Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Dingbat on March 07, 2004, 08:09:10 AM
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Is this legal? Is it legal to take a business tool from someone and then fire them because they can't perform their duties?
Doesn't affect me because I don't use it for personal business, but it's a continuing trend with the company I work for... They seem to want to squash any employee loyalty. I'm all for people paying for their personal calls.
Attached please find the new Cell Phone Abuse Policy. For those of you that have a cell phone, please be aware of the following:
1. When you received your phone, you signed a form that stated that is was for business use only.
2. There are no free minutes.
3. There are no free incoming calls.
4. Any rumors you hear about the phone policy are rumors if you don't hear it from management.
The new policy addresses the chronic abuse we have had. On the first offense, you will receive a verbal warning (on a (Company Name withheld) Warning Form). The second offense will produce a written warning and you will have to pay HQ back for the overage. On the third offense, I will take your phone. If you cannot perform your job without your phone, you will be discharged. You will have to pay (Company Name withheld) for the overage.
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Sounds reasonable to me.
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Sounds reasonable to me ... what is your concern with the policy?
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lol I'm betting that A) You don't have a legal or HR dept or B) If you do they haven't seen this yet.
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for the record, I am a government contractor.
_Schadenfreude_ lol I'm betting that A) You don't have a legal or HR dept or B) If you do they haven't seen this yet.
I don't understand what you mean?
aknimitz Sounds reasonable to me ... what is your concern with the policy?
My concern is the legality of this policy. I've had numerous problems with this company and with the job situation as it is leaving is not an option at the moment although I'm entertaining new positions. Let me start with my own personal experiences:
They took 4 weeks (effectively 6 due to pay period scheme) to resolve a pay issue with me that they even admitted was thier fault, while they devolped a new policy.
I had to threaten ADA lawsuit after 3 months of me requesting a device that allows me to use a Cell Phone (required for my position) with my hearing aides.
Attempted to require us to sign a privacy policy that allowed them to view any personal information (including health records) they so desired under the guise of research.
My government boss will Publicly (through email) Humiliates people when mistakes are made.
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Just to get this straight, but the Company provided you the cellphone?
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Not sure about the employment laws in USA but in Europe and Uk specifically you have to have better reason than you outlined to fire someone.
Also it would be pretty easy to lock certain calls from a phone so they can't make anything but local for eg and then have a contract that allows a high number of minutes at a low cost to the company.
The other way is for the employee to provide the phone and the contract and the company pays any work related calls on a monthly basis.
I have a company phone which I only use when I'm travelling overseas - rest of the time I use my personal phone - never use 600 minutes a month that I get on my contract anyway.
Point being Labour Law can blow up in yr face and you could face litigation for wrongful dismissal in court. It may sound ok - but better to check and be sure.
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Yes the company did indeed provide the cell phone.
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Sorry didn't read yr last post - as the agrieved party I'd tell them to go ***** themselves - don't sign anything and if they pressure you say "I'd like my lawyer to see it first" preferably in front of the HR Director.
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Originally posted by _Schadenfreude_
Not sure about the employment laws in USA but in Europe and Uk specifically you have to have better reason than you outlined to fire someone.
Also it would be pretty easy to lock certain calls from a phone so they can't make anything but local for eg and then have a contract that allows a high number of minutes at a low cost to the company.
The other way is for the employee to provide the phone and the contract and the company pays any work related calls on a monthly basis.
I have a company phone which I only use when I'm travelling overseas - rest of the time I use my personal phone - never use 600 minutes a month that I get on my contract anyway.
Point being Labour Law can blow up in yr face and you could face litigation for wrongful dismissal in court. It may sound ok - but better to check and be sure.
Well my intent and purpose is that if this is illegal and intend on bringing charges against this company. This was the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak...
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So you got fired for using your cellphone for personal calls?
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No, I haven't gotten fired... Nor have I even accused. I'm just curious as to the legality.
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Originally posted by Dingbat
My government boss will Publicly (through email) Humiliates people when mistakes are made.
Anonymously forward the mails to the KO administering the contract. They are generally outside your customer's chain of responsibilty--if mistakes were truly made, the KO's office most always will look into it--they usually require the accuser to make a full report of the infraction to the KO.
Sounds like you have a customer on a power trip. It happens.
h
oh and btw, the thing w/ the cell phone is perfectly legit. I've had one before (contract only phone) and we painted them red so that we would not confuse them w/ our personal cells.
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I imagine state laws can vary, but the cell phone thing sounds legal.
