Employee Handbook

Can They Do That? Retaking Our Fundamental Rights in the Workplace is a book written by Lewis Maltby and featured in Marie Claire's February issue.  He points out that your office is a dictatorship and the bottom line; you can be fired for just about any reason. Whether it's from maintaining a closet Marlboro habit to sporting a "Yes We Can" bumper sticker.  (The exceptions: It is illegal to terminate on the basis of race, gender, age, or religion.)  In this economy that's the last thing we need to hear.  Here Maltby shares a few ways employers keep tabs on their workforce:

Taking a stand makes you a target.
"There is no rights to free speech when it comes to work," warns Maltby.  Translation: Constantly tweeting about all of the annoyances and mediocraty of your work can lead to your termination.  So keep blog, Twitter and Facebook posts unrelated to work.  And exercise some common sense.  If your boss is an avid hunter and hangs a moose head in his office, why antagonize him by plastering your walls with PETA paraphernalia?

Your social life is fair game.
Your boss can ax you for after-hours activities that rub him/her the wrong way.  So before taking any job, get the scoop on a potential boss by talking to current and former employees.
 Your boss spies on you - even when you're at home.
If you log on to the office network remotely, any e-mail you send, whether from Gmail or Outlook, passes through your firm's servers and is therefore accessible to them. So make sure you log out of the corporate network before tending to personal business.  And it works both ways - so do yourself a favor and print copies of all the glowing emails you've ever received from the boss.  You never know when they'll come in handy.

Grab the book to read more!