BlackBerrys Focus Of Workers' Rights Flap

(CBS)  BlackBerrys enable companies to contact employees 24/7, and workers often find themselves doing company business after-hours -- sometimes, plenty of it -- so much so that many employees have come to view the device as almost a digital ball and chain.

And now, reports Early Show national correspondent Tracy Smith, workers are beginning to fight back -- insisting that they get paid overtime for e-mails sent and work done after hours.

BlackBerry use is, Smith points out, a "cultural craze" that, for some, borders on addiction," as people check their devices constantly.

One man told Smith he checks his roughly every 90 seconds! Another admitted he can't resist checking his.

Members of Congress aren't immune. "The BlackBerry is really like a leash on you, and that means you can never get away. It is a constant reminder of everything ya gotta do and even those things that you don't wanna do," says Rep. Eric Cantor (R, Va.).

But, says Smith, employees of ABC-TV said, "Enough is enough," are asked to be compensated for checking their 'berries after work hours.

"Sometimes," says Wall Street Journal technology reporter, Julia Angwin, "BlackBerry usage after-hours becomes extremely intrusive. It can take up your whole evening, your whole day on a weekend. In that case, it really is like being at work and is like overtime.

One man remarked to Smith that, "If it's after work, and it's productive, absolutely" the ABC employees should be paid for after-hours BlackBerry use.

Smith asked one woman, "If you were the boss and somebody came to you and said, 'I want to be paid for my BlackBerry use outside the office,' what would you say?"

"Don't use it!" the woman responded.

But a man observed to Smith that, "The e-mails are coming in all day, all night -- there's no way you could sort of be compensated for that."

ABC agreed last week that workers can get paid for some work on their BlackBerrys -- if it goes "beyond routine."

So, says Smith, "Maybe the next e-mail many of us write will be to the boss, asking if we can make a deal, too. We'll hit send and then, in typical crackberry fashion, keep checking and checking and checking for the response!"

A recent article in the National Law Journal says some attorneys are even telling their clients to create explicit overtime policies to address potential complaints about BlackBerry use after regular business hours, Smith notes. "There's a danger (companies) could get sued, for overtime, for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. All of these things are coming up."

[jerfenz]

AIRTIME OFFERS A SIMPLE SOLUTION FOR ABC EMPLOYEES: That is, if employees would like to validate and get paid for time spent on their mobile devicses (i.e BlackBerrys, iPhones and Windows Mobile devices) while out of the office and after hours; AND if the employers want to verify, aggregate and compute the overtime associated with those activites, AIRTIME-Manager sells a reliable and accurate solution that has been used effectively by attorneys and consultants for the past two years to capture and bill mobile time. Check out AIRTIME''s solutions at www.airtimemanager.com and contact Jerry Fenzel(CEO) at [e-mail]

[omgomgomg1]

Watch this video. It takes 2.5 minutes to pop a popcorn kernel in a microwave. About 15 seconds for the popcorn kernel to pop using a cell phone. Using a blackberry most likely is frying or causing permanent damage to brain cells of employees. Bring on the lawsuits...forget over time...this is a class action lawsuit for damaging people''s health when using blackberries most likely... http://youtube.com/watch?v=AcLS2WJERQ0

[omgomgomg1]

Watch this video. It takes 2.5 minutes to pop a popcorn kernel in a microwave. About 15 seconds for the popcorn kernel to pop using a cell phone. Using a blackberry most likely is frying or causing permanent damage to brain cells of employees. Bring on the lawsuits...forget over time...this is a class action lawsuit for damaging people''s health when using blackberries most likely... http://youtube.com/watch?v=AcLS2WJERQ0

[omgomgomg1]

THEY''D PAY...CUZ IF I DIDN''T HAVE TO BE AT WORK, I''D WORK FROM HOME. SO BEING AT THE PHYSICAL LOCATION IS NOT A CHOICE BUT A MANDATE BY THEM.

[Latrocinor]

" BlackBerrys enable companies to contact employees 24/7..."
......... .
Isn''t a blackberrry a fruit?

[omgomgomg1]

COME TO THINK OF IT...WHY DOESN''T OUR COMPANIES PAY FOR GAS AND OUR COMMUTE TIME????

[omgomgomg1]

LEAVE YOUR BLACKBERRY AT WORK...D''UH!

[faith_in_w]

docpete, national labor code? Hahahaha, this is Bushtime. Nobody cares about that today.

[pat1967-2009]

Once, a long time ago (15 years), when I was working as an hourly employee maintaining machinery, my boss wanted to issue me a pager so I could be reached even when I wasn''t at home. I said that I would do it but I wanted "On Call" pay for every hour that the pager was on after hours. He said that he would have to run the request through management to "see what he could do." Interestingly enough, I was never issued that pager.

To my thinking, unless you are an exempt employee, everything you do for the company after normal hours should be compensated. To argue that our jobs are going to be shipped overseas unless we do what the company wants is not a good one. Many of our manufacturing jobs are being shipped overseas anyway, regardless of our work ethic. When I see the company execs taking pay cuts to keep jobs here, then I''ll be worried. Nothing boils my blood faster than to hear a company cry poor while the CEO gets a 35% pay hike. What kind of BS is that? Smells like fraud to me.

[credibility2]

Employment is viewed by most employers as indentured servitude. Many years ago, I refused to give out the phone number of where I was going for a much needed one-week vacation. I advised my employer that if they found it necessary to call me while I was on my earned vacation, I didn''t have a problem with that, so long as I could also adjust my vacation time as work time and lengthen the time away from the office. My so-called superiors didn''t like this and in time I''d be asked to leave the company. No employer has the right to tell employees what they can or can''t do on their personal time, including earned vacation time.