Employer's taking over your personal life too!

" A German company called Laserline has just fired one of its workers for smoking. Private detectives were hired to take pictures of the guy lighting up in his back garden...

Anyone else feeling a chill right now? I wish I could say that I made up that quote for dramatic effect. Unfortunately, that it is a direct quote from an article reporting on the incident. Similar incidents are happening in the US as well. This is a growing trend, one that I feel is far more dangerous to our way of life than terrorists and the Patriot Act combined. If employers are permitted to dictate how workers are to behave in the privacy of their own homes...

Do you hear that? It is Benjamin Franklin rolling over in his grave. I think old Ben was a smoker too.

This company in Germany hired private detectives to spy on employees, then fired a man for smoking in his backyard. A distributor of Miller beer in Racine, Wisconsin was caught on camera drinking a Budweiser, during some local city event. His picture was published in the local newspaper and he was fired that very day. A Budweiser distributor in Colorado fired one of its employees because he was seen drinking a Coors in a bar.

I understand that private employers can do things forbidden to the government. If you go on television and say bad things about your company, do not be surprised to see the contents of your office packed into a cardboard box the next day. However, a line must be drawn somewhere. Companies and corporations are not totalitarian governments, nor should they be allowed to behave as such. We are not discussing spyware, installed on the company computer, catching someone surfing for porn during work hours. These people, while off duty and miles away from company property, were fired for doing things that were entirely legal.

Why is this being permitted? Why are the labor unions not on Capitol Hill raining down fire and brimstone upon the Congress? What's next; NBC firing employees for watching ABC while they are at home? I meant what I said earlier: this trend, if allowed to continue, threatens to destroy our liberties. Companies cannot and should not be allowed to dictate what people do in their own homes. The owners of those beer distributors and the owner of Germany's Laserline should be thrown in prison for what they did. If you are a union worker, you need to speak to your rep about this. The next company that decides to suspend the Constitution in our homes might be your's. The labor unions, all of them, need to march straight up the steps of the Capitol building and demand that companies be ordered out of our homes.

We need to do something about this. Today, it is private detectives snapping photos of you in the back yard. Tomorrow, they will be planting microphones and cameras in your bedroom. Is that the world in which you want to live? "