Google Says Staff Have No Right To Protest Its Choice of Clients (bloomberg.com) 358
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Google employees have no legal right to protest the company's choice of clients, the internet giant told a judge weighing the U.S. government's allegations that its firings of activists violated the National Labor Relations Act. "Even if Google had, for the sake of argument, terminated the employees for their protest activities -- for protesting their choice of customers -- this would not violate the Act," Google's attorney Al Latham said in his opening statement Tuesday at a labor board trial. National Labor Relations Board prosecutors have accused the Alphabet Inc. unit of violating federal law by illegally firing five employees for their activism. Three of those workers' claims had originally been dