Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Employers who try to control what you have in your car

Has anyone brought up, many times they are just covering their posterior?

The refinery where I formerly worked even prohibited the presence of cigarettes anywhere on company property. Possession of cigarettes would "lead to disciplinary action up to and including termination". Before I left the company the ban extended to include any smoking by employees. Annual blood tests were given to verify that you did not smoke. Of course you had to sign a paper indicating you were aware of company policy and agreed not to smoke as a condition of employment.

Texas is a right to work state. The company has rules, if you choose to work for them then you choose to follow the rules. Since you are not forced to work there they are not usurping your rights... rather you are agreeing to curtail your rights in order to gain and hold employment.

Maybe this is why they have a hard time retaining any experienced employees. When I started there in '90 people smoked. They even gave out shotguns as retirement gifts or as part of fund raising raffles for charities the refinery hosted.

By Ohio law:

"Employers may not forbid employees from storing guns in their vehicles while the vehicle is on the employer's parking lot.[4]"


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Ohio

It's been several years ago now, but once I was working for a large masonry contractor that had several projects and crews at several projects all going on at the same time. I knew that we had a big job at the Wyoming prison, but I wasn't there, I was working on a different job by Guernsey. I heard about it when it happened, when one of my coworkers had his vehicle searched on the prison grounds and they found a handgun, and now he was a prisoner. That wasn't very smart, I'm sure we would all agree. I hadn't met this guy yet when all this chit hit the fan, but I got to know him well several months later when he came to work in Guernsey. He was a good guy, and a very good bricklayer. His version, which I believe is that even though they were on prison property, they were nowhere near the prison -- you could see the prison, but it was a couple of miles away--no prisoners were ever anywhere near the jobsite. He drove a very nice Vette up from Colorado every week, and he said there was no way he would ever drive around the greater Denver area, especially in that car, unarmed. He also said that his hotel had a room safe and he kept his pistol there 3 days of the week (we worked 4 10s) and only on the last day of the week, when he checked out of the room, did he ever bring his gun to work, and he didn't do that even for the first six months of the job, and he had seen that nobody was ever getting searched, just waved through the gate towards the jobsite when they signaled that direction. He said also, that as far as he knew, he was the only person ever to have been searched on the job of any of the trades. He wasn't searched at the gate either, he was searched at the end of the day in the parking lot. He also claims to have never told a soul about the gun under his seat or had anyone else there ever seen it. Something doesn't add up? Were they profiling him because of his Colorado CCW? I don't know, but he did in a way get lucky, he got six months in county and a $5000 fine, no felonies -- it could of been many times worse, 10-20 IIRC. The company really didn't care if we carried in our cars or not, till now, just when we were going to be on prison grounds or military bases, schools, etc. then, you were to be immediately fired and escorted off the grounds. I can't say I blame them either, this was a multimillion dollar contract.

We had hired a guy to work in our optical lab, and wihin a month I fired him. A litany of ways he found to get him self in trouble. Long story short, he told some folks he'd be coming back and had a bone to pick with all the managers, including me. We were all well armed in case he did. Even the secretary was carrying. He got arrested a day later for getting in a bar fight. We never heard from him again.

Yeah, that's it. Don't worry about it, big brother will take care of everything. Everything will be okay.

Fire me so I can have a few months off and get all the back pay when we go to the labor board.
Going to be really funny having HR explain how they know I have firearms in my vehicle or even how they know it's my vehicle.