Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital
I think he meas "right to fire" state.Darth Wong wrote:What do you mean by "right to work state"?Kamakazie Sith wrote:It seems that if it is a right to work state that he can fire her for that. There isn't much she can do...
So why would this make it acceptable to fire this woman for having the wrong political affiliation?Joe wrote:"Right to work" laws simply secure the right of employees to work regardless of whether they want to join unions or not. Nothing wrong with that in principle.
It has nothing to do with that, I was just correcting people who seemed to think Right to Work laws were the reason she got fired.Darth Wong wrote:So why would this make it acceptable to fire this woman for having the wrong political affiliation?Joe wrote:"Right to work" laws simply secure the right of employees to work regardless of whether they want to join unions or not. Nothing wrong with that in principle.
I agree with you. However, they call it "right to work". I'm not sure why they don't call it something more accurate but that's the way things are.Darth Wong wrote: Contracts cannot contravene legislation, regardless of whether you sign them or not. I can only see this working in a state that has almost no worker protection laws at all.
In any case, I certainly can't understand why it would be called "right to work". It sounds like the correct term would be "right to arbitrarily fire".
They're the reason a lot of people get fired for stupid things in Utah. Basically the way it was explained to me is an employer doesn't have to cite a specific reason to fire you, they just can. The other side of the coin is they can't tell anyone you were fired either.Joe wrote:It has nothing to do with that, I was just correcting people who seemed to think Right to Work laws were the reason she got fired.Darth Wong wrote:So why would this make it acceptable to fire this woman for having the wrong political affiliation?Joe wrote:"Right to work" laws simply secure the right of employees to work regardless of whether they want to join unions or not. Nothing wrong with that in principle.
I don't have anything against unions in general (I'm in the Louisville Music Union myself, though I've been inactive since going to school, and I notice that wages for gigs are a lot less outside the union's area), but I don't care for strong-arming people who aren't in the union out of a job the way the union shop setup does.
Decent of him, I've got to give him that. Obviously a blatant political move, but at least she'll get paid.
I'd say the applicable federal statute would be the Constitution: Right to freedom of expression (she wasn't talking about her political views at work, she just had a bumper sticker in her car, which she doesn't use at work), freedom of association etc right there, you can't go any higher than that.Glocksman wrote:She wasn't union, so her termination didn't violate a collective bargaining agreement. I'm not sure of the laws in her state, but a lot of states have what's called 'at-will employment'.
In other words you can be fired at any time for any reason, so long as the reason doesn't violate any state or Federal civil rights laws.
I'm not certain about this, but I don't think her activity was protected under any Federal labor laws and since it was in the South, I doubt if it was protected under any state laws.
But I could be wrong, so we need Stravo to look up the applicable Federal statutes for us.
Glocksman wrote:What happened violated the spirit of the Constitution, sure.
However, by and large the Constitution is a restraint on the powers of government, not private citizens.
Doesn't it work BOTH ways? That if it guantees freedom of expression, it means both that the Government and its citizens have to observe this right? I thought the US constritution was binding on all the people of the United States?From a Slate article on the subject SlateGlocksman wrote:What happened violated the spirit of the Constitution, sure.
However, by and large the Constitution is a restraint on the powers of government, not private citizens.
In other words, it's reprehensible but probably legal unless it violated a state law.
But like I said, I'm not 100 percent certain of the federal law on the subject.
and just because I am seriously thinking that this is Sig worthy... Same article.
One of this column's various mandates is to keep track of people who get fired from their jobs solely for holding certain political beliefs. Firing a person because you don't like his or her politics runs contrary to just about everything this country stands for, but it is not against the law. My interest in this topic was stimulated a couple of years ago when I learned that my childhood friend Michael Italie, who sewed U.S. Navy jackets for Goodwill Industries in Miami, got fired for appearing on television as the mayoral candidate for the Socialist Workers Party, in which capacity he made some predictably provocative statements. Subsequently, I wrote about Bryan Keefer, who lost his job as a research assistant with the Service Employees International Union for writing an online column critical of the coinage, "Enron conservatives." In both of these examples, the extracurricular activities that caused offense were entirely unrelated to the fired person's job and were not performed, or even discussed, in the workplace.
In a political campaign, I should note, it's entirely appropriate to hire somebody based on that person's politics.
Emphasis mine. The 1st Amendment only prevents the government from censoring people this way; it has no effect on private employers, so what the owner did is in no way "unconstitutional". However, as others have pointed out, he could still be in violation of federal or state "wrongful termination" laws.The 1st Amendment wrote:Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech...
And the article ends with the ultimate irony of this particular case...Italie had not been proselytizing within the Goodwill plant, and he was not accused of doing so. His views had come to management's attention only because Italie was making a quixotic run for Miami mayor on the Socialist Workers Party ticket. A few days before his firing, Italie appeared in a TV debate and made several highly provocative remarks...