The pay problem and the ADA thing left the company open to action at that time, maybe.
"My government boss will Publicly (through email) Humiliates people when mistakes are made."-- this may be construed as a hostile work environment which may leave them open to legal action. (At least it is something that HR depts cringe about.)
Just to clarify, I'm not a lawyer, but I have had to deal with HR quite a bit.
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Have they told you that you aren't allowed to use the cell phone for personal use? Have you signed a contract saying you will only use it for business?
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They have said it, and a contract was signed.
HORN:
KO? This the same as the COTR
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Originally posted by Dingbat
HORN:
KO? This the same as the COTR
Sorry. As most of my business was with the DoD, to differentiate between a commanding officer and contracting officer, the requisitioning branch official was referred to as "KO" --this is not the same as the contracting officer's technical representative (altho it is from the same office)--the cotrs are generally low end minions responsible for only one or a few contracts within their expertise.
The KO is the person who actually signed the dd1155 (if that was your vehicle) and is the responsible gov't party for contractual performance.
h
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I dont know if I am completely missing something or not, but ... what is illegal (or wrong in your opinino) about an employer making you sign a contract that says you will only use your company-provided cell phone for business use? That sounds not only reasonable to be, but, call me crazy, good business policy? Get your own cell phone if you want to have one for personal use? Or offer to split the bill with the company ... *shrug
Nim
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Originally posted by Dingbat
They have said it, and a contract was signed.
HORN:
KO? This the same as the COTR
KO is contracting officer in Army speak. In the Navy, the COTR works for/with the contracting officer.
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Originally posted by aknimitz
I dont know if I am completely missing something or not, but ... what is illegal (or wrong in your opinino) about an employer making you sign a contract that says you will only use your company-provided cell phone for business use? That sounds not only reasonable to be, but, call me crazy, good business policy? Get your own cell phone if you want to have one for personal use? Or offer to split the bill with the company ... *shrug
Nim
Get your own cell phone if you want to have one for personal use? No arguement here
Or offer to split the bill with the company... They have refused to even discuss this.
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But you still havent told me what about the policy you feel is illegal/wrong?
Nim
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it's in the first post :confused:
"Is it legal to take a business tool from someone and then fire them because they can't perform their duties? "
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Originally posted by Dingbat
it's in the first post :confused:
"Is it legal to take a business tool from someone and then fire them because they can't perform their duties? "
The government does the same thing with "security clearances".
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Sounds like their cell phone policy is pretty lenient. The last organization that I worked for (state gov't) was much more strict...first offence of personal calls noted on a work cell phone was grounds for immediate termination. I solved the problem by refusing a work cell and used my own, however filed for re-imbursement for calls that were business related.
However, if your company will not re-imburse you for the calls on your own phone, then I would write that off my taxes.
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Attempted to require us to sign a privacy policy that allowed them to view any personal information (including health records) they so desired under the guise of research.
If you're just fishing for some sort of illegality, from what you have listed as grievances your protected health information is your best bet.
new HIPPA regulations went into effect 3/1/03, I'd be surprised if a gov contractor's HR would be so late in compliance but there may holes in their current policy regarding the handling of protected health information.
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My initial reaction was "dang, that's a pretty poor way to relate to labor". Then again, there could be an explanation beneath this.
You certainly can fire someone for theft.
But let's look at cellphone usage; say management has tolerated a discrete amount of personal traffic as a part of the "celphone benefit". Now somebody abuses that, and rings up something like $1000 in overages (which can be really bad if you're a public outfit, and someone catches wind of "government property for private use"). Manager goes to HR and asks, "how do we fire this person?"
Well, it's gonna be tough to fire if that person can show that, official policy notwithstanding, it was common practice to make personal calls. Show the celphone records of everyone in the work group, and demonstrate that s/he's not the only one using the phone for other purposes. So you could run into trouble trying to terminate someone like that.
So what do you do? Start enforcing the rules. They're not "taking someone's cellphone away and then firing them for being unable to fulfill their duties". They're "either taking away someone's cellphone or firing their bellybutton for theft".
Of course, if this part of a trend on the behalf of management to regularize your activity (and always at the detriment of the employees), maybe you should look into unionization. Politics don't create unions; bad management does.
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Originally posted by _Schadenfreude_
Not sure about the employment laws in USA but in Europe and Uk specifically you have to have better reason than you outlined to fire someone.
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The U.S. has employment at will...I don't need a reason to fire you.
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Originally posted by weaselsan
The U.S. has employment at will...I don't need a reason to fire you.
