Ethics Newsline®

At center of controversy is how much an employer may intrude on home life

OTTAWA
The ethical question of how closely an employee should be electronically tethered to the boss and the office emerged as a labor negotiation problem last week last week as a union representing government workers in Canada said it will confront use of BlackBerrys in its next round of collective bargaining.

According to reports from the Toronto Globe & Mail and the National Post, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) says use of the devices will be part of the next contract.

“For some people, having a BlackBerry is like, ‘We own you. You are our person, 24 hours, seven days a week,’” PSAC regional vice president Ed Cashman told the Globe & Mail. “Our members are running into situations where they’re not compensated properly for having to do work at home.”

But a report from the Agence France-Presse notes that some are skeptical about requiring that BlackBerry users be compensated for the time they spend online with the devices. They fear that by officially making BlackBerry use part of the job, such a stipulation will open the door to mandatory assignment of on-call devices and a further erosion of home and family life.

“That’s only going to legitimize its use,” Carleton University business professor Linda Duxbury told the Ottawa Citizen. “What they are trying to say is that an hour is worth ‘X’ amount of time. But, it’s not. It’s worth way more…. These people are interrupting their lives…. I wouldn’t want to legitimize it by [having employers] say, ‘We are entitled to send them messages because they are being compensated for it’,” she said.

Sources: Globe & Mail, May 1– Ottawa Citizen, May 1 — National Post, May 1 — AFP, Apr. 30.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Sept. 17, 2007 — Related Newsline story, June 25, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 6, 2006 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 6, 2006 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 27, 2006.