Your Rights At Work

February 1, 2010

Interview with Lewis Maltby, author of the book Can They Do That?: Retaking Our Fundamental Rights in the Workplace

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Mike Carruthers:
You do have rights in your workplace - but maybe not as many as you think.

Lewis Maltby:
The thing that most people don’t understand is that the Constitution and Bill of Rights only apply to the government, they don’t apply to corporations.
 

Employment rights attorney Lewis Maltby, author of the book Can They Do That? 

The government can’t punish you for expressing your political opinions but your boss can. If your boss sees a letter to the editor that you wrote that he doesn’t like or a bumper sticker on your car that he doesn’t like, he could fire you and there’s nothing you can do about it.

 It’s very common for workers to believe they have all kinds of rights in the workplace, like the right to privacy. But Lewis says, “It just doesn’t exist”.

We know that 94% of all employers are conducting some sort of electronic monitoring, most commonly reading emails. And there are virtually no employers that make any attempt to avoid reading your personal emails.

Lewis says your boss cannot discriminate against you or ask you to do anything illegal. But other than that the law is pretty quiet. But let’s keep things in perspective too…

There are not a great deal of people who have been fired because their boss didn’t like their bumper sticker. On the other hand it’s not at all uncommon for somebody to be venting about their boss on their blog and have their boss find out about it and fire them – that happens quite frequently.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here