Big Brother Nixes Happy Hour

From American Rights at Work courtesy of Slashdot courtesy of This is not a compliment:

It is a regular pastime for co-workers to chat during a coffee break, at a union hall, or over a beer about workplace issues, good grilling recipes, and celebrity gossip. Yet a recent ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) allows employers to ban off-duty fraternizing among co-workers, severely weakening the rights of free association and speech, and violating basic standards of privacy for America's workers.

Click here for the rest.

I suppose I would be less outraged by this if these workers were adequately compensated for their off-the-clock duties. That is, it's one thing to be paid for following employer rules when you're not at work; it's quite another to be expected to obey your boss on your own time, for free. This is really one of the same principles behind my opposition to employee drug testing: if part of the job, staying "drug free," encompasses the totality of an individual's life, including time when he is not actually working, he should be paid accordingly for it; unfortunately, such a concept is so insanely far off Corporate America's radar screen, that it's probably not even worth a joke to them.

That the federal agency charged with protecting worker rights is okay with this says a lot about the priorities of the current administration. That is, Bush thinks that shit-wages are too much: workers should work for free. Bastards.

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