Actually you are quite wrong. Ever hear of wrongful termination...
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Dingbat,
(DISCLIAMER) I am not a lawyer, but I am a Union official in my local (yeah one of those guys) and I deal with this sort of thing all the time.
Although I am in the private sector some of the rules and laws translate between public and private sector jobs.
Any employer has the right to develop and enforce policies and proceedures in the workplace that they own or control. However if any of these policies are illegal, immoral, or unsafe they cannot reasonably enforce such a "work rule" and the employee would and should be protected through any grievance or litigation.
With that being said, I do not see anything "illegal" with the cell phone policy as you state it here. There are problems for sure, but illegal-no. The policy as you state it is vauge and painted in very broad strokes. I would try to find out what criteria they use to determine between business and personal. For instance if you call home to talk with your wife and see how her day is going-personal, If you call home and ask your wife to retrive a computer file and give you some details from it that you forgot to bring with you to work that day-business-You get my drift? The actual vaugeness of the policy might leave you some room for a defense if things would turn bad for you (at least that is what I would base my defensive arguments on)-but illegal-no-not in my opinion.
The issue with your personal health information, that is a horse of a different color. As was stated, the HIPPA (Health Insurance Privacy & Portability Act) laws that went into effect last year caused a lot of employers to cringe-now they can know even less about you. To have you sign a release is their way to circumvent that law and as long as you sign off it is not illegal, but is not and should not be a requirement of continued employment. Refusal to sign such a document would not be a legal basis for termination. To be hired for a new job-well you are not given much of a choice (unfortunately).
crowMAW, Hornet, and Dinger bring up some good points that you might consider.
Hope this all helps, good luck to you
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Originally posted by Dingbat
for the record, I am a government contractor.
My government boss will Publicly (through email) Humiliates people when mistakes are made.
That is illegal, the offended parties should talk to a lawyer.
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Originally posted by Dingbat
Actually you are quite wrong. Ever hear of wrongful termination...
No.... because it doesn't exist.
A couple little dittys for a quick education....
But perhaps it's more accurate to say that the absence of laws is what really grants employers their leeway. In turn, just because an employer unfairly fired or forced an employee to quit, doesn't necessarily mean that the employee suffered wrongful termination, at least not according to law.
However unfair, for it to be the illegal act of wrongful termination, an employer must violate a specific state or Federal law, regulation or constitutional provision. Unfortunately, there's no such thing that generally protects employees from "crummy deals" per se.
To further understand what legally constitutes wrongful termination, it's important to also note that most states consider employment to be "at will" in legal jargon. In plain English, the employment at-will doctrine means that, in the absence of contracts stating otherwise, employment is presumed to be voluntary and indefinite for both employees and employers. As an at-will employee, you may quit your job whenever you want, usually without consequence. On the flip side, at-will employers may terminate you whenever they want, usually without consequence.
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Yeah, Bodhi that is a point I missed.
I'm not saying that I disagree with you on this point but I would suggest that it depends on what and how it was said. That would determine it's legality. Bad management style for sure but might not be illegal. If you document this sort of behavior and treatment and forward or anonimosly send it to someone higher up in the chain of command then you might get your boss a reprimand-but you would probably never know unless the unwelcome acts discontinued.
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Originally posted by Dingbat
Is this legal? Is it legal to take a business tool from someone and then fire them because they can't perform their duties?
Please see first weaselsan post .....
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The company I work for provides me with a cell phone. Since I am the regional manager, I budget the use of cell phones by 8 district managers. We are all on a plan which has "x" amount of anywhere minutes a month, but if we are on the road much of the month we will use a lot more minutes than if we were in our field offices'. Every month I get a detailed summary of the use of the cell phones, it is for record, but I rarely read it, and look at the bottom line for any overage of minutes. I can change the plan, and usually my people have more minutes than they would ever want to talk(2000 minutes). My people respect the personal use of the cell phone. I encourage my people talk with their familys, or friends, as much as they like, as long as their work, and company phone calls are promptly completed. If my company had a policy of only company business on the issued cell phones, all my guys would just get their own cell phones, and believe me, every "company" phone call would automatically go into voice mail. The return phone call would be 59 minutes later, and their personal cell phones would be subsidized on their expense reports somewhere, no auditor would ever find.
Lesson one: Don't mess with a guy when he's away on business most of the week, or month, and trying to keep peace in his home life. The cell phone is his lifeline to hearing the people he loves, and his wife, and children need to talk to him whenever they want. I don't want to train a new troop every month. My people have time in grade from 28 years to 5 years. And my people are expected to work hard, have fun, travel, make money, and have a happy home life.