Goodwill makes no bones about the fact that it fired Italie not for any on-the-job conduct but for holding views it does not wish to be associated with. "We cannot have anyone who is attempting to subvert the United States of America," Dennis Pastrana, chief executive of Goodwill in South Florida, told the Miami Herald on Oct. 30. "His political beliefs are those of a communist who would like to destroy private ownership of American enterprises and install a communist regime in the United States." ...
when the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union looked into Italie's case, it discovered, as Pastrana evidently had, that Goodwill was on strong legal footing. "There is no legal case to be brought," explains Miami chapter president Lida Rodriguez-Taseff. "The law is pretty clear that a private employer can fire someone based on their political speech even when that political speech does not affect the terms and conditions of employment."
A public employer would be prevented from firing someone based on political speech (because that would constitute the government itself suppressing free speech).
I mostly quoted it due to the better explanation of the basic American position in regards to such matters. It also seems clear why she did not sue, she would have lost. Somehow she would have lost.The irony is that one can make (and many have made) the case that people like Michael Italie shouldn't be permitted to hold jobs in government, where at least in theory they have the power to subvert the U.S. system. Yet it is in government where Italie would be protected. In the private sector, where Italie is entirely harmless, he enjoys no protection at all.
This means that "freedom of speech" in the US is just a slogan with no substance behind it. Yiou have the right to free speech as long as you only say things that the big money elite (i.e. those whose companies people depend on for their livelihood) approve of, otherwise you have the right to shut the fuck up and take it up the arse. Your country is seriously fucked up on a very fundamental level.White Cat wrote:Emphasis mine. The 1st Amendment only prevents the government from censoring people this way; it has no effect on private employers, so what the owner did is in no way "unconstitutional". However, as others have pointed out, he could still be in violation of federal or state "wrongful termination" laws.The 1st Amendment wrote:Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech...
First of all, it's not "my country."This means that "freedom of speech" in the US is just a slogan with no substance behind it. Yiou have the right to free speech as long as you only say things that the big money elite (i.e. those whose companies people depend on for their livelihood) approve of, otherwise you have the right to shut the fuck up and take it up the arse. Your country is seriously fucked up on a very fundamental level.
Edi wrote:This means that "freedom of speech" in the US is just a slogan with no substance behind it. Yiou have the right to free speech as long as you only say things that the big money elite (i.e. those whose companies people depend on for their livelihood) approve of, otherwise you have the right to shut the fuck up and take it up the arse. Your country is seriously fucked up on a very fundamental level.White Cat wrote:Emphasis mine. The 1st Amendment only prevents the government from censoring people this way; it has no effect on private employers, so what the owner did is in no way "unconstitutional". However, as others have pointed out, he could still be in violation of federal or state "wrongful termination" laws.The 1st Amendment wrote:Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech...
Edi
That's a different matter. If the person is actively disrupting the workplace by proselytizing there, that's enough to fire them for it. There is also the little thing about freedom of association cutting the other way. There is a freedom to form associations that have certain kinds of rules, and those associations cannot be forced to employ people who go against the rules and/or try to undermine the association. The caveat is that the rules must be relevant, which requirement the Catholic hospital would fulfill, because their work is based on religious tenets even if they perform a practical service.Glocksman wrote:Or unless you're union. Union contracts include 'just cause' clauses and lay out what is considered legitimate grounds for termination. If she had been union, the ALJ not only would have given her the job back, he probably would have fined the employer for deliberately violating the contract.Edi wrote: This means that "freedom of speech" in the US is just a slogan with no substance behind it. Yiou have the right to free speech as long as you only say things that the big money elite (i.e. those whose companies people depend on for their livelihood) approve of, otherwise you have the right to shut the fuck up and take it up the arse. Your country is seriously fucked up on a very fundamental level.
Edi
My guess is that its not illegal because of the potential for forcing an organization to employ someone who is directly opposed to the goals of the company. One example would be an abortion rights activist employed by a Catholic hospital that refuses to perform abortions due to moral restrictions.
Should this hypothetical hospital be forced to continue the employment of the activist once he/she speaks out against the hospital's position?
The religious organizations have that exemption precisely because of the above freedom of association vs freedom from discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion etc issue, and there's nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is that in America there is no universal ban on discrimination based on race, sex, religion or lack thereof, ethnicity, political beliefs and affiliation etc, which has been written into most European constitutions anyway.Glocksman wrote:As I pointed out earlier, the laws vary from state to state. In other states, your right to speak out and keep your job is largely protected, though exemptions are made for religious organizations.
Not quite true.What is wrong is that in America there is no universal ban on discrimination based on race, sex, religion or lack thereof, ethnicity, political beliefs and affiliation etc, which has been written into most European constitutions anyway.
Then why is not discrimination based on political views prohibited? Seems even more grotesque, because the law is obviously meant to prevent arbitrary discrimination of all types, and its lack just opens the door wide open to abuse. "He's got different political opinion than I, so I can fire him" could be applied to almost any difference of opinion.Glocksman wrote:Not quite true.What is wrong is that in America there is no universal ban on discrimination based on race, sex, religion or lack thereof, ethnicity, political beliefs and affiliation etc, which has been written into most European constitutions anyway.
Federal law prohibits all of the above with the exception of political belief in regards to employment and housing.
