Legal question: Does your boss have the right to dig through your desk?

[Catch22Dem]

My co-worker told me my group leader was just standing at my desk going through all my papers. Now, I've got nothing to hide, and he's just being his normal dickhead paranoid self, but it does piss me off.

Now, he's not HR, or a department manager, or any other kind of manager. He's just a group leader. Technically he's my boss, but I think he may have crossed the line. I'm gonna ask a buddy down in HR what they think.

[Sanity Claws]

1. Who owns the desk?

At most places, the company does. So I do think that they have the right to go through your desk, just as they have the right to go through your email in the office.
I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying that seems to be the way things are.

[AP]

20. Do you have an employment contract?

It might state specifically that you have no privacy rights in the office.

[NMDemDist2]

2. i would think so except your personal property (purse, jacket pockets etc)

it's company property :shrug:

[Horse with no Name]

6. Actually most hospitals require

you to consent to full body or property searches--including your car at any time they deem necessary.
Drug testing on demand as well.
I gave up the notion of personal property at work a long time ago.:shrug:

[northzax]

13. and retail

when I worked in a store, I signed a consent form for bag searches for merchandise only at the end of my shift. it only happened once, the night corporate made the manager fire me, and I forced him to search my bag in the presence of the other employees. He was not happy about it, but I wanted to leave dotting all the Is and crossing all the Ts.

[SoCalDem]

42. Some stores here have see-thru plastic bags

and employees must lock their own purse in a locker, and transfer necessities into the see-thru bag.. When they leave work, someone unlocks their own purse and they dump the contents back in. Most female employees no longer even carry a purse to work because they cannot clock in until they transfer stuff and they do not want to go through that ordeal.

[nolabels]

21. My toolbox is my personal property which they have no right to

But to think I would give a rat's ass if someone that worked there wanted to dig through it :rofl:

All of us leave ours open in case one shift needs to borrow another's wrench or something.

What's wrong with sharing anyway?

[democrat in Tallahassee]

3. Perhaps legally, but ethically it is dead wrong

My boss got reprimanded for going through someone's desk (one of her staff)

[Ioo]

4. I think that you have some rights...

It depends on what he was looking for. If he was looking for something like a key to a closet or something, I think he can. If he was snooping on you, or something you may have an issue here.

Was it locked...

It also depends on what you signed whrn you joined... also where is your work, because that could also change from state to state.

[wtmusic]

5. If you have "the expectation of privacy" in most states

the answer is no.

Whether rifling through your papers on top of your desk qualifies, I dunno...

[megatherium]

7. A lecturer where I teach was arrested for child molestation.

My office was right next to his. While he was away, the computer services people appeared and removed the hard drive from his computer. Evidently, they were going to examine it to see if there was illegal material (child pornography) on it. My understanding is that the university has a right to examine the contents of a hard drive, in fact, the responsibility to do so if there's a suspicion of illicit material being present. I never heard if they found anything. But my colleague was terminated (as a lecturer he did not have the protection of tenured and could be dismissed at will). Years later, I learned he was in fact convicted of child molestation.

So the bottom line is, yes, they have the right to examine their property. Typically, employees are expected to refrain from using company equipment for personal use, as well as email or web browsers. Many companies monitor email (this is legal) and web browser use. So, I do not view naughty web sites or do any day trading at work. There is nothing on my machine or in my desk drawers I wouldn't want my mother to see.

On edit: Wow! My 777th post -- what a mystical number! (Pity such a depressing topic though.)

[sweetheart]

8. The illusion of property

The original poster points out: "my desk" and that is the problem
right there. On the master's plantation, there ain't no "my" and "mine"
when its slaves involved.

The master can search the masters desk and computer whenever massa'
likes. That is why the constitution has that little amendment at the
beginning of the bill of rights that says: "The following rights are
not valid during working hours, and any citizen who has entered in to
a voluntary slavery contract, has no rights under the law."

When they hired you at your job, megatherium, did you have to sign an
intellectual property waiver, saying that all ideas that you have
during your employment with employer belong to employer? I've been
asked to sign such things at banks, and i'm curious about university
hiring.

Many institutions, if you read the small print of your hiring
contract, really do have 24x7 control over your rights. It is
disturbing, that "liberals" are so corporatist that they view a minor
blemish on constitutional rights as nothing much.

Its illegal search and seizure, given the real common law reality
that it is "YOUR" desk.... but the activist republican judges have
twisted this to mean that "your" is an illusion to pre-slavery time.

