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Work-Life Balance: Cryptographer Fired By BAE Systems For Taking Care of Dying Wife (bostonglobe.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the mind-body-and-soul dept.

mdecerbo writes: A new lawsuit by cryptographer Don Davis against multinational defense giant BAE Systems highlights the fact that companies are free to have their boasts about "work-life balance" amount to nothing but idle talk. The Boston Globe reports that on his first day on the job, Davis explained that his wife had late-stage cancer. He would work his full work day in the office, but if he was needed nights or weekends, he'd want to work from home. His supervisor was fine with it, but the human resources department fired him on the spot after four hours of employment. The lawsuit raises interesting questions, such as whether employment law requires corporations to have the sort of common decency we expect from individuals. But what I want to know is, if BAE Systems loses this lawsuit, will they prevent future ones by making their "work-life balance" policy say simply: We own you, body and soul? Don Davis' lawyer, Rebecca Pontikes, contends he was discriminated against because the company "requires its male employees to be the stereotypical male breadwinner and to leave family responsibilities to women." BAE issued a statement to The Boston Globe saying, "we do not tolerate discrimination of any kind and work hard to provide our employees with flexible working options that enable them to have a meaningful work/life balance." The company declined to discuss specifics, citing pending litigation.

24 of 513 comments (clear)

  1. WTF!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What?! He would work his full work day but if he was needed during night or weekend he would work from home and they fired him? For taking care of his dying wife?! Holy Jesus if only I could put my hands on the HR assholes department of BAE systems...I would teach them the lesson of their miserable life.

    1. Re:WTF!!! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What?! He would work his full work day but if he was needed during night or weekend he would work from home and they fired him? For taking care of his dying wife?!

      You are jumping to conclusions that are not supported by evidence. We was fired on his first day of work. The reasons for that are not clear, but there is almost always more to these stories than what is on the surface. You are only hearing one very biased side of it.

    2. Re:WTF!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That might be. However, the most important thing here is in my opinion that employers have a terrible amount of control over their employees' lives. Here in the EU, and especially in Scandinavia, we have very good protection by law for workers in situations like these. There is also fair means of state-sponsored compensation for employees (especially smaller ones) that may otherwise suffer financially from an employees personal crisis.

      We need to start treat workers as humans and stop thinking private corporations have the right to anything and everything. They take advantage of the stable society we all provide for them. It should come with a responsibility to treat employees humanely.

    3. Re:WTF!!! by Macthorpe · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hiding what? Do you go to job interviews and they ask you if your wife has cancer? Is it relevant to your competency to work the hours you're contracted?

      Your employment system is fucked.

      --
      "It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
    4. Re:WTF!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Are you seriously going to pretend that

      A) people should immediately give any family medical circumstances right along with their Resume
      and
      B) that *any* corporation in america would have ever hired him knowing he had sick family?

      Because the first is none of their business - dangerous even due to how easily it can open one up to abuse. And the second? The second is an outright lie. Not one HR entity in this country would *ever* see "my family member has advanced cancer and I may need to work from home when doing overtime" and think anything other than "hahahaha! lol! into the reject pile! hey bill check out this Sobbing SOB! Get it?"

    5. Re:WTF!!! by Calydor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh yeah, he revealed on the day he started that working beyond the official hours would come with a caveat.

      How HORRIBLE of him! He didn't bring a sleeping bag and a toothbrush to work after divorcing his dying wife before leaving his home for the last time!

      Respect goes both ways, sure - but due to the insane power difference between employer and employee that respect has to start at the TOP, otherwise it's bootlicking and grovelling in the hopes of being thrown a treat and a kind word one day.

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    6. Re:WTF!!! by ebyrob · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Surely if you were recruiting for a job which requires someone to be physically available after hours (or travel away from home half the month, or whatever) this would be discussed at the interview, and put in the job contract?

      What makes you think it wasn't?

