7 ms·

If we start allowing corporations to dictate what their employees do in their own time, where does it stop? Safety issues are one thing (and should be a matter

If we start allowing corporations to dictate what their employees do in their own time, where does it stop? Safety issues are one thing (and should be a matter of legal regulation, not individual corporate policy) but performance issues are another, and I've already seen them conflated in this thread. Should my employer have the right to impose a curfew on me so that I'm not tired the next day at work? Should they have the right to attach a tracker to me to make sure I'm not cheating? We are already flirting with corporate-employment-as-citizenship and crazy dystopian things have become status quo, e.g. beyond-the-pale noncompetes for leaf-level wage-slave class employees, and all "inventions"/IP developed by employees in their own time belonging to their employers regardless of relevance to their employer's business or support they received from their employer in developing them, and so on. If an employee is performing poorly, fire them. That's where this should start, and where it should end. People are already selling their time to their employers, and they shouldn't have to sell their souls too.

cma 7y ago
> Should my employer have the right to impose a curfew on me so that I'm not tired the next day at work? I bet the military has done that for centuries. Though I wouldn't want companies too start drafting people.
CalChris 7y ago
We already have drug testing in many industries, particularly shipping. https://www.portseattle.org/sites/default/files/2018-03/Drug%20Testing%20FAQs.pdf https://www.portseattle.org/sites/default/files/2018-03/Drug...
- zamadatix 7y ago
  To see if you're illegally operating port machinery in a state likely to kill people is a different discussion than "did they have a smoke on their day off?"
  - Cougher 7y ago
    Do they test for Ambien use?
- ATsch 7y ago
  The overuse of employee drug testing should be forbid too, unless there are specific good reasons for it. In fact I think it's pretty revealing as to how poorly our society treats and thinks about people suffering from addictions that this discussion is only being had now that it hits people niccotine addiction, which is far less stigmanized than most other harmful drugs. Arguably, before, people didn't care, because it only hit the less-than-human "junkies".
- abstractbarista 7y ago
  What everyone's missing here is that drug tests are basically a joke for everything except THC (of which the metabolites are fat-soluble and take longer to excrete). You can just not consume nicotine for a couple weeks and then go take your test. If you're using harder drugs like meth or heroin, you don't need to wait nearly as long. Using someone else's urine is also easy, but this is a crime in many states. Is UHaul really going to hair + blood + urine test each employee not only before hiring, but randomly throughout employment? That gets expensive fast. Ultimately the whole thing is silly. Show up, do your work well, and leave. Simple as that. (Yes, dangerous jobs like pilots and ambulance drivers should probably be randomly tested during work hours to ensure common-sense responsibility.)
  - dmurray 7y ago
    Most nicotine users can't just "not consume nicotine for a couple of weeks" without physical side effects. Most of the ones who can, already have given it up.
  - caconym_ 7y ago
    This is sort of missing the point. If my employer wants to make my employment contingent on not entertaining subversive thoughts, they'll have a heck of a time doing it today. Maybe they can e.g. devise some questionnaire or half-assed Voight-Kampff-style test that appeals to upper-middle-manager types with its high price tag and euphemistic-authoritarian marketing verbiage, but one has to imagine it would be fairly easy to fool. So from a certain perspective, it's not really worth worrying about. But then, when they figure out how to really make it work, we're already living in a society where the theoretical concept of it is completely mainstream and acceptable, and at that point what will stop it from becoming the new status quo?
treden 7y ago
Found the smoker. Joking aside, non-smokers should not have to pay the insurance costs of smokers. It is all fine and good if you want to do that to yourself, but you should also have to pay for it. Simply not hiring smokers is the right decision, they dont get tangled up in the details of sorting out what diseases stem from smoking and what are natural. It's different paying for insurance to cover incidents or conditions that people can't control (accidents, genetic diseases), or would be bad for society to not cover (pregnancy, psychological issues).
- SamuelAdams 7y ago
  One could argue that type 2 diabetes is something many inflict on themselves. Should people without this disease pay for their treatment? What if the person with type 2 diabetes is a 15 year old kid, and their parents taught them bad eating habits which lead to type 2 diabetes? Should the parent's insurance cover that? Or should the parent not get hired because of something their dependent did to themselves?
  - sarah180 7y ago
    No, but we should have a tax on sugar that offsets the cost of sugar-related illnesses like diabetes and obesity. Let people make their own decisions, but don't socialize the costs of substances we know are harmful like sugar and drugs. This solution has many virtues. It discourages harmful behavior without being paternalistic. It comprehensively prevents an entire class of free-rider problems. It prevents people feeling like they're subsidizing another's bad behavior because everybody knows the smoker is paying their way.
    - Cougher 7y ago
      And decades ago, people who ate "too much" saturated fat would have been penalized while people who replaced it with hydrogenated oils would have paid less while ultimately costing much more. All these years later, we now know that there was some pretty bad dietary advice/policy and the result could have been a whole lot worse if people were financially incentivized to change their diets.
decebalus1 7y ago
> We are already flirting with corporate-employment-as-citizenship We're done with flirting, we're already probably at second base as if you take a cold hard look at the corporate-employee relationship in America, we've basically reinvented a new form of feudalism.
wrs 7y ago
If we’re going to saddle employers with paying for health insurance, it would seem odd to restrict them from trying to have healthier employees. (Hint: I’m agreeing with you.)
hurricanetc 7y ago
You can deny employment if a prospective candidate is fat or for numerous other superficial reasons. I don’t see much of a fundamental difference.
m-p-3 7y ago
> If we start allowing corporations to dictate what their employees do in their own time, where does it stop? Especially with something that doesn't impair your cognition or ability to do your job, even when taken a brief moment before you start working.
6510 7y ago
> If we start allowing corporations to dictate what their employees do in their own time, where does it stop? It stops or ends with the persecution of people who helped with the persecution of previous groups - because you don't need that kind of people in your company anymore.

cma 7y ago

> Should my employer have the right to impose a curfew on me so that I'm not tired the next day at work? I bet the military has done that for centuries. Though I wouldn't want companies too start drafting people.

