On Thu, 31 May 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> James Sutherland wrote:
>
> > The approach you seem to advocate is "let companies do WTF they want, and
> > to hell with people's rights".
>
> I'm not sure where this started, but it looks to me like both
> sides are either arguing for the extreme, or accusing the other of
> arguing for the extreme.
"Penguina" did state something along the lines of "it's the company's
property so they can do whatever they want with it" - and suggested Liese
just ignore the laws which appear inconvenient. That seems a pretty
extreme position to me...
> Let's go for a middle ground here, hey? Something like 'companies
> are entitled to have trustworthy employees, and employees are entitled
> to have trustworthy companies'
Yep. Your employer is paying you to do a job. As long as you do that job
properly, without breaking the law etc, they can't complain - and
monitoring behaviour not directly related to your performance is BAD.
In the last place I worked, there were a variety of contracts in use for
different staff (being a university, some staff were on academic
contracts, others were on "services" contracts). Basically, though, they
stated "your job is to maintain and support the university's Unix
servers". Not "you must be at your desk by 9am each day, may not leave
before 5pm, and may not take more than 75 minutes break per day" or
micromanagement junk like that.
Ultimately, that's what you're paid for: not to spend X hours/day doing
something work-related, but to keep those servers running to the best of
your ability (or whatever). It doesn't matter if they spend twice as long
on coffee breaks as other staff - all that matters is "do they do the
job?".
> And maybe then start arguing about what to do when an employee/company
> proves untrustworthy.
Well, if they aren't doing the job properly, you fire them, after suitable
warnings.
> > That's the whole point: this is NOT a case of letting a complete stranger
> > use your system.
>
> Bull Feathers. :)
>
> You've seen a resume and read a handful of references. This hardly
> qualifies the person as no longer a stranger. My parents run a small
> business - it's HARD, bringing in a new staff member.
Yes. Obviously you supervise them more closely to begin with, to make sure
they do the job properly. Don't do it by bugging the workplace and spying
on them, though! In this sort of case, you are already trusting them with
access to one of your systems, and to do the job you're paying them to -
so let them get on with it!
> > Yes - a lot of companies export work to countries with lax laws, since
> > it's cheaper that way. The ethics of this are rather questionable, but
> > that's another issue...
>
> New Zealand is hardly a country with lax labour laws!
>From the description here, it sounds like complete anarchy - telcos
permitted to monitor and record customers 'phone calls?!?
James.
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