Congrats on 777... i've given up on mystical post numbers anymore...
as soon enough the counter moves on... perhaps the most interesting
number is the highest count you'll ever have on DU before you die.

I've not thought about it, but i could easily have 100K by then...
and just another internet writer tickety tap on the keyboard. :-)

[megatherium]

9. I believe the usual arrangement for intellectual property

for university faculty is that if a faculty member uses university resources (lab space, etc) to produce something of value, they are expected to sign over the rights to their patent to the university. I honestly can't remember what my faculty handbook or contract says about this because in my discipline nobody is making any money (pure mathematics). But I recall I'm allowed to spend up to 20% of my time on consulting, where I keep my extra earnings. And if I write a book, say a successful textbook that sells millions of dollars, I keep my earnings from that.

The intellectual property issue sounds unfair, but in defense of the university, they have provided me with a decent career with a modest but adequate salary, and they have given me the unusual privilege and protection of tenure. Basically, I have a permanent contract. (There are circumstances where tenured faculty can be gotten rid of, but they are unusual.) If I hadn't gone in this direction in my career, I would most likely have gone into high tech; and high tech right now is a blood-curdlingly vicious career. I'm very grateful where I am now even though I miss the Pacific Northwest from which I came.

[northzax]

14. and in reality

most universities have profit sharing arrangements with professors who come up with something worthwhile, don't they? and there are loopholes, Mark Andressen wrote Mosaic at Urbana-Champaign, and they didn't stop him from doing netscape.

so if you came up with something big, the University would make sure you got something, don't you think?

[AP]

19. Generally, if you work at a university, everything you create you own UN-

LESS you have a contract that says otherwise.

Professors own the IP rights in their lectures and the books they write even though they write them while they're on the clock, for example.

People in the sciences who have funded labs and get grants, however, will almost always have a contract that says who owns the IP they create.

Storing porn on your computer (unless you study porn) doesn't have anything to do with IP rights.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

10. Oh come on.

The fact that you'd even compare modern office law and culture to slavery is an insult to everyone who was ever a slave.

[sweetheart]

15. That's right, use a republican meme

"insult". There are more living slaves in the world today, in pure
numbers than there were during "slavery". The slavers are these
tendrils of the multinational corporatocracy, or pure "fascism" if you
prefer the term. THe result is real slavery, and subtle enslavement.

The subtle enslavement is being owned. Perhaps it is voluntary, yet
we are indeed enslaved to varying degrees, and i reject your "insult"
to the slaves, as the insult is pretending that the corporate culture
you excuse is not involved with real slavery... no, perhaps not SS
guards, but rather gas chamber attendents. Smile and be inviting.
Always say the showers are clean and sanitary, as it does not matter
what the customer things once they turn the gas on; Gas chamber
attendents, excusing the inexcusable.

[northzax]

16. you don't get out much, do you?

paging Ted Kazcyinski, Dr. Kazcynski, please pick up the white courtesy phone.

[sweetheart]

23. More than you do

Following on with the republican ad hominem, you're batting 1000.

Slavery is practiced in greater numbers terms in our corporatist world
today, than every before. You are missing that point... I mean REAL
slavery. What is it about that detail, that has you slandering this
writer? Are you a defender of slavery and its institutions... sounds
like.

[northzax]

24. so I'm a slave, somehow

because I trade my skills and abilities to the highest bidder? And not simply on economic terms, I choose my employer based on other issues, related to what I do, where I work, who I work for and what my work will be used for. There is no penalty, besides a lifestyle change, if I decide right now to walk out and never work for this place again. That doesn't sound like slavery to me. If I don't want to so something, I don't, the only penalty is financial. If I want to sell everything I own and live in a tent, I can; if I want to move to San Francisco, I can; please, explain to me how this is slavery.

How can I be a slave, honestly now, when I can choose my employer (as long as they're willing to employ me) choose, in fact, whether I want to work at all for financial renumeration? I'm under no obligation to work for someone else, I choose to. I choose to work because I want the things that go along with working, living in a neighborhood I like, travelling at will, going to movies, buying tickets to concerts, buying art and books; drinking good wine and scotch and paying other people to cook for me in restaurants. How is that slavery? I have turned down, recently, employment that would make all of that more accessible to me, but it wasn't a job I wanted to do, I didn't like the people I would have been working for. How is that slavery? do tell.

how is it when I ride my bike or take the Metro to work in the morning you can equate that to walking into Treblinka? I don't get it. You are the one making the allegation that this is slavery, perhaps you have a better model? do tell.

