Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
I understand all that, and I agree completely with your opinion on the subject of "none of your business," but the time to say "it's none of your business" is BEFORE you sign a contract that may make it their business. I would never sign a contract that had an ambiguous moral conduct clause. Neither should anyone else who truly believes it's "none of their business."
No. This is completely different. This is the "if you don't like the terms, then don't sign the contract" argument. Quite a huge distinction in my eyes.
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Well, let me give you a little rundown of my history on this. (And thank you for taking my fervor in stride.)
I went to a private college that I pretty much *had* to go to or my parents would have disowned and disenfranchised me. It was our church college, and state colleges are dens of sin and iniquity, you see. I was 18 and a very fervent member of the church, so the contract clause -- No ANYTHING, or we throw you out. -- seemed reasonable because it reflected my beliefs at the time. But please don't kid yourself that because I was a legal adult I had a "choice" -- I wasn't going to choose to live on the streets over this contract that I had to sign.
Two years later, I was a very different person, but still under the same contract. I could leave at any time, but my classes wouldn't transfer and neither would my classes. I was stuck. In the meantime, I saw these contract clauses enforced cruelly against genuinely innocent people, and in some cases used to blackmail other students. Several girls were expelled under the "no sex, no pregnancy" clause because they were raped and got pregnant. (My aunt went to that school as well. She never finished her degree because they kicked her out when she got married.) The school counselor regularly broke confidentiality and got students expelled or blackmailed based on recorded conversations.
For myself, I was hauled up before the court, so to speak, for lending my car to my boyfriend: the school had literally assigned someone to follow my car around and failed to notice that I walked back to the dorm after dropping the car off. The car was there overnight, so I must have been too! Fortunately, the cameras and badge scanners on campus proved that I was telling the truth, but not until after the expulsion process had been started. The only thing that protected me from expulsion or blackmail was that I was the favorite of an influential teacher who stepped in on my behalf. Otherwise, I would have never finished my degree.
It's not enough to say "don't sign a contract if you don't believe in it". People change over time but they don't have the power to renegotiate their contract -- they have to be fired or get a new job, no easy thing in this economy. Meanwhile, as Apple as proved (IT'S THE CONVERSATION SINGULARITY!), the party holding the power in a contract can "renegotiate" at will when they please, because the contract is always written that way. And even if you DO follow the contract, these contracts can be abused so easily that it's not even funny. Suing for the abuse is a joke and simply will not work.
Jobs are not optional -- they're required in order to eat. Employers are in a position of power where they can write ANYTHING into a contract and we'll sign because we have to have a job. The government protects us from some forms of contract clauses ("I.e., I promise to have sex with my boss or be fired.) but we need more protections ("I.e., I promise not to have gay sex or be fired.").
Certainly, ANYTHING an employee does off company time/property should not be considered grounds for sacking except in very serious circumstances.