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That's None of Your Business! On the Limits of Employer Control of Employee Behavior Outside of Working Hours

Version 2 2024-06-13, 14:59
Version 1 2022-10-27, 23:48
journal contribution
posted on 2022-10-27, 23:48 authored by Matthew Lister
Employers seeking to control employee behavior outside of working hours is nothing new. However, recent developments have extended efforts to control employee behavior into new areas, with new significance. Employers seek to control legal behavior by employees outside of working hours, to have significant influence over employees' health-related behavior, and to monitor and control employees' social media, even when this behavior has nothing to do with the workplace. In this article, I draw on the work of political theorists Jon Elster, Gerald Gaus, and Michael Walzer, and privacy scholars Daniel Solove and Anita Allen, to show what is wrong with this extension of employer control of employees' outside of work behavior. I argue that there are ethical limits on the controls that employers may put on their employees' behavior outside of work, and that many of these limits should be enshrined into legal protections which would prevent employers from conditioning employment on the regulations criticized.

History

Journal

Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence

Volume

35

Pagination

405 - 426

ISSN

0841-8209

eISSN

2056-4260

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