
Inducing People’s Employers to Fire Them Should Be a Civil Wrong - raleighm
https://quillette.com/2018/07/28/inducing-peoples-employers-to-fire-them-should-be-a-civil-wrong/
======
hirundo
Freedom of speech is important. Freedom of association is important. As long
as we respect both we won't interfere with people freely speaking to other
people's employers or employers choosing to disassociate themselves from
employees as a result. Sure free speech and association can have negative
consequences, they just tend to be less negative than prohibited or compulsory
speech or association.

~~~
rohit2412
I'm not so sure. If an employer wants to disassociate from Islam and fires all
muslims, why do we cover that under religious discrimination?

Why not stop discrimination over all ideologies? Maybe somebody will start a
religion for Nazism.

~~~
geofft
Are you genuinely asking for an entry-level explanation of why most modern
societies disapprove of discrimination on a few specific characteristics but
do not generally consider "ideology" one of them? (I can provide one, but
don't want to explain something basic if it's not actually at issue here.)

~~~
Inconel
I'm not the poster you're responding to, and I like to think I have a
reasonably good understanding of why modern societies don't discriminate on
characteristics which a person can't change, and while I personally find it
unethical to discriminate against someone based on their religious views, I
have a hard time discerning why religion should get that protection while
"ideology" shouldn't? As a non religious person I find religion both fairly
ideological and something that a person can readily change, at least in a free
society.

I've looked through your profile and you always seem to provide good
explanations so I'd love to hear your thoughts. I hope you can believe me that
this is a question asked in good faith.

~~~
wgjordan
For the sake of productive discussion, let's narrow 'modern societies' to the
United States since 1964 (when Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was passed).
In 1965, the Supreme court held (in United States v. Seeger) that:

'The test of religious belief [...] is whether it is a sincere and meaningful
belief occupying in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled
by the God of those admittedly qualified for the exemption.'

So a non-religious person like yourself _can_ have their 'ideology' legally
protected from discrimination, as long as it passes the same 'sincere and
meaningful' test that other protected religious beliefs do.

So the key to answering your good-faith question is in the definition/scope of
'religious' belief. A 'religious' belief (in this narrow context of US Title
VII law) must meet a higher standard than a more general 'ideological' belief
in that it must be both _sincere_ and _meaningful_ , and I would argue that a
sincere belief meeting this higher standard is, by definition, _not_
'something that a person can readily change'.

~~~
lostmsu
But why can't I make religious jokes at my workplace, if my ideology requires
fighting religion, and the most acceptable place for it is lunches at work?

~~~
wgjordan
Religious accommodations are not required by law if the employer can
demonstrate that granting them would impose an 'undue hardship' on the conduct
of the employer's business, which in this case would be liability for claims
of religious harassment.

~~~
lostmsu
Stumbling by prayer rooms in tech companies is an insult on my world view, but
I doubt courts would let me call it harassment.

Not to mention me having to pay for them indirectly.

------
duxup
I'm sympathetic to the example and idea, I guess I feel like it ... depends on
the situation.

Let's say you're running a coffee shop. One of your servers posts a lot of
racist stuff about minorities on twitter and it comes to light.

You want your shop to feel welcoming to all customers, keeping that person on
is clearly untenable, potentially even a risk for the business to survive.

Granted the article at the end does take a more measured approach compared to
the title that seems a bit absolute.

~~~
thunderbong
Is it really?

If nobody coming to the shop feels threatened, if the server's attitude
towards the customers is not racist, if nothing that the server is doing in
their private life is affecting your business, should you really be bothered?

Because, it feels to me, that once we give in to our imagined fears, we are
only a few steps away from becoming what we feared.

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gator-io
Still can't believe Brendan Eich was hounded out of Mozilla.

~~~
duxup
That's where IMO things get complicated.

Mozilla presumably has or would have gay employees. Meanwhile here is a guy
running the company supporting a cause to limit a specific group of employee's
rights to marry.

That's no small thing, it's not some generic labor dispute, it's a very
specific action that is specifically targeting a group of employees legal
rights regarding marriage.

I think there is a legit leadership problem there.

~~~
zbobet2012
By that logic should leadership fire those who support gun control? They are,
after all, removing (what to some) seems a constitutional right.

I'm not against gun control, but the argument here isn't a slippery slope one.
This is very close to believing or not in gay rights.

~~~
geofft
I think that if you donate to pro-gun-control causes and a significant number
of your employees own guns that you wish to ban ownership of and find it
personally important to own those guns, you might be a poor choice of CEO.

(Gun control isn't quite analogous here for a few reasons, one major one being
that employers care a lot about who you marry, for insurance and family-leave
reasons, and employers tend to care little about what guns you own. But if you
can construct some situation where, I dunno, you interrogate employees about
their guns or they want to open-carry at work, it's a little closer.)

Remember that nobody cared about Eich's views when he was CTO. He could have
remained CTO for years, and the question of his suitability as chief
_executive_ wouldn't have arisen.

~~~
paulddraper
> employers care a lot about who you marry, for insurance and family-leave
> reasons

Employers don't care _who_ you marry; they care _if_ you marry. Although,
those matters are related.