Dingbat your leaders aren't very good leaders. The cell phone useage should be the least of anyones' worries.
Thorns
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Originally posted by Thorns
The company I work for provides me with a cell phone. Since I am the regional manager, I budget the use of cell phones by 8 district managers. We are all on a plan which has "x" amount of anywhere minutes a month, but if we are on the road much of the month we will use a lot more minutes than if we were in our field offices'. Every month I get a detailed summary of the use of the cell phones, it is for record, but I rarely read it, and look at the bottom line for any overage of minutes. I can change the plan, and usually my people have more minutes than they would ever want to talk(2000 minutes). My people respect the personal use of the cell phone. I encourage my people talk with their familys, or friends, as much as they like, as long as their work, and company phone calls are promptly completed. If my company had a policy of only company business on the issued cell phones, all my guys would just get their own cell phones, and believe me, every "company" phone call would automatically go into voice mail. The return phone call would be 59 minutes later, and their personal cell phones would be subsidized on their expense reports somewhere, no auditor would ever find.
Lesson one: Don't mess with a guy when he's away on business most of the week, or month, and trying to keep peace in his home life. The cell phone is his lifeline to hearing the people he loves, and his wife, and children need to talk to him whenever they want. I don't want to train a new troop every month. My people have time in grade from 28 years to 5 years. And my people are expected to work hard, have fun, travel, make money, and have a happy home life.
Dingbat your leaders aren't very good leaders. The cell phone useage should be the least of anyones' worries.
Thorns
Thorns, you sound like a person with great values. These are the same values that I look for in a company. This company has none, everything is about the bottom dollar and how much the owner of the company can walk away with... They win contracts by well underbidding then to add insult to injury they put performance penatlys on the contract as well, so if the GOV decides they didn't like one thing they can deduct it from the contract. If I could just find a suitable job, I'd be outta here. Since the wife is getting orders in the next month or so, I'm just trying to suck it up. Everyday is something new...
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They could fire you for abuse of company equipment anyway. In this case, they're just taking the equipment away and leaving you to decide if you should foot your own cell phone bill.
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I have to wonder if you are, what is termed "an at-will employee"? This basically means you can be terminated any time they want with or without reason.
As far as cell phone use, if it's the companies phone, and they clearly stated verbally and in writing that it was not to be used for personal calls, what is the concern? Use it only for business calls and you have no problem.
If, after the warnings recieved someone continues to use it for personal business, they should be fired for gross stupidity.
Don't worry about the legality of the policy, worry about somes excessive stupidity to get in that situation.
dago
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LOL, I asked about using your own personal cell phone and submitting the expense report. Their reply, creates to much paper work... damned if you do, damned if you don't...
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Originally posted by Dingbat
it's in the first post :confused:
"Is it legal to take a business tool from someone and then fire them because they can't perform their duties? "
If you don't need a reason to fire someone, why would you ask if it was legal to fire someone? Of course it's legal..
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They took 4 weeks (effectively 6 due to pay period scheme) to resolve a pay issue with me that they even admitted was thier fault, while they devolped a new policy.
Gee..only 4 weeks? In the Navy 4 weeks to resolve a pay problem is considered lightning fast service.:rofl
My government boss will Publicly (through email) Humiliates people when mistakes are made.
How about being publicly humiliated not only through e-mail, but also infront of your peers (while mustered at quarters)
Attempted to require us to sign a privacy policy that allowed them to view any personal information (including health records) they so desired under the guise of research
All govt employees and most of their contractors are required to sign privacy act statements.
Yes the company did indeed provide the cell phone.
If the company provided the cell phone....and laid down rules about the usage..and you broke those rules..some companies would fire you just on those grounds...if your job requires you to use a cell phone and you can't be adult enough to follow the rules and lose it....which in the end gets you fired..then really thats the same thing..why worry about it? Follow the rules and use your own cell phone for personal use.
personally I think a company should be able to hire and fire as it likes. Why should the government get involved. After all that company belongs to somebody and that is the government telling you what you are allowed to do with your property...something the government has no business doing. If everyone challenged the legality of a companies emplyment practices when they get fired then companies would be force to keep on substandard, obsolete, or troublemaking personnel costing a company more money which in turn drives up prices for the consumer..which means less consumer spending which leads to a slump in the economy.
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not sure about the legality of there situation (seems reasonable though)
the solution doesn't seem that difficult though. just use the companies tools for company bussiness, use your own phone for personal calls.