LWN.net Logo

Remotely wiping mobile phones - by employee agreement

Remotely wiping mobile phones - by employee agreement

Posted Sep 17, 2010 16:46 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: Remotely wiping mobile phones by dskoll
Parent article: Remotely wiping mobile phones

In the US, since 1938, workers in low-level jobs are not allowed to work extra hours for free. (Low-level basically means non-intellectual). I don't know about wearing revealing uniforms, but there many very similar things an employee isn't allowed to give.

The great majority of legal rights are waivable -- they're property the holder is allowed to sell. But many are not, and the main reason is to eliminate competition with other people who don't want to sell those rights at the going price. In the case of working extra hours for free, the effect (by design) is to transfer wealth from people with more natural employable talent to people with less, as a group.

There are moral arguments for and against that transfer, and that way of doing it, and the same would apply to the issue of an employer conditioning a job offer on the employee handing over delete power on his phone. (As for the legal arguments, I really have no idea).


(Log in to post comments)

Remotely wiping mobile phones - by employee agreement

Posted Sep 21, 2010 20:49 UTC (Tue) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link]

But many are not, and the main reason is to eliminate competition with other people who don't want to sell those rights at the going price.

The main reason is to prevent those whose main employable talents is being filthy rich from working people who weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth to death, just because these working people need to feed their families.

Remotely wiping mobile phones - by employee agreement

Posted Sep 21, 2010 22:33 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

But many are not, and the main reason is to eliminate competition with other people who don't want to sell those rights at the going price.
The main reason is to prevent those whose main employable talents is being filthy rich from working people who weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth to death, just because these working people need to feed their families.

Of course, but you missed the point, which is about the mechanism for stopping filthy rich people from doing that. The reason the filthy rich person, with all rights being waivable, would be able to entice someone to work to death is that the worker is competing for the job with other workers who are willing to work to death. By removing everyone else's ability to waive his right to work to death, we eliminate that competition and force the filthy rich person to offer a better job to everyone.

The ultimate effect is a redistribution of wealth from the filthy rich employer to the workers. But this is just one mechanism for doing that.

Copyright © 2013, Eklektix, Inc.
Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds