Jumping the Gun
The issue of firearms in the workplace heats up.
The passage of an Oklahoma law last year allowing employees to
keep firearms in cars parked on company property isn't OK with
David Johndrow. "It's a bad law, basically," says the
37-year-old co-founder of HRLogix, an Oklahoma City-based HR
software company with 20 employees and $3 million in sales.
Johndrow isn't alone. Last year, Pizza Hut fired a delivery
driver who shot and killed a pistol-toting holdup man. The
driver's act was judged justifiable self-defense and no charges
were brought against him, but he was fired for violating his
employer's ban on guns in the workplace.
The issue of workplace firearms is heating up, with several
states passing laws expanding employees' ability to carry
weapons on the job, says gun-rights activist Alan Gottlieb, founder
of the Second Amendment Foundation in Bellevue, Washington.
Oklahoma has been joined by Ohio, where Gottlieb spearheaded a
lawsuit to relax gun laws, and Minnesota.
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Gottlieb says employers have the right to prohibit guns in the
workplace, but workers should be allowed to keep firearms in their
parked cars for convenience and protection. If they're not,
employers "could be liable for damages," he says.
A 2003 Minnesota law requires employers to let employees keep
guns in cars in the employee parking lot. That law was later judged
unconstitutional--a decision now being appealed, according to Mary
Krakow, an employment attorney with Minneapolis law firm Fredrikson
& Byron P.A. Employers who want the law struck down are
concerned about retaliation by workers who have been disciplined or
fired, Krakow says. "One fear is that a hot-headed employee
will go get that gun and return to the workplace with it," she
says. "Many employers say they need more latitude to ban guns
from the workplace."
A 2004 report by the Society for Human Resources Management
suggests relatively few small businesses are part of that group--it
found 42 percent of small firms had no written policies on weapons
at work, compared to 14 percent of big companies.