[sweetheart]

26. The ripple effect

Your freedom to drive a car is based on the enslavement of millions
of people, torture and killing with impunity. Your work is taxed and
applied to this appalling state of affairs. You are using the amoral
disconnect of american culture as an excuse. Hey, i can live in a tent
and i am not part of it... yet that is a lie. You pay for it... your
taxes go to the big plantation that finances the repression and
enslavement of persons all over the planet.

Slavery starts small. You go out for the evening and have a puff on a
joint... no harm done. The workplace does random checks of hair and
pee to check its staff, and more and more such workplaces exist, that
you won't work for if you object. This list of "free" employers is
increasingly small. That aside, the slave-state has its war on drugs
that you finance with your taxes. It dumps poison on to people in the
amazon basin to kill their crops under the auspices of eliminating
the cocoa crop. So the villiages have deaths and birth defects, and
are treated by the slave machine as subhuman animals on your tax
dollar, and you are morally free to wash your hands, pure as snow.
So hmmm... the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and all the
good wishing happy go lucky bicycle riding disenfranchised kitchen
workers in the world does not end slavery.

You are not morally free. You are working the kitchen, while the
killing field is somewhere else, and you claim that conditions in the
kitchen don't amount to slavery, or something that morally wrong.
The right of an inorganic entity to have unequal rights to a living
breathing person is root, and with each seemingly tiny contractual
chip away at the sovereign indivdiual, the plantation closes doors
for happy liberal workers like yourself; until you are cornered and
there are no jobs out there that will pay for your food, your medical
bills and your expectations of bicycle freedom... and then it will
be too late... and you will accept the terms of a draconian contract
that puts a collar on you, and remember then, that it isn't enslavement,
just voluntary... just a trifle, nothing important.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

18. Gee, thanks.

>That's right, use a republican meme

You know, I'm not even going to dignify that with a response. Claiming that white-collar Americans aren't slaves is now a "Republican talking point?"

>THe result is real slavery, and subtle enslavement.

Strangely, I see it differently. I'm quite free to quit my job and go live in the woods if I wanted to. Your rhetoric is overheated.

>The subtle enslavement is being owned. Perhaps it is voluntary

Voluntary enslavement. This is a very interesting concept you've discovered.

> Smile and be inviting.
>Always say the showers are clean and sanitary, as it does not matter
>what the customer things once they turn the gas on; Gas chamber
>attendents, excusing the inexcusable.

Well, now you've completely lost me. And here, let me save you the trouble: I lost the plot because I'm a slave. I'm a slave I'm a slave and I don't see I'm a slave and that's why I'm a slave and only when I start saying exactly what you are saying will I no longer be A Slave and no longer be spouting Republican Talking Points.

[sweetheart]

25. Sorry, the writing jumps concepts too quickly

1. Slavery is practiced in REAL slavery terms in larger numbers today
than ever before in human history. *REAL SLAVERY*

2. Corporate life is behind this, and we have stateside, a modified
version of slavery, voluntary servitude, where we voluntarily
suspend our constitutional rights and become indentured servants,
bound by contractual ownership of our labour and ideas. This system
of exploitation is a grey area between draconian evils not far from
original slavery, and lighter evils such as signing away all your 24x7
intellectual creative property for years to get an engineering job.

The only republican talking point, was this "insult" and "not dignify"
and all that horse crap. There are no insults. There is just points
made, questioned, discussed and refuted.

The new corporate servitude (stateside) version is cultish, and is
really not voluntary, as you starve otherwise. Your alternatives are
burger king, the slaughterhouse, fruit picking with the migrants,
engineering killing technologies or killing iraqis. Some of these
careers put the employees at risk of life and limb, but that is
secondary to profits, and could not be called slavery.... rather
workers rights, and workplace justice is a better term... but it all
comes from the not-so-voluntary servitude and the conditions of that.

And the reflection abroad, in the grey areas of the global economy,
sponsored by servitude-lite stateside, is real slavery.

It is more than just a trifle... and why i made a reference to gas
chamber attendents like a non-sequiter jump, as the stateside attendents
don't quite get the global significance of their servitude...
slavery and death industries designed to repress and destroy
humans.... gas chamber attendents.

[mondo joe]

27. Your stance is that words don't really mean anything

Otherwise there'd be no confusing people who have choices with people who are slaves.

There are instances in which there is virtual slavery - typically those in which there is a sole employer in a region that calls the shots and there are not sufficient alternatives.

But for most Americans there are ample enough choices that "slavery" can only be hyperbole at its worst.