Similarly, employers doesn't care if you or others own a gun; they care if you
are alive and healthy. And those matters are related. [Insert debate here
about the direction of that relationship.]

~~~
geofft
> _Employers don 't care_ who _you marry; they care_ if _you marry. Although,
> those matters are related._

Sure. And if you are married to someone of the same gender, you reach the
situation where the question of if you are married has different answers to
different people.

Or more precisely, your employer doesn't care if you are married, either; many
states had processes for extending insurance benefits to either registered
domestic partners or unregistered people that you just state an intention to
live with long-term in a marriage-like way. Your employer cares that the
social good promoted by insuring a family and not just the individual employee
is a) actually being used when appropriate and b) not being used contrary to
their wishes when not. If the employee's and employer's idea of social good
and social ill are at odds, the employee should think twice about whether this
employer is a good long-term (or even short-term) place for them.

The fact that this question arises with a significant number of Mozilla
employees made Mozilla and Eich a poor match.

~~~
paulddraper
> the question of if you are married has different answers to different
> people.

No one has a different answer to this question.

This isn't baptism. If one group could have one answer and another group could
have a different answer, there would have no need for Prop 8, et al. The
conflict arose because there is only one answer to which people have entered
into a state-administered legal contract.

~~~
geofft
OK, fine, let's be even more pedantic. The question is whether you _should_ be
able to get or remain married to someone. The purpose of Prop 8 is to make
things that were previously recognized as legal marriages no longer legal
marriages. If you're in one of the affected marriages and your CEO is trying
to cause your marriage to become invalid, you may not share long-term goals.

(I can't tell, are you disagreeing with my point or just picking at the words
I'm using to make it?)

~~~
paulddraper
> trying to cause your marriage to become invalid

FYI, the validity of existing marriages was never really on the table.

> I can't tell, are you disagreeing with my point

I'm disagreeing with "gun control isn't quite analogous here for a few
reasons".

What if a leader opposed gun rights, thus removing employees' ability to
protect themselves? Or what if a leader supported gun rights, thus making
employees' communities more violent?

What if a leader opposed abortion rights, thus imposing an inappropriate level
of control on women and their bodies? What if a leader supported abortion
rights, thus showing a fundamental disregard for human life?

What if a leader supported minimum wage, thus showing a poor grasp of
economics? What if a leader opposed minimum wage, thus hurting his employees
financially?

What if a leader wanted increased defense spending, thus recklessly
endangering the well-being of the world? What if a leader wanted decreased
defense spending, thus recklessly endangering the well-being of the world?

What if a leader has Communist sympathies?

Or let's bring it back to marriage: What if a leader supported rights to
polygamist marriage? What if a leader opposed rights to polygamist marriage?

The usual response to this is "Well, _OBVIOUSLY_ X is the right thing."
Despite the fact that the country at large does _not_ have anything resembling
consensus on these issues. (Just as the supposed "obvious" answer to Prop 8
was evidently very non-obvious to most Californians in 2008.)

~~~
geofft
I am distinctly not claiming "Obviously X is the right thing." I am claiming
that if a leader believes that obviously X is the right thing, and a
significant number of employees believe that obviously !X is the right thing,
and the issue is likely to affect the productivity or long-term happiness of
employees, the leader is a poor choice. This claim does not in any way express
an opinion on which of the two groups is right. (Also, the poor choice may
still be the best of the available choices.)

~~~
paulddraper
In that case, I suppose I don't see that as a surprising or really even
noteworthy occurrence.

Statistically speaking, it is very likely that a CEO's political views are at
odds with half of his employees.

~~~
geofft
I didn't say it was surprising or noteworthy. Brendan Eich is one of literally
billions of people who are ill-suited to be CEO of Mozilla.

~~~
paulddraper
> I didn't say it was surprising or noteworthy

I don't think it's noteworthy that a CEO doesn't vote the same way as some
employees; I think it's notable that a CEO was fired for it. How many
companies have done that?

> billions of people who are ill-suited to be CEO of Mozilla.

 _Specifically_ (and this is really important -- you can't leave this out)
because of their political affiliation.

------
monksy
What we need is stronger rights for the worker. At the moment the employer
holds all of the cards and enjoys the fact that we can be let go for silly
social riots like this.

~~~
ngngngng
I debated this with a co-worker the other day. His opinion was that no matter
what the reason for firing an employee, the employer can always justify it by
citing performance or budgetary concerns. So the protections would be rendered
useless.

How's it work in Norway? They usually do a good job of making Americans look
silly when we say "that can't work because..."

~~~
mdekkers
_...citing performance or budgetary concerns..._

In the UK, where I ran a business and employed people, you need a small
mountain of paperwork, collected over a fair period of time, to show that you
tried in good faith to remedy the situation with the employee (in case of
performance). Budgetary concerns also carry a heavy burden of proof. It really
is a difficult and time-consuming path. Most medium and large companies choose
to bypass the whole thing and offer a "compromise agreement", essentially "we
give you x months pay right now if you sign this agreement where we mutually
agree not to sue, or talk bad against eachother, and you GTFO right now".

