them when we meet?", and is from my viewpoint pretty disgusting.
What about "How dare they stop us meeting outside work! Its none of their god damn business what we do outside of the time that we are payed by them!"
Why the seeming sycophancy? Are people so brainwashed by capitalism that they think they have a moral duty to comply with their employers, and no right to stand up and say "Hey, go screw yourself. My personal time is mine and mine alone"? That's all the "rationalisation" that should be required!
Still, just wearing a work uniform should not be a pretext for an employer to control his/her employees' behavior. If they employer does not like what his/her employees do in their uniforms, they have to right to take the uniforms away (i.e. require that they are stored on sight) or to fire the employees. Employers should not have any control over their employees' behavior off the clock.
Unenforced laws are the most dangerous sort. The thing is, then they are commonly broken and can be selectively enforced to punish anyone.
It seems to me that if any employer (especially if federal) actually tries to enforce this ruling--provided the victims are competent--there will be a court battle. In my unexpert opinion, this clearly impinges upon our constitutionally protected right to free speech. Plus, unless our government deems us property of those we work for (I'm not saying it doesn't), there's just too much gray area to enforce this.
"I'm a philosophy major. That means I can think deep thoughts about being unemployed." -- Bruce Lee
Yeah, it is interesting (since you're the one politicizing it) that the Clinton appointee thought it was just fine for Guardsmark employees to date and/or get "overly friendly with" clients and co-workers while in their work uniform.
Since, you know, that was the crux of the entire ruling: not that employees couldn't fraternize on their own time, but that employees couldn't do whatever the fuck they wanted while still in their Guardsmark uniform, implying that they are official representatives of Guardsmark.
Of course, since President Clinton himself had no problem with that sort of thing, I imagine it is "interesting".
1 point Hysterical*
/., would this be a '+' or '-' rating?
* for dispensing with a pedestrian "summary" of the facts in TFA in favor of hyperboic and hysterical misreading according to one's own personal filters, or as an attempt to induce such hysterics in others.
The only question, for
-Styopa
I don't really see this being a big problem. I am assuming, of course, that your employer pays you for all 24 hours in the day, of course. Let's see, where I live, the government mandates overtime at time-and-a-half past eight hours in a day. Or double-time past twelve hours in a day. That works out to 6.65 times my base pay. So yes, I'd happily not socialise with my coworkers, provided I get AT LEAST a 565% raise. Heck, I'll even carry a pager for that.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
[Emphasis added by previous poster]
In other words, naked fraternization or dating of clients and co-workers is now officially sanctioned!
Should have known it was bogus, the ruling as hyped by that crappy little website would have been SO controversial that we would have all been seeing wall to wall coverage on every news net on every part of the political spectrum from NPR to FoxNews. Good to know this is just hysterical Democrats doing thier fundraising thing.
But folks, it wouldn't be the first time an employer has pulled a stunt like this, making demands of your off time, and there are even some cases I could envision where it would be justified. Off the top of my head would be a lot of highly classified work splits things up so that no worker bee sees the whole picture. Often they don't even know what the end product will even resemble. They often have rules in place to keep it that way.
But the proper response when an employer does something stupid isn't to go running for the Nanny State to some in and make that bad ol boss play nice. Are we not Free Men, the inheritors of the blessings of liberty bought at such horrific prices of blood and treasure by our mighty forefathers? Are their descendants such pussies that they can't handle such an easy problem themselves? Nay, the correct response would be for a dozen or so key employees to have banded together and marked riht into that pointy haired boss (probably in terror of liability from the sexual harrassment nazies) and made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
Demand he front the money to start a company softball team. In one swoop you accomplish several things:
1. His PHB manual says he has to agree so you win.
2. Putting his name on the purchase approval form pretty much voids his "no after work association rule" in writing.
3. Makes him may a token but real monatary penalty.
And if the employyes are such sheep they won't stand up for themselves then I judge that as sheep it is the boss's duty to shear their pathetic asses.
Democrat delenda est
if you don't have any cases to point to, then don't put up complete BS about this stuff. The ACLU is also spending its time protecting bible beating christians in Las Vegas to keep there rights to demonstrate infront of the casinos. And that is a real case they defended and won(on CNN about 6 months back).
It's a pretty good pretext. When you're in uniform, you are representing that company.
Let me put it this way, and I'm assuming you're a fan of Linux, but if you aren't, just pretend you are for a sec. How would you feel if you were attending a computer conference, and after it ended for the day, you went out to grab some dinner, and you saw some guys wearing Tux t-shirts and acting like total jackasses? You'd be pretty upset, I bet, because you'd think they were hurting Linux's reputation by wearing those shirts and acting like they did. Doesn't matter a whole lot that they may or may not be developers or associated in any official way with Linux, the damage will be the same.
Just an analogy, FWIW.
Since there is no law protecting the right of workers to socialize outside of work, the court allowed the rule that they couldn't to stand. There is a law, thanks to union lobbying, saying workers can meet outside of work to discuss unions or union business - so this is the ONLY reason workers are allowed to meet each other outside of work. As far as uniforms, the court further put the restriction that workers can not wear their work uniforms at these meetings.
People are trying to spread disinformation and FUD about this. If it was a ruling only applying to some little rule about uniforms or some obscure union regulation, it would not be a big deal. Anyone who reads the ruling can see what it says.
You are wrong. Most people are unsuitable as friends or anything else.
It's always interesting when we make broad comments--the natural tendency is always to place ourselves into the majority, even if it's unconciously.
I'm a leading-class introvert. My wife has trouble understanding me, and she's spent a mind-boggling ammount of time trying. I drink only very rarey, I don't watch sports, and I don't go to church--
but I make a good friend, because I take people as they come and present myself as I am. Some of my friends are as introverted as I am, but most of them are like most people--extroverts who like to hang out in groups.
You are placing FAR too much burden on other people. Introverts can get along just fine with extroverts--you just need to change "despise extroverts" to "aren't an extrovert", and let the social chips fall where they may.
First that's NLRB, not NRLB. Consult the National Council to Combat Dyslexia in Abreviations, (NDCAC).
I read this from the NLRB's web site. The ruling only states that you can't fraternize with others while you are on duty whether they are off duty or not.
Seems overly controlling to me, but within the employer's rights. Two off-duty employees would still be able to communicate, organize, etc.
This administration seems to be trying to erode the rights of workers but if we're going to make accusations against them, we need to have the facts on our side. Exaggerating our case makes it easier for them not to be held accountable by the American people.