“I Fought the Law” is a much-covered song reflecting the angst – and futility – of fighting authority.
Through the years, the song – and its lyrics – have taken on different meanings, and have been applied to different political and social contexts.
When the Dead Kennedys covered the piece in the late 1970s it was intended as a comment on Dan White’s murder of George Moscone and Harvey Milk (an event which was recently documented in the Oscar-nominated film “Milk”).
In 1989 the US Army played the Clash’s version of the song when attempting to flush out the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.
The song might also provide an appropriate soundtrack in a workplace setting – where an employee is charged by the Police with an act of criminal wrongdoing.
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Here’s one from the only in America file – but, equally, it raises an interesting legal problem.
The Indianapolis Star reports about an employee who, at great personal expense, had a dog trained to sniff out any hint of paprika. The reason? She had a severe allergy which sent her into anaphylactic shock every time she was close to the substance.
The problem? When she took the dog to work, it turned out that one of her co-workers was allergic to the dog.
The worker claims that her boss told her to leave the dog at home and to take unpaid leave. She responded with a discrimination claim and has not returned to work since.
Although perhaps a little bizarre set of circumstances, this type of issue could easily arise under New Zealand law. An employer has a general obligation under health and safety legislation to take all reasonable steps to minimise risk in the workplace. In this case, that would mean allowing reasonable steps to be taken to minimise the possibility of this employee suffering an anaphylactic shock.
The interesting question would be whether bringing a dog to work would be considered within the reasonable threshold. If the prospect of the risk was sufficiently low, that the presence of a dog in the workplace would be an over-reaction to the chance of harm.
Even if not (for example if the employee worked in a food factory where this type of risk was more likely) the employer would still have to balance the equally valid right of the co-worker not to be exposed to a dog which led to a different type of health concern. The employer would inevitably have to consider such things as whether the two workers could be sufficiently separate to allow them both to co-exist – and, equally, whether the risk of allergy was significant, or at the low end of the scale. Ultimately, this sort of thing is a balance exercise for an employer – but always a very difficult one.
Social media faux pas: like spitting on someone’s food?
This – rather blunt – analogy is a proffered this week on the Ohio employer’s law blog by Jon Hyman.
While you may not necessarily agree with the strength of the comparison, Hyman’s point is simple: posting derogatory comments about your workplace on a blog or social media site are, at least from the employer’s point of view, pretty much as bad as a wanton act of vandalism at work.
Hyman offers some thoughts about the essentials of a workplace policy: but to my mind, there’s one thing missing.
Monitoring.
How is the employer necessarily expected to know what an employee is saying on a personal site? From my experience, most often the boss finds out because of information passed on by others (most notably co‑workers).
It’s one of the classic debating topics that you may remember from the 3rd form: “That the pen is mightier than the sword”.
The idea, of course, is that we are supposed to think – in a modern, western society – that logic and reason should triumph over might and terror: a sentiment that the law would, of course, tend to support.
But the sword has a distinct advantage. One either strikes with it, or does not – the sharpness of its blade cannot be denied.
The problem with the pen – quite literally – is that one may not always make oneself so clearly understood.
This problem was recently illustrated in the context of an employment claim in the English jurisdiction. The case is May v Greenwich Council (Employment Appeal Tribunal, London, 15 April 2010). It involved an unjustified dismissal claim brought by an employee who was acting for himself.
Victoria University’s Industrial Relations Centre publishes an excellent annual review of union membership in New Zealand. For different reasons, the most recent review (which came out in the last couple of weeks) only has figures current to the end of 2008. But, despite this, the findings are telling.
In short, there has been a modest increase in union membership – of .5% in the two years from December 2006 to December 2008.
Overall, however, the total union density (number of union members as a total of wage and salary earners) is only 21.2% - being the lowest level in 20 years, and lower than any level of union density through the Employment Contracts Act.
In plain English, what this means is that – despite encouragement to the contrary in the Employment Relations Act – union membership is on the decline, and arguably a thing of the past in many industries.
Union membership is still high, for example, in the public service – and in certain industrial pursuits (such as mining). But, overall, and particularly in the private sector – one might be justified in concluding that the age of unions is past.
I’m not really sure whether this is the sort of survey that should be taken seriously.
According to research done over the last few weeks, one-third of Kiwi workers have perfromed a sexual act during a lunch hour.
And, to boot, 70% of all workers claimed to have had some form of “sexual experience” during their lunch time (regrettably, the difference is between a sex act and a sexual experience isn’t spelt out).
I am always suspicious about these surveys – and one’s eyebrow should probably be firmly raised in the case of a survey commissioned by a pizza delivery company!
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