There is a significant risk of something called "constructive dismissal"
meaning you made it unreasonably hard for someone to be effective in their
workplace, that is decided by an employment tribunal. As an employer, the
system is undoubtedly a burden, but as a human, I always found I could live
with it. I had one instance where it was open-and-shut grounds for instant
dismissal, and I _still_ had to spend 4 months going through the process to
ensure I was fully covered and not liable to some tribunal action. That
sucked, but in the end there are many large firms that will fuck over
employees without a second thought (USA style), and employees need protection
from that.

~~~
DanBC
Although employees don't get those protections if they've been working for the
company for less than 2 years (unless the firing is discriminatory as defined
in the Equality Act), and bringing a case to Employment Tribunal is
fantastically expensive and thus not common.

------
projektir
This mostly comes down to employment being too important and an unbalanced
relationship between the employee and the employer. If the relationship was
more balanced, "you said something questionable on Twitter" just wouldn't
really be that compelling.

~~~
exabrial
I think this is an effect, but not a solution. The harder answer is we treat
others the way we would want to be treated if the roles were reversed.

~~~
projektir
I'm not sure how "we should treat others better" can be implemented in
practice? That seems to be in the same bucket as "people should be smarter".

~~~
deviationblue
> I'm not sure how "we should treat others better" can be implemented in
> practice?

This is an honest question from you, but to some it might seem like a no-
brainer. I think a lot of it has to with personality types.

------
exabrial
Indeed. I think harassing people because you disagree with their political,
religious, favorite flavor of skittle, etc is nasty. We need to have some
class as the entire country is running towards identity politics like it's a
good thing.

~~~
anonytrary
Unfortunately, in-group preference is like a primal instinct. People will
pretty much always (sub)consciously treat you differently if you are
different. This is why I prefer not to work for companies where everyone is
"like family". They tout a "strong company culture" but, to me, it sounds more
like "if you aren't one of us, we'll find a way to fire you".

~~~
duxup
I agree. It is human nature / instinct to get all tribal and such.

Someone had a great quote that I'm going to screw up big time here, but it was
something like, "Every civilization is invaded by barbarians, they're called
children."

Now as a parent it is amusing, but I belive the quote really was intended to
note how children aren't born making good decisions or making decisions that
support a community or civilization. Rather they must be taught to resist the
negative instincts in order to maintain society.

------
paxys
> There’s another issue here, too. Why do employers not stand up for an
> employee in the face of mob pressure? My own theory is that it comes down to
> “corporate branding” and the way in which an individual’s “personal brand”
> is thought to mesh with the employer’s “corporate brand.”

This is the key point in the article IMO. Companies could shrug off these
online mobs with a simple "none of our business" (and they have done so plenty
in the past). Nowadays, however, every company is working its way into
completely unrelated social causes simply for marketing, and employees must
bear that burden whether they like it or not.

------
mc32
On the one hand people have a right to free speech, on the other hand, they
should not leverage their jobs or positions when making controversial comments
so as to associate their employer with those words.

Of course, this position is frustrated by there not being a clear cut
distinction between work persona and private persona.

Ideally, with a platform like Twitter, you'd have two personas, one tied to
your employer or professional life, one tied to your private persona... For
example, Rosanne or the people in the article.

~~~
DanAndersen
Some people do separate their personal and work lives/personas. They are still
at risk when malicious actors work to "doxx" them and force that connection to
be made in the public space despite the honest attempt to compartmentalize.

~~~
mc32
This is true. But I mean it should br sicially acceptable to have at least the
two. That’s not to say people should not push back on odiousness, but the
pushback should happen on the account conducting the odiousness; hopefully
with some community policing. In other words there should be some modearation,
even if by a sympathetic group to ensure it does not become too extreme.

------
msiyer
Democracy is a function of many variables. "An average high intelligence of
population" and "high tolerance for seemingly outrageous ideas" are important
ones. Humans have rigid belief-systems (comfort zone) and show very little
capacity to step out of it.

In the current form of democracy, freedom of expression exists only when it is
convenient for masses or when the elites need to push an agenda.

------
everdev
People like to go for the jugular when topics like these are best tread
delicately.

I'm sure the reporter in the sorry feels passionately about his position but
if you use strong right/wrong language someone will probably end up feeling
offended and get defensive.

~~~
nemothekid
> _Hitler as an example in an argument about a modern day political debate._

Huh? What would this prove? Doesn't this happen already? Are you not aware of
Godwin's law?

------
meritt
If someone isn't ready to face the consequences of being of shunned
professionally or socially, all they need to do is stop being a terrible
person.

[https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/) sums it up quite well.

~~~
dredmorbius
Attacks may and have been fabricated out of the blue.

"When a Stranger Decides to Destroy Your Life"

[https://gizmodo.com/when-a-stranger-decides-to-destroy-
your-...](https://gizmodo.com/when-a-stranger-decides-to-destroy-your-
life-1827546385)

~~~
DanBC
But that is already a civil wrong, and would be covered by defamation law.

------
geofft
Glad to see Quillette come out against free speech.