My employer owns my desk and its contents. I have no problem with that. It's part of the agreement I chose to consent to in which my work is traded for dollars. It's their desk, their materials and I just use it for work.

How you can confuse that with slavery is a mystery and a shame.

[sweetheart]

28. How you disconnect it is a shame

My stance is that, in a world where american taxpayers (read: us),
pay to kill people in other nations with impunity, to support the worlds
most repressive states, where women have NO rights, like animals...
there is no confusion.

Rather there is a moral disconnect on your part, where you don't see
your actions as part of the greater machine, that someone you are
excused. It is the machine that enslaves abroad, kills destroys,
tortures and enslaves... and you are part of it... and to confuse that
with not slavery is a mystery and a shame.

It is the new american amoralism... we got ours, and it is not
slavery and mass murder that we "got ours" through murder and enslavement. Corporate hegemony sells amoralism as the coolaid of
choice for the worker population... and clearly people drink a lot of
it.

[mondo joe]

29. BS. Whether US international acts are appalling or not doesn't make

me or you slaves.

Whether the US waves illegal war or not has nothing todo with one's agreement to work for a hospital that owns a desk.

If Americans choose to ignore the actions of the state or the corporate machine, that's their CHOICE.

You're confused because you think corporations and governments commit their acts without the consent of the people.

[sweetheart]

32. Amoralism epidemic

So you're saying that a nation that oppresses millions, taxes its poor
and criminalizes poverty, uses its power to destroy and erode womens
rights (if there are any) to not be property, that such a state is
actually persuing a moral evil on a parallel with slavery. And that,
by being employed in the kitchen, we're not responsible.

I'm relieved of any moral need to wonder whether people consent to it,
but don't actually CONSENT to it. That one form of consent is
different than another... and maybe some slaves in the deep south long
ago, realized that the institution of slavery would go away fast, if
they stopped working, even though they weren't being abused. But rather
they had surely similar rationalizations as the evils were beyond their
control, by the plantation masters.

When you are paid to sit at a desk, at a job, you are party to the crime
of the business. You pay taxes to the greater crime of the federal
criminal state. You don't own your desk, and corporate interests seek
similarly, that you don't own your body. It can be searched at will
unless of course you quit. So where exactly were the framers intending
illegal search and seizure to be relevant... perhaps only on sundays.

The government has never ever ever had my consent, just a form of
coercion to committ crimes, and i am a filthy criminal for helping
pay for it. There is no consent, and no alternative except to not
be at a desk under their jurisdiction.

[mondo joe]

34. When did I say we're not responsible? You're the one who says we are

slaves. How can slaves be responsible for the acts of the master?

Make up your mind.

Are we slaves or are we responsible?

Back to employment: it's a simple case of mutual exploitation in most cases. And that includes the fact that the company owns the desk you agree to use in your choice to work there.

What did the framers intend regarding illegal search and seizure? That the government wouldn't do it. That has nothing to do with your CHOICE to work with a private organization and its policies. Don't like the employer policies? Worl somewhere else. Form a bargaining unit and negotiate the working conditions. Start your own business.

You're so funny - you talk about us being responsible but then goon to say you've never consented. Make up your mind. And remember, the American people have consented to these state policies and practices by choosing to elect the people and parties that wage them.

[sweetheart]

35. We're responsible

Even slaves are responsible for staying slaves. There is no
abdication of responsibility as long as we're alive.

This discussion has grown legs beyond searching desks and we agree,
you and i on the basis of exploitation in the employment contract.

I am an "american people" and am totally unrepresented by
people and parties, nor have i ever been. I guess it comes from
the breakdown in the social contract, when there is no longer any
consent on behalf of the governed. Its more than "not in my name."

I enjoy discussing this with you, and look forward to a thread that
offers the topic a fair and more thorough hearing.

[mondo joe]

36. But there is consent. The American people cast their votes.

The American people choose their working conditions.

Not each of us individually, but as a collective.

But the idea that I - who can freely choose where and if to work - am comperable to a slave who toiled without even modest choices or benefits, coerced under penalty of injury or death - is a shameful fallacy.

[sweetheart]

37. Nothing shameful and no fallacy

Whether modern working conditions have any bearing to slavery is a topic
of another thread.... and i do not agree at all, that the link is
shameful or a fallacy. Rather it is creeping enslavement, coming to
a neighborhood near you...

