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I don't think it's reasonable to pretend voicing opinions can be separated from "concerted activities". It's too cute to claim that even if only one person is

I don't think it's reasonable to pretend voicing opinions can be separated from "concerted activities". It's too cute to claim that even if only one person is expressing an opinion, that it isn't "concerted" and "for mutual aid". Even the first person to speak up about something is trying to get support from others, and if we used sophistry to allow employers to suppress that, then how do you get to the next step of organizing people? An honest person looks at their argument and if it leads to an absurdity, such as with any law completely negating it, the argument must be BS.

jrochkind1 5y ago
Yeah, totally. But legally the voicing of opinions is protected because it's related to those "concerted activities". (as opposed to original commenter who thought it should be protected only when unrelated to those activities!) One reason this matters, is that employees do not in fact generally have the equivalent of first ammendment rights at work. I'm just saying the law in the US, agree or not. (although I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice). So for instance, if you work at, I dunno, a company that sells the color Blue, and you go around speaking at conferences on how Blue is actually the worst color and everyone should use Yellow instead, it's unlikely this would be considered a protected activity they can't fire you for. You don't generally have "free speech" rights at work. (The current law, whether we like it or not). If the original commenter thinks you should, that you should generally be able to voice whatever opinion you want totally unrelated to "organizing" activities, go around telling everyone that Blue is a terrible mistake of a color while working at Blue Inc and they shouldn't be able to fire you for it since you're just expressing your opinion... they are actually arguing for an expansion of labor rights, which is to say a restriction on employer ability to fire, that does not currently exist in the US. Which, sure, I could welcome that. It's not the way it works now. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomspiggle/2018/09/28/free-speech-work-rights/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomspiggle/2018/09/28/free-spee...
- perl4ever 5y ago
  This all sounds like stuff that's not in the law, but seems like "common sense" to some people and not others. The rights you take for granted are not permitted to workers, even when the law says so, everybody assumes stockholders have. Look at GameStop and its followers. It was selling "Blue", that is, video games in stores, and some weirdos on reddit became obsessed, caused a short squeeze, or so the myth goes, and some of them had strong opinions that the company should and could totally pivot to some sort of completely different business that's substantially online. That is, "Yellow". So if shareholders can engage in that sort of activity, why not a union? And if a union can, then surely the law requires that people be able to do it whether or before there is an official union; the whole point is to enable and protect collective action. "employees do not in fact generally have the equivalent of first ammendment rights at work" Ok, but nobody said they did - they have specific rights from a different source. Sometimes companies, even large or long-lived ones, do have to totally change their business. I forget which one it was, but there was one of those snack cake/junk food companies that went bankrupt a while ago. Ideally, management and workers would find a way together to save things. When a company goes down the toilet like that, management usually blames the union, so it would be perverse to declare that in general, the workers need to stfu and gbtw instead of having opinions on the business.

jrochkind1 5y ago

Yeah, totally. But legally the voicing of opinions is protected because it's related to those "concerted activities". (as opposed to original commenter who thought it should be protected only when unrelated to those activities!) One reason this matters, is that employees do not in fact generally have the equivalent of first ammendment rights at work. I'm just saying the law in the US, agree or not. (although I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice). So for instance, if you work at, I dunno, a company that sells the color Blue, and you go around speaking at conferences on how Blue is actually the worst color and everyone should use Yellow instead, it's unlikely this would be considered a protected activity they can't fire you for. You don't generally have "free speech" rights at work. (The current law, whether we like it or not). If the original commenter thinks you should, that you should generally be able to voice whatever opinion you want totally unrelated to "organizing" activities, go around telling everyone that Blue is a terrible mistake of a color while working at Blue Inc and they shouldn't be able to fire you for it since you're just expressing your opinion... they are actually arguing for an expansion of labor rights, which is to say a restriction on employer ability to fire, that does not currently exist in the US. Which, sure, I could welcome that. It's not the way it works now. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomspiggle/2018/09/28/free-speech-work-rights/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomspiggle/2018/09/28/free-spee...

perl4ever 5y ago
This all sounds like stuff that's not in the law, but seems like "common sense" to some people and not others. The rights you take for granted are not permitted to workers, even when the law says so, everybody assumes stockholders have. Look at GameStop and its followers. It was selling "Blue", that is, video games in stores, and some weirdos on reddit became obsessed, caused a short squeeze, or so the myth goes, and some of them had strong opinions that the company should and could totally pivot to some sort of completely different business that's substantially online. That is, "Yellow". So if shareholders can engage in that sort of activity, why not a union? And if a union can, then surely the law requires that people be able to do it whether or before there is an official union; the whole point is to enable and protect collective action. "employees do not in fact generally have the equivalent of first ammendment rights at work" Ok, but nobody said they did - they have specific rights from a different source. Sometimes companies, even large or long-lived ones, do have to totally change their business. I forget which one it was, but there was one of those snack cake/junk food companies that went bankrupt a while ago. Ideally, management and workers would find a way together to save things. When a company goes down the toilet like that, management usually blames the union, so it would be perverse to declare that in general, the workers need to stfu and gbtw instead of having opinions on the business.