Company Provided Blackberry

[mgeoghan]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Massachusetts

My company recently changed our wireless policy so that employees must pay 20% of the voice portion of our Blackberry bill. They say this is to account for personal use of the device. Is this practice legal? We are required to have a Blackberry by the company, they will not let us use personally owned devices, and what about those employee such as myself who already have personal cellphones. I have no need to use my work phone for anything other than business. Any insight that can be provided would be much appreciated.

 

[pattytx]

Yes, it is legal as long as you signed some type of agreement when you got the device (or subsequent to getting it). The only argument you could make is if you could prove that you NEVER use the device for anything except business and I don't know how you'd do that, unless you can provide a history of detailed bills and tie every single communication to a business reason, even texts. I don't have a Blackberry, but my phone bill doesn't show the numbers to people whom I've texted or have texted me, or people who have called me.