Perhaps as i've spent a good many years of my career on the foreign
edge of the machine, it is so obvious how its power is used to repress
and enslave persons against their will, without due process, through
a sort of collusion. It is that same collusion that was used to take
britain to war against popular will to the contrary... and similarly,
at the "foreign" edge of the ameircna corporate empire, it is all about
enslavement... no social contract, no democratic choice, weapons, guns,
in your face, get back to the field, slave.

Perhaps were you a piece of human property, a woman in saudi arabia,
you might feel that this slaveless utopia is something other.

[mondo joe]

38. You again contradict your own argument

"Perhaps were you a piece of human property, a woman in saudi arabia,
you might feel that this slaveless utopia is something other."

If I were a slave now why would I need to be a saidi woman to know what slavery is?

My employer and I freely engage in mutually agreeable exploitation of one another. I trade my skills for money.

I'm no more a slave thana baker is when I trade my money with that baker for bread.

Andyou continue to undermine your own argument by playing bith sides: we're responsible but we're slaves who give no consent.

You ought to figure out which argument you really want to make - either we are hapless slaves or we are responsible parties.

[sweetheart]

39. Here is another thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3771618&mesg_id=3771618

It is not contradictory, mondo joe.

I am not the enemy, nor am i attempting to be fallacious. I'm
investigating the meaning of what slavery is in this 21st century when
it is more widely spread than ever before.

One poster says that it is just greed. In this regard, i see it as
something the neocons have unleashed to be the benchmark of the
ultimate "cheap labour" in the race to the bottom.

Moderate dems who are in bed with the neocons, of course will defend
the slavery of today. That is the nature of the complexity in this
discussion. It is a grey area, and not black and white.

[nolabels]

22. Many slaves could escape if they understood the bondage on their mind

Chained to the Desk

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
If you could only buy one book on workaholism, this is it!, October 30, 1999
Reviewer: A reader
This is a frightening look at workaholism (the addiction to adrenaline) and the different forms in which it manifests itself. Dr. Robinson's words will hit home if you are or know a workaholic. The book includes information on how to recognize the symptoms, the disease's affect on partners, children and co-workers as well as descriptions of workaholic company cultures, and why this disease is encouraged instead of treated. The book gives some help on steps towards managing the disease from the Workaholics Anonymous 12 step program and other programs. Like all other addictions, Dr. Robinson points out that there's no easy fix, especially since the workaholic still has to work. But the disease is as life threatening as any other chemical addiction. There are lists of resources offered including programs, books and tapes. Keep this one nearby when you need the facts
(snip)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0814774806/002-6043100-2158414?v=glance

[Fla Dem]

11. Employer's have a right, but it should be used reasonably.

If they have some sort of supervisory responsibility over you and your work, then they are well within their rights to go through your desk. Where I once worked, bills were not being paid and suppliers were getting angry. Come to find out, the person responsible for inputting the bills in the payment system, hid any bills she didn't get done by the end of each day in her desk drawer.

I don't think random searches of employees desks are a good thing, except when there is reason to suspect wrong doing by the employee.

[Egalitariat]

12. If it's your desk, then no. If it's the company's desk, then probably***

nm

[KansDem]

17. My boss can dig through my desk anytime she wants...

But she'd better bring an excavation team and plan on several days or weeks to complete the "dig"...

I'm not the neatest person in this world! :D

[Baclava]

30. I hate it when people mess up my ratnest !!!

I know where everything is - unless somethings been moved...then it might as well be on the moon- no hope for recovery...

[0rganism]

31. If s/he can dig through your bladder contents, why not your desk?

When one accepts the former, the latter can be regarded as relinquished by default.

[Sapphire Blue]

33. It sounds like he was going through work related papers on your desk

... not personal items inside your desk. If you're working on a project as part of a team, any team member might need information that you're working on... and if you're away from your desk, they might need to go through the material on top of your desk. If it's common knowledge that project related material is kept in a specific drawer, a co-worker might need to go through that specific drawer. Most desks have drawers that can be locked... for personal/confidential items/material.

In the case of your team leader, he might be looking for project related material, checking on your progress, or just micromanaging.

[Catch22Dem]

40. DING DING DING: Micromanaging

He's a clueless twit. He's micromanaging my project, and displaying his usual paranoia. He's so afraid we're all talking about him that he'll go to any lengths just to catch a glimpse of what we're saying.

[jayctravis]

41. If you have personal belongings at work that you're

worried about getting stolen or examined, you shouldn't leave them at work. Was there perhaps a file or something he was looking for?

I'd mention casually, "If you need something from my desk, please let me know and I'd be more than happy to find it for you, rather than you having to hunt for it. Is that coffee done?"