Slashdot Mirror
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.
My wife and I are employed at the same company... Does that mean I don't have to talk to her anymore afterwork? Thank you NLRB!!! I'm soooo shot-gunning two beers tonight and watching ESPN.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
So wait, they are going to ban my drinking! What next, no more vodka shots during breaks? Then what, they are going to replace the coke and rum dispenser with WATER!? THEY CAN'T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME!
Oh wait, what was TFA about again?
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?
...since the submission is extremely misleading and melodramatic, as usual.
NLRB ruling
The ruling does not universally allow employers to ban any and all off-duty interaction. It made a specific ruling, in its capacity of administering the National Labor Relations Act, that Guardsmark's ban on in-uniform, but off duty, fraternization ("dating or becoming overly friendly with") with clients and coworkers. The critical and key aspect of the ruling was that it allowed for the prevention of such inappropriate fraternization while in Guardsmark uniform. The NLRB ruling further stated that care must be taken such that this ruling is not misapplied as to have a "chilling" effect on employee's rights under Section 7 of the the Act.
The actual order is:
ORDER
The Respondent, Guardsmark, LLC, its officers, agents, suc-cessors, and assigns, shall
1. Cease and desist from
(a) Maintaining or enforcing a handbook provision prohibit-ing employees from registering complaints regarding their wages, hours, or conditions of employment with Guardsmarks' clients.
(b) In any like or related manner interfering with, restraining, or coercing employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed them by Section 7 of the Act.
2. Take the following affirmative action which is necessary to effectuate the purposes of the Act.
(a) Within 21 days after receipt of this decision advise its employees, nationwide, that the handbook provision regarding registering complaints with clients is not to be understood as limiting the right of employees to engage in activities protected by the National Labor Relations Act.
(b) At a time when the employee handbook is to be revised or reissued, either delete the handbook provision prohibiting employees from registering complaints with clients, or modify the said language so that it does not prohibit activities protected by the National Labor Relations Act.
(c) Within 14 days after service by the Region, post at its San Francisco, California office copies of the attached notice marked "Appendix."6 Copies of the notice, on forms provided by the Regional Director for Region 20, after being duly signed by Respondent's representative, shall be posted immediately upon receipt thereof, and shall remain posted by Respondent for 60 consecutive days thereafter, in conspicuous places, in-cluding all places where notices to employees are customarily posted. Reasonable steps shall be taken by the Respondent to ensure that the notices are not altered, defaced, or covered by any other material.
(d) Within 21 days after service by the Regional Office, file with the Regional Director for Region 20 a sworn certification of a responsible official on a form provided by the Region at-testing to the steps that the Respondent has taken to comply.
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.
Why do you call the U.S.A the "land of the free"?
:o)
They mean free as in beer, not free as in freedom.
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!
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.
Why dampen sensationalism with the facts? :)
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
FYFL-
The judge also concluded that the Respondent did not violate the Act by maintaining a work rule that directs employees not to "fraternize on duty or off duty, date[,] or become overly friendly with the client's employees or with co-employees." The judge reasoned that such a rule "does not on its face, or by reasonable implication, pre-clude activities protected by the Act." The General Counsel excepts, arguing that employees reasonably would understand the rule to prohibit activity protected by Section 7.
We find no merit to this exception. The Respondent's rule is somewhat similar to a work rule we reviewed in Lafayette Park Hotel, supra, and found lawful. There, the employer's rule mandated that "[e]mployees are not allowed to fraternize with hotel guests anywhere on hotel property." 326 NLRB at 825. We concluded that the rule was lawful because employees would not reasonably read "this rule as prohibiting protected employee com-munications . . . about terms and conditions of employ-ment." Id. at 827. Although the Respondent's rule is not identical to the one in Lafayette Park Hotel, we find that any differences between the rules are not material and do not warrant a different outcome here. Contrary to our dissenting colleague, we do not believe that the Respondent's rule would reasonably tend to chill protected employee activity. The Respondent's proscrip-tion against fraternization appears alongside proscrip-tions on "dat[ing,] or becom[ing] overly friendly with the client's employees or with co-employees." That being so, we believe that employees would reasonably under-stand the rule to prohibit only personal entanglements, rather than activity protected by the Act. In our view, it would be an unreasonable stretch for an employee to infer that speaking to others about terms and conditions of employment is a "fraternization" that is condemned by the rule. As in Lutheran Heritage Village, our dissenting colleague continues to advocate finding a violation where an employee could possibly perceive a conflict between a rule and protected activity. We, instead, limit the Board's reach to rules, unlike this one, where an em-ployee would reasonably perceive such a conflict.
We recognize that the rule in Lafayette Park Hotel prohibited fraternization with guests, while the rule here prohibits fraternization with client employees or coem-ployees. However, in context, the rule here is reasonably understood as prohibiting personal entanglements, rather than activity protected by the Act. Moreover, as the judge noted and our dissenting col-league ignores, the Respondent's rule is designed "to provide safeguards so that security will not be compro-mised by interpersonal relationships either between Re-spondent's fellow security guards or between Respon-dent's security guards and clients' employees." Given those heightened security concerns, we think the Re-spondent's justification for its fraternization rule is even stronger than that of the employer in Lafayette Park Ho-tel, where we concluded that a fraternization rule was a proper means for preventing the "appearance of favorit-ism, claims of sexual harassment, and employee dissen-sion created by romantic relationships in the workplace." 326 NLRB at 827 fn.
The thing about the ACLU is that they don't ask who you voted for, what your religion is, or what color your skin is before they work to protect your rights.
Does it surprise you that a majority of ACLU members are religious? Most of them are Christians, with many Jews and Muslims and other religions.
The problem is that they don't waste their energy fighting off people who try to define them as something they are not. They let their own actions define who they are. Which is evidenced by their repeated defenses of the civil liberties of all members of society.
Maybe you should visit the ACLU's website for yourself and learn about them from THEM instead of Limbaugh.
What?
That doesn't sound like it has anything to do with union organizing, does it?
So the union protested the ruling precisely because it did interfere with the ability to recruit for unions, which is a protected right.
So in other words, they upheld the rule because they felt workers would know it didn't apply to union activities. What occured is exactly the opposite of what you stated in your post. Now how do you feel about the ruling?
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.