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Judge Rules in Favor of Websurfing at Work
MirrororriM writes "According MSNBC article, a judge has ruled in favor of a worker that was repeatedly warned for surfing the internet on company time. Only a "reprimand" is a fitting punishment - not termination. From the article: 'It should be observed that the Internet has become the modern equivalent of a telephone or a daily newspaper, providing a combination of communication and information that most employees use as frequently in their personal lives as for their work.'"
repeatedly warned for surfing the internet on company time
If this was a problem, why in the world didn't they simply block outbound port 80 from the local NAT address (192.168.0.dumbass-that-won't-get-to-work) -> 255.255.255.255/0?
You can do this type of thing on any SOHO firewall, surely they had this ability.
You won't be able to use this as binding precedent against an employer unless you live in New York. The cost of bringing a wrongful termination suit to establish a corresponding precedent in your jurisdiction may be more than you can afford. Worse yet, employment laws tend to vary greatly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
Actually - the original article referred to a city/state employee (no mention of that in the quote) - that's relevent because if you've ever worked for the government - you'll know that it's not as simple to fire a person. Most of us work in an "employment at will" environment - where they don't need to establish a good reason to fire. -Mike
www.wildpad.com
First, a judge didn't rule in FAVOR of employees being allowed to surf the web at work. He ruled that firing was too severe a penalty in this narrow case. Second, this ruling applied to a government employee in a specific situation, not to someone in a private company.
I think the judge is nuts, but even so, the ruling only applies to a narrow class of public employees, many of whom were already notoriously slow and useless -- even before the days when web access was available.
David
Not that I post to /. that much (!) but there's just too much info out there not to take a peek. Of course then you get sidetracked with another link, you have 20 tabs open in Firefox, and you're wondering what you were supposed to get done today (or this week) at work!
;)
This pecident will serve me well!
fak3r.com
According to the article: "The ruling came after Mayor Michael Bloomberg fired a worker in the city's legislative office in Albany earlier this year after he saw the man playing a game of solitaire on his computer." What a stupid case. Since when is a game of solitaire "providing a combination of communication and information"? I can see if the guy was researching something online but he was goofing off.
This will not even apply to most NY workers, either.
:)
NY happens to be one of those states where an employer can fire you for any reason ("Employment at will"), except for 8 very specific circumstances (Here's the list of exceptions).
Given that, I guess the critical point to this case was that the employer was the Dept of Education: a public sector job.
Albany's culture of "pay to play", indeed.
This is not my sig.
Shouldn't an employer have the right to fire a worker who wastes too much time online?
Unfortunately the system logging net usage does not attempt to correlate it to compiler usage, so it doesn't show that you were surfing while waiting for a 15 minute build and link to complete because a header file used by only 21% of the code had to be touched and you need the resulting binary to do testing.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Traditionally the New York courts have been very strongly in favor of employment-at-will and very strongly opposed to any kind of intravention into the employer-employee relationship, so this is very surprising for a New York court to rule this way. If the city appeals this, I would expect it to be overturned very quickly.
What?
This is earlier, and it is already V 2.0
h /msg/e30ac35a76c6a5a9?dmode=source&hl=en
/pub/resources/guides. The name is
http://groups.google.com/group/bit.listserv.edtec
---------- Text of forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1992 13:13:33 -0500
From: jpo...@NYSERNET.ORG
To: Multiple recipients of list NETTRAIN
Subject: Surfing the Internet 2.0
Surfing the Internet, my Wilson Library Bulletin article from 6/92, has
been updated and is available for anonymous ftp from nysernet.org.
Look for it in the directory
surfing.the.internet.2.0.txt
It is a large file of about 64K. Its general flavor is an enthusiastic
piece about how I used the Internet in my former life as a public
librarian.
There is also a lot of compiled information about how to learn about
listservs, how to get Internet guides, gopher resources (even Veronica!),
an annotated list of "must have" books about the Internet, and much more.
It may be freely copied and given away for educational purposes; please do
not sell it. I hope it is helpful to you.
Jean Armour Polly
Manager of Network Development & User Training
NYSERNet, Inc.
111 College Place Syracuse, NY 13244
315/ 443-4120.... FAX 315/425-7518....jpo...@nysernet.org
"NYSERNet....how to get there from here."