Organize on Borrowed Time?

Some economists describe a "free good" as something that is so common, it's practically free.  Most of us would hardly think twice about taking a paper clip home from work, or a staple, because there are just so many, their value is hard to even quantify.  A box of 25,000 staples might cost $5, so an individual staple costs less than 1/1000 of a cent.  Practically speaking, you couldn't pay your employer for that staple if you wanted to!  Sometimes it seems like such is also the case with time...


It's tough, if not impossible, for an employer to watch an employee every second of the day, and if they did, it probably would be a workplace that had a hard time keeping employees!  Still, for many jobs, one of the great comforts is the individual employee's control over their time.  Your employer probably lets you talk to other employees, for example.  You might even have management who is nice enough not to "micro-manage" you, adopting the attitude, "as long as the work gets done, I don't care what you do."

And yet, the simple fact of the matter is that time spent on the job is really borrowed time; it's really your employer's time.  It's true that you do have a legal right to organize a union, but that doesn't mean that you can take your employer's time and disrupt work to do so; you might be fired for it, and your employer may be protected in doing so.

So how do we define "company time?"  What time is borrowed time, and what is our own?  Lunch time and regularly scheduled break time is usually OK, but taking somebody away from their normal shift, even if it's only for a brief moment, is risky at best.

Defining "company time" is easy for hourly employees, the classic 9 to 5, but the waters get far more murky for a salaried employee, and as is frequently our advice, the most prudent course is to consult with an attorney!  Sometimes the most valuable, most dangerous things are the things we borrow, precisely because they aren't ours.