The Question of Moonlighting?

A whole lot of very distinguished entrepreneurs have spoken out against the practice of moonlighting.

In the post-Covid workplace, employees are using their pandemic experience to push at the boundaries of their work lives, creating tension. The usual arguments for and against have been made several times. From the employer’s perspective, the issue is often framed as an act of cheating—when an employee divides her attention between more than one job, it is also seen as a violation of the contract, both explicit and implicit between the two parties.

From the employee’s perspective, the issue is one of freedom beyond working hours. What the employee does in her spare time is seen to be her business, one which her employer can have no point of view on.

The conceptual issue at the heart of the debate is an interesting one. What does the employer buy—time or the employee’s commitment? If the employer is only buying eight hours a day, how can they lay claim to or have any say in what the employee does in the rest of the time as long as what they do does not conflict directly with the employer’s business? It is interesting that the word moonlighting picturesquely describes this idea—that the employee is using ‘moontime’, that belongs to them, rather than daytime, which is the employer’s.

However, is that all that an employer buys? A job is much more than contracted time. It is an affiliation, an act of belonging. We join a company; we don’t merely lend some regular time to it. When employees take on side hustles, they are in fact breaching this idea of belonging that is so central to the notion of employment.