I work in production, and my boss likes to push weird boundaries every few months. We got this one yesterday about “work outside the company”.
“I wanted to be sure that you are aware of my policy on staff working outside [company].
…any and all outside work you are thinking of doing for others, must be approved by myself before entering into or engaging in outside work that involves any sort of production. While I don’t have a problem with you doing work 'on the side' there are a few parameters required on my end:
- A list of what you are doing, the person or institution and what the event or agenda is must be provided to [office manager] prior to accepting the outside work so I can sign off on it. this can be in the form of an email sent to me and [office manager] prior to excepting the outside gig.”
There's a few other bits I omitted because they're understandable, but I have issues with the above. He'll likely ask us on Monday if we understand/agree to it; normally we can ignore things like this, which he takes as agreement, and it never really comes up again. But I feel like eventually something's going to become a real issue. If we ever disagree with him, he often threatens to take away our quarterly bonuses (in lieu of health insurance, 401(k), etc), and reminds us of “how well” he pays us.
I've tried some Googling, but is there any strong privacy rights language I can cite in regards to this policy? We're in the US.
Thanks for any help.