“they didn’t make him sign an agreement relinquishing rights to anything he creates, they don’t own it.”
Are you reaching for the only scenario that makes his actions valid?
The law firm owns the computers, the committed to hours, the benefits, the vacation time, the sick leave time, and the job itself. And, the terms of employment and standards most likely says, along with the non=disclosure of company or case information forms, that anything created is intellectual property of the company.
Unless he’s a registered independent contractor, with a business license of his own, and hired as such, he’s just a worker - he owns nothing - not even the company pencil.
” I write scripts all of the time, they know about it and are fine with it.”
keywords: they know about it and it’s part of your job. It’s not part of his job description, ergo, the illegal uploading. If he uploads a unauthorized “simple” script to his employer’s computer, isn’t that a form of hacking? And you’d know better than most how easy it is hack a “simple” script. What if he goes further and starts selling the case information? or puts out leaks to influences cases? one crime leads so easily to another when financial gain is afoot.....
“He is accomplishing the amount of work expected of him”
Is he? Was he hired to write scripts? Or was what is expected of him is ‘eyes-on’ each entry by others into the system. And, one assumes, communication with the uploading party as to errors that should be corrected. But it’s not his eyes, is it? He thinks his script is good, but he’s only a year into it, with cases not due to come to court for another year or so. So how to validate ‘good’?
Exempt employees (salaried) are generally expected to pull in excess of real-time 60 hours a week and prove it with bottom line performance - including dropping everything on off-hours for an assigned task, traveling here and there, and maintaining a close managerial rein on his subordinates and their problems. Hourly white-collar grunts are expected to pull a 36-40-hour week - the duties of which are NEVER limited to just one function - the old ‘other duties as assigned’ clause in employment agreements - the team player stuff. (one of my personal ‘other duties’ involved coming down from the ivory tower to wrap customers’ purchased gifts for a week every Christmas to help out the hourly staff.).
50 minutes a week is not 40 hours. 50 minutes a week intentionally blocks availability for ‘other duties as assigned’ and violates his employment agreement. Especially if the remaining time is tying up company resources and computing time for ‘games’ and personal chatrooms that have nothing to do with the business and which may, by doing so, (and often does) compromise his employer’s computers and/or case integrity.
Essentially, he is very publically admitting to gross negligence of his fudiciary duty. 10 minutes of work a day assuming his script is working correctly without fail. Ten minutes is what he should be paid for and 10 minutes is what should be applied towards senority, vacation and sick leave accrual and not a minute more.
Rebuttal?
Macros in Excel are scripts. Has anyone been fired for those?
Lawyers often skip work and spend inordinate time doing all sorts of either non-billable work of claiming billable work when little actual work was done. How is either situation better then someone who is actually at work, getti g legitimate work done, and spending excess time sitting around looking at his phone? If the job is done, he’s allowed to look out a window or listen to the radio or play on his phone.
Have you seen the dude’s employment contract?
In the auto plants your maintenance employees - electricians, machine repairmen, millwrights, etc., - will typically sit in a "bull pen", reading or playing cards all day until a line supervisor with a problem will come over and get the tradesman to fix whatever the problem is.
“10 minutes of work a day “
Define the term ‘work’.
He is performing work all day since he is responsible for the operations throughout the day of his area of responsibilities.
His work is not measured by attendance to a specific computer system or any other measure that requires his presence at a specific computer.