    7. Re:WTF!!! by JeffOwl · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I believe that this is the more likely scenario: They are interviewing for a specific job. They tell him the job involves doing work that can't be done at home. They tell him the job will involve working after hours from time to time on things that cannot be done at home. He accepts the job offer and then on the first day of employment says he cannot do the job for which he was hired, rather he would like to do the job for which he would have liked to have been hired. The company says no, he cries to the media.

    8. Re:WTF!!! by flink · · Score: 4, Insightful

      We need to start treat workers as humans and stop thinking private corporations have the right to anything and everything. They take advantage of the stable society we all provide for them. It should come with a responsibility to treat employees humanely.

      I think it is telling that we call the people management department of our corporations human resources. It used to be the personnel department. Persons you relate to. Resources are things you exploit.

    9. Re:WTF!!! by tsqr · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I believe that this is the more likely scenario: They are interviewing for a specific job. They tell him the job involves doing work that can't be done at home. They tell him the job will involve working after hours from time to time on things that cannot be done at home. He accepts the job offer and then on the first day of employment says he cannot do the job for which he was hired, rather he would like to do the job for which he would have liked to have been hired. The company says no, he cries to the media.

      TFS: "Davis explained that his wife had late-stage cancer. He would work his full work day in the office, but if he was needed nights or weekends, he'd want to work from home. His supervisor was fine with it, but the human resources department fired him on the spot after four hours of employment."

      What part of that leads you to believe that his work couldn't be performed from home? HR departments in large corporations are typically not intimately familiar with the detailed requirements of a particular position, while the employee's supervisor certainly is.

    10. Re:WTF!!! by swillden · · Score: 4, Insightful

      TFS: "Davis explained that his wife had late-stage cancer. He would work his full work day in the office, but if he was needed nights or weekends, he'd want to work from home. His supervisor was fine with it, but the human resources department fired him on the spot after four hours of employment."

      What part of that leads you to believe that his work couldn't be performed from home?

      BAE Systems is a defense contractor and Davis' area of expertise is cryptography. It's all but certain that a defense contractor is contractually obligated to perform all security-related work on site in appropriately-secured offices, which would imply that no work can be performed from home, and Davis' job as a cryptographer is all about security. It's also very likely that the company's policies require the same, regardless of contractual requirements. Never mind that cryptographic security should absolutely not depend on secrecy... the contracts/policies don't make that distinction.

      I have a great deal of sympathy for Mr. Davis, but it is important to remember that we're only hearing one side of the story, and that's the story as presented by Mr. Davis' attorney, whose job is to put the strongest possible spin on the facts, without actually lying. Attorneys are very good at that.

      HR departments in large corporations are typically not intimately familiar with the detailed requirements of a particular position, while the employee's supervisor certainly is.

      I fail to see the relevance, unless you're assuming that all hiring is done by HR with no involvement of the hiring department (which does happen in some particularly stupid companies, but not many).

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    11. Re:WTF!!! by Enigma2175 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      . Usually when people have steady jobs that have health insurance and someone covered has a serious illness, they won't change jobs because doing so has possible health insurance implications that could be negative.

      And this is reason #45123998 why the US should have single-payer healthcare. When you tie healthcare to work it gives the employer an extraordinary amount of leverage over the employee. Of course, employers like it this way which is why the system is the way that it is, since those with the money make the rules in this country.

      --

      Enigma

    12. Re:WTF!!! by Altus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The fact that he almost certainly wouldn't have taken the job if it was? The fact that his boss was ok with him working any extra hours from home?

      --

      "In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson

  2. difficult to tell who is at fault from article by gravewax · · Score: 4, Insightful

    impossible to know whether this is a case of an evil company or a case of a self entitled git without knowing what was the conditions of employment he was knowingly signing up to. e.g. if they said in job description "must be available oncall 24/7" and that included coming to office then I can understand him having his job offer rescinded regardless of his personal circumstances. Work-Life balance is all about providing that balance outside of the expected job requirements and sometimes flexibility inside job requirements (but not always).