CalChris 7y ago

We already have drug testing in many industries, particularly shipping. https://www.portseattle.org/sites/default/files/2018-03/Drug%20Testing%20FAQs.pdf https://www.portseattle.org/sites/default/files/2018-03/Drug...

zamadatix 7y ago
To see if you're illegally operating port machinery in a state likely to kill people is a different discussion than "did they have a smoke on their day off?"
- Cougher 7y ago
  Do they test for Ambien use?
ATsch 7y ago
The overuse of employee drug testing should be forbid too, unless there are specific good reasons for it. In fact I think it's pretty revealing as to how poorly our society treats and thinks about people suffering from addictions that this discussion is only being had now that it hits people niccotine addiction, which is far less stigmanized than most other harmful drugs. Arguably, before, people didn't care, because it only hit the less-than-human "junkies".
abstractbarista 7y ago
What everyone's missing here is that drug tests are basically a joke for everything except THC (of which the metabolites are fat-soluble and take longer to excrete). You can just not consume nicotine for a couple weeks and then go take your test. If you're using harder drugs like meth or heroin, you don't need to wait nearly as long. Using someone else's urine is also easy, but this is a crime in many states. Is UHaul really going to hair + blood + urine test each employee not only before hiring, but randomly throughout employment? That gets expensive fast. Ultimately the whole thing is silly. Show up, do your work well, and leave. Simple as that. (Yes, dangerous jobs like pilots and ambulance drivers should probably be randomly tested during work hours to ensure common-sense responsibility.)
- dmurray 7y ago
  Most nicotine users can't just "not consume nicotine for a couple of weeks" without physical side effects. Most of the ones who can, already have given it up.
- caconym_ 7y ago
  This is sort of missing the point. If my employer wants to make my employment contingent on not entertaining subversive thoughts, they'll have a heck of a time doing it today. Maybe they can e.g. devise some questionnaire or half-assed Voight-Kampff-style test that appeals to upper-middle-manager types with its high price tag and euphemistic-authoritarian marketing verbiage, but one has to imagine it would be fairly easy to fool. So from a certain perspective, it's not really worth worrying about. But then, when they figure out how to really make it work, we're already living in a society where the theoretical concept of it is completely mainstream and acceptable, and at that point what will stop it from becoming the new status quo?

treden 7y ago

Found the smoker. Joking aside, non-smokers should not have to pay the insurance costs of smokers. It is all fine and good if you want to do that to yourself, but you should also have to pay for it. Simply not hiring smokers is the right decision, they dont get tangled up in the details of sorting out what diseases stem from smoking and what are natural. It's different paying for insurance to cover incidents or conditions that people can't control (accidents, genetic diseases), or would be bad for society to not cover (pregnancy, psychological issues).

SamuelAdams 7y ago
One could argue that type 2 diabetes is something many inflict on themselves. Should people without this disease pay for their treatment? What if the person with type 2 diabetes is a 15 year old kid, and their parents taught them bad eating habits which lead to type 2 diabetes? Should the parent's insurance cover that? Or should the parent not get hired because of something their dependent did to themselves?
- sarah180 7y ago
  No, but we should have a tax on sugar that offsets the cost of sugar-related illnesses like diabetes and obesity. Let people make their own decisions, but don't socialize the costs of substances we know are harmful like sugar and drugs. This solution has many virtues. It discourages harmful behavior without being paternalistic. It comprehensively prevents an entire class of free-rider problems. It prevents people feeling like they're subsidizing another's bad behavior because everybody knows the smoker is paying their way.
  - Cougher 7y ago
    And decades ago, people who ate "too much" saturated fat would have been penalized while people who replaced it with hydrogenated oils would have paid less while ultimately costing much more. All these years later, we now know that there was some pretty bad dietary advice/policy and the result could have been a whole lot worse if people were financially incentivized to change their diets.

decebalus1 7y ago

> We are already flirting with corporate-employment-as-citizenship We're done with flirting, we're already probably at second base as if you take a cold hard look at the corporate-employee relationship in America, we've basically reinvented a new form of feudalism.

wrs 7y ago

If we’re going to saddle employers with paying for health insurance, it would seem odd to restrict them from trying to have healthier employees. (Hint: I’m agreeing with you.)

hurricanetc 7y ago

You can deny employment if a prospective candidate is fat or for numerous other superficial reasons. I don’t see much of a fundamental difference.

m-p-3 7y ago

> If we start allowing corporations to dictate what their employees do in their own time, where does it stop? Especially with something that doesn't impair your cognition or ability to do your job, even when taken a brief moment before you start working.

6510 7y ago

> If we start allowing corporations to dictate what their employees do in their own time, where does it stop? It stops or ends with the persecution of people who helped with the persecution of previous groups - because you don't need that kind of people in your company anymore.