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I apologize if this is a naive question, but didn't they expect to get fired? I certainly would, if I started publicly protesting my employer.
by rmbryan 7y ago
I apologize if this is a naive question, but didn't they expect to get fired?
I certainly would, if I started publicly protesting my employer.
- compiler-guy 7y agoProtected activities are protected. You'll notice from the text of that article that some of the retaliation stopped once a lawyer got involved.
- java-man 7y agoI am sure they'll be moved to a different project and then subsequently fired for "performance reasons".
- Jasper_ 7y agoThat is also against the law. From https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/retaliation.cfm https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/retaliation.cfm > For example, depending on the facts, it could be retaliation if an employer acts because of the employee's EEO activity to: > * transfer the employee to a less desirable position;
- malcolmgreaves 7y agoThank goodness for the labor movement.
- kolbe 7y agoThe problem with that, like so many laws, is that you have to prove motive for the law to work. I'm sure the previous commenter is not so naive as to think companies give a formal, written demotion stating that their EEO activity was the reason.
- perfmode 7y agoNot anymore you don’t. It’s easy nowadays to conceal motive through indirection.
- hnal943 7y agoThere are lots of reasons the involvement of lawyers could slow things down. That doesn't mean that Google was behaving illegally.
- Jasper_ 7y agoNot only is it a terribly bad look, retaliation against workers organizing is against the law. EDIT: Since people don't believe me: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/retaliation.cfm https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/retaliation.cfm
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- turc1656 7y agoThat law protects against retaliation only against certain protected actions by the employees. Nothing these Google employees did is even close to being on that list. The Google employees simply didn't like what their company was doing and decided to take a very public action against it. There is nothing protected about that at all, whatsoever. I don't even think it would be covered if they were unionized.
- Jasper_ 7y agoThe walkouts were organized to protest ongoing claims of sexual harassment and abuse. That is protected action. Namely, the second bulletpoint here: "communicating with a supervisor or manager about employment discrimination, including harassment"
- bendbro 7y agoNext time they should communicate with their supervisor in binary encoded ASCII, 1s encoded in days they are in office and 0s in days they are out of office ;) Edit: Guys stop hating me im just trying to help the cause!1!!
- turc1656 7y agoYou are correct. I can't edit my original comment anymore but found this explanation - https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2018/11/01/when-a-walkout-hits-employees-and-employers-rights-during-a-protest/?slreturn=20190322161726 https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2018/11/01/when-a-walkout-hi...
- 7y ago
- AntiTechTechie 7y agoThey honestly don't expect to be fired which boggles the mind...they are that delusional...It's kind of a running joke here, we look at some of these activists/protesters and rarely are they L6+ working on anything remotely important...
- saagarjha 7y agoThey don’t expect to be fired because it would be against the law if they were.
- AntiTechTechie 7y agoSure, you don't think Google will find a way to identify these "problem" employees, transfer them to a pointless project or put them on something that will cause them to leave on their own accord? Their managers could easily give them CMEs for good reason (wasting time on activist bullshit instead of doing work, etc..), essentially forcing them to leave...
- ravenstine 7y ago> transfer them to a pointless project or put them on something that will cause them to leave on their own accord? This could be the subject of a dystopia or a dark comedy where the free world has been taken over because could-be revolutionaries are placed on boring, pointless, mismanaged, tail-chasing projects so they have no time to think about the bigger picture or take any real action against the system.
- AntiTechTechie 7y ago> This could be the subject of a dystopia or a dark comedy where the free world has been taken over because could-be revolutionaries are placed on boring, pointless, mismanaged, tail-chasing projects so they have no time to think about the bigger picture or take any real action against the system. This sounds like the current world we all live and work in...basically we have a bunch of "bullshit jobs" to occupy our time during the day and endless trash entertainment to distract us and keep us from noticing how shitty modern industrial life really is...
- idlewords 7y agoBroadly speaking, it's illegal to fire or otherwise punish people for this kind of concerted workplace action, under the Wagner Act. This is the cornerstone of US labor law. It's important to point out that you can get fired for protesting alone. But once you start organizing, you unlock a lot of legal protections.
- jseliger 7y agoThis reminds me of a recent conversation with Tyler Cowen and Jordan Peterson: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-jordan-peterson-db9a718beebe https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-jord...: COWEN: If we turn to senior management of large American companies, as a class of people — and I know it’s hard to generalize — but what do you see them as just not getting? PETERSON: I would caution them not to underestimate the danger of their human resources departments. COWEN: Say more. PETERSON: Yeah, well, because I see that the social justice etiology that’s destroyed a huge swath of academia is on the march in a major way through corporate America. And if the corporate people think they’re immune to it, they’ve got another think coming. It’s not like they’re any smarter than the universities. COWEN: And who gave the HR department so much power? How did that happen? What myth did we follow that led us wrong? PETERSON: That’s a good question because they had virtually no power to begin with, right? HR departments have always been underpowered, so to speak. If Google is still mostly focused on writing software and building the future, rather than prosecuting culture wars, that strikes me as a slight but real positive sign.
- jrochkind1 7y agoFiring people for organizing is in fact taking part in a war. It's just the wrong side of the battle, which you may prefer.
- pmoriarty 7y ago"If Google is still mostly focused on writing software and building the future, rather than prosecuting culture wars, that strikes me as a slight but real positive sign." In other words, if corporations stopped trying to prevent sexual harassment and discrimination, Jordan Peterson would consider it a positive sign. The more I learn about this guy, the more of a scum bag he appears.
- reallydude 7y ago> if corporations stopped trying to prevent sexual harassment and discrimination, Jordan Peterson would consider it a positive sign. That's not the implication. He was speaking about the Damore issue, wherein the Google HR department focused on mandating equity. > The more I learn about this guy, the more of a scum bag he appears. Most everyone who criticizes him takes a bad faith approach and draws their own conclusions. This is typical. eg /r/enoughpetersonspam for endless interpretations of phrases as philosophical statements
- rmbryan 7y agoOkay, again, I'm uninformed: How is anyone supposed to establish WHY a company does something? The rule says, "For example, depending on the facts, it could be retaliation if an employer acts because of the employee's EEO activity to..." The word because bewilders me here. Who knows why anyone does anything? I don't know why I do 90% of what I do. If someone accused me of having tuna for lunch because of someone's EEO activity, how could I possibly prove they were wrong?
- Jasper_ 7y agoWhen you run a multi-billion dollar company, you need to know why you do 90% of what you do. If you don't, you can talk about it with people called "lawyers" who can tell you whether it's a good idea or a bad one before you do it. They demoted two employees who were highly performing, weren't told otherwise, but coincidentally highly instrumental in organizing and staging protests. Doesn't take a genius to figure out why they were forcibly transferred.
- throwawaysea 7y ago> Doesn't take a genius to figure out why they were forcibly transferred. This doesn't meet the standards for burden of proof.
- azernik 7y agoAs lmkg mentioned at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19721225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19721225 - the burden of proof in civil cases is "preponderance of the evidence". This kind of information can easily clear the bar.
- tartuffe78 7y agoI would guess it would go like this: 1. Fired employee sues employer 2. During discovery, fire employees lawyer requests all documentation/emails/performance reviews for employee 3. Lawyer tries to show proof there was no other reason for the firing.
- 7y ago
- mtgx 7y ago> I certainly would, if I started publicly protesting my employer. I'm sure most Europeans here would agree that this is a very sad statement.
- neilv 7y agoI'd assume that most of them didn't expect much/any disfavor. Wild guess is that Google internal culture has more "we're the good guys" beliefs among employees than many other companies. And, at least in the past, Google officially supported Don't Be Evil. If so, that good-guy identification might be self-fulfilling to some degree, in the people who are attracted disproportionately, and in reinforcement from an atmosphere of many people identifying that way. Continuing the wild guessing, it's possible that people think Google is a safer place to speak up than many other places. And especially in the age of 'social media', we have blurred ideas of where the line is, between collegial dialogue and public performance. Also, a single person's blurred ideas about that can turn something that was internal for everyone else, into public for everyone else. Though, in general, if people feel they have to go public about an issue (assuming it's genuine by everyone, not a self-regulation/PR stunt, nor politician-style individual career-building by some)... that seems to suggest that they don't have sufficient influence and trust internally, without putting the organization on the spot publicly. If you don't trust your colleagues/management to do the right thing, or you still don't have influence, I'd say that's not a place you want to be. If the idea of walking away sounds bad, consider whether you actually can find influence and trust within the organization. (And let the rest of us know where you eventually find influence&trust, because that can be hard to find.)
- TheCoelacanth 7y agoThey probably did expect Google to illegally fire them, but they would be morons not to publicize that Google illegally fired them.
- grecy 7y ago> but didn't they expect to get fired? I certainly would, if I started publicly protesting my employer What a sad state of affairs when workers in the supposed 'greatest country on earth' feel that way.
- JustSomeNobody 7y agoOf course they did. That's one of the points to doing it. They also expected to fight the consequences.