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“leave your politics at home” must remain explicitly disjoint from “workers have a right to self organization”. if it doesn’t, then workers don’t have a right
by hprotagonist 7y ago
“leave your politics at home” must remain explicitly disjoint from “workers have a right to self organization”.
if it doesn’t, then workers don’t have a right to self organization , and that, uh, doesn’t end well.
- danharaj 7y ago"leave your politics at home" while working for a company that is shaping tomorrow's society. that is to say, adopt the politics of your boss at work. i don't like that.
- hprotagonist 7y ago“inaction is implicit support of the status quo” is, unfortunately, true.
- mc32 7y agoIsn’t that why people have a right to vote?
- t34543 7y agoYes, I would rather see Google accept/tolerate all political viewpoints. Google is mostly liberal but that doesn’t represent everyone. They have a significant influence. We should all be free to form our own opinions, whatever they may be, and not fear retribution from anyone.
- arkades 7y agoDon’t work there? Vote for policies that shape tomorrow? “Accept large sums of money for building your boss’ vision for tomorrow while complaining about it” has a lot going for it, but I have a hard time actually sympathizing for folks that think they’ve a right to that.
- mc32 7y agoI see your point but allowing workers to decide the politics of a company is populism. People feel confident because they have many like minded colleagues. What happens when the winds change? Are people going to be happy when the workers of Exxon decide that it’s in their best interest to extract from some wildlife refuge? It’s not a good idea. We have laws that should govern corporations and businesses . It should not be a referendum for everything.
- bluntfang 7y agoAre you suggesting that Exxon doesn't already lobby governments to make the laws that allow them to extract oil from places where they really probably shouldn't? And that the employee's opinions don't matter?
- bluntfang 7y agocan anyone help me with why this post got downvoted?
- pjc50 7y agoIf not the workers deciding what the politics of a company, then who? It's going to be a much smaller number of people from a much more privileged class; the managers and key shareholders. > Are people going to be happy when the workers of Exxon decide that it’s in their best interest to extract from some wildlife refuge? No, but that's because they're not happy when the managers of Exxon decide that either? Really the underlying problem is that giant companies and especially media companies like Google have a very large amount of political power. Almost more than the big parties, and certainly more than the average grassroots organisation. How google uses that power matters. If Google want to be apolitical, the very first step should be to end all their corporate political donations and PACs. A good second step would be to end all recommendations (ie free promotion) for political videos on youtube.
- zarkov99 7y agoWell, I don't like a bunch of activist techies trying to shape tomorrow's society using the assets of their host corporation. The answer, I believe, is to reduce the "shaping" impact of corporations in the first place.
- mc32 7y agoI think these things are distinct. You can advocate for unionization without being political. For example you can advocate for unions but you don’t have to conflate that with your personal politics.
- danharaj 7y agoIf you don't consider unions a political issue then what is your definition of politics? The organization of labor is one of the central pillars of civilization and has been political since time immemorial.
- goatinaboat 7y ago“We should have a Union to negotiate with management” is orthogonal to “we should cease all work for law enforcement”.
- danharaj 7y agoSo which politics are OK and which aren't? They're both politics even if they're "orthogonal".
- goatinaboat 7y agoThe first one is protected by law, which is what this case hinges on. But it’s not at all clear that everyone who wants a union at work also shares an identical opinion on open borders, drone strikes, facial recognition etc etc
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoThe kind of politics where you point at specific people or groups and say "ooh, they're nasty" isn't OK.
- shadowgovt 7y agoUnions have traditionally painted management as adversarial to employee best interests. Is agitating for unionization therefore the kind of politics that isn't okay?
- BickNowstrom 7y agoOk. Then bring your politics to work. But when you have to make a difficult decision (whether to ban a popular Youtuber for hate speech), make that decision based on precedent, the good of the company, and for the users. Don't view it as a personal attack to your political beliefs, and default to banning when the free speech happens to clash with your beliefs, while defaulting to complaining when people talking about LGBT+ rights get demonitized. Also, if you are allowed to take your politics to work, accept that others may bring their opposing politics to work too. The vocal conservative-right Googlers are in the minority, and are mistreated as such by the political power brokers. A union should be for all the workers.
- ummonk 7y agoThe NLRA protect's worker's rights to organize around labor conditions at the workplace. Labor conditions are only a subset of politics.