    1. Re:difficult to tell who is at fault from article by codeButcher · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The article mentions about the HR person: "She simply insisted he needed to be available at the office 24/7".

      Be that as it may, I am not even available 24/7 in my own head. When did they think he would sleep? Go to the toilet?

      --
      Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
    2. Re:difficult to tell who is at fault from article by swb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      My guess is he works on cryptographic code and if an urgent fix is needed in crypto code (I know, my heartbleeds over this idea..) in defense systems, well, then they need him to work outside normal hours.

  3. Re:Welcome to Sweden by Kokuyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Even in Switzerland, employers are expected to show some flexibility not just for family emergencies but also for taking care of business. If you have to deal with banks or the government, you'll likely not be able to schedule that outside of business hours after all.

    This seems to be yet another example of how questionable the US economy operates sometimes.

  4. Decency? by lorinc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The lawsuit raises interesting questions, such as whether employment law requires corporations to have the sort of common decency we expect from individuals.

    They don't. And that's exactly why they were created in the first place: to avoid pesky human feelings from hindering business.

    --
    Video of some good progressive thrash music
    1. Re:Decency? by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Corporations are intelligence without conscience. Yes, the people working there may have "morals", but they don't come into play because you always have someone you can blame for you "having to do" what you're doing.

      If you get laid off by your boss, he's not to blame. He gets that order from higher up. He has to fire one of you guys for the sake of the allmighty profit. And his boss, and his boss, all the way up to C-Level, can pass the blame buck upwards. C-Level isn't to blame either. The CEO has to make the company more profitable because he's responsible for it to the board. And the shareholders, let's not forget the share holders. If he allows his profit to plummet, stock prices will fall and portfolios will sell them. So the investment bankers are to blame? Hell no. They're not doing it with their own money, they have been entrusted with the money of probably hard-working people to invest that money wisely, so they can at some point go into retirement. Holding stock that doesn't perform is not in the interest of those people that trusted them with their money.

      So, in a nutshell, you have a retirement fund? Guess who just caused you to lose your job.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  5. The irony is by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The irony is this is a British company, but in Britain he would have had the legal right to take time off to make other arrangements. (though probably not for much longer)

  6. Re:on his first day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why is it even relevant ? You want to give your employer the entire medical records of everyone in your family just in case?

    Why the hell does everyone in the US consider overtime work normal ? If your business can't get all the work done in 8 hours, hire additional people. Don't expect ME to spend more than 8 hours in work unless it's a critical emergency - no more than 50 hours per year.

  7. Re:24/7 job by gsslay · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sounds like you gave up all chances of having a normal private life for 4 years to become a company drone. Fine for a short period, and if financially rewarding, but no way to spend a life.

    If a company wants me to be available 24/7, in the office, in addition to usual office hours, they would have to pay me a small fortune and I'd be planning my exit from day 1. Employing me does not mean you own my life.

  8. Re:24/7 job by meta-monkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sounds like you gave up all chances of having a normal private life for 4 years to become a company drone.

    Yeah but for 4 years, and look at all the money he saved. That's "putting yourself through college" money. No you're not going to do that and raise a family, but if you're poor or an immigrant and need to bootstrap yourself? That's a damn good opportunity.

    --
    We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
  9. Re:Just goes to Show Ya by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Insightful

    HR could end up costing the company money as well...

    A few years back, my wife was in-and-out of the hospital for what turned out to be a rare congenital disorder (currently under control and in remission of sorts). When it began, I filed ADA paperwork with HR to the effect that, as her de-facto caretaker, I would occasionally have to work remotely or take off from work on occasion for her doc appointments. HR and my manager were understanding and quite fine with it; I just had to occasionally work odd hours to ensure that it never affected my performance.

    If Mr. Davis filed similar paperwork (he really should have, even before starting work there), the company may well end up eating a big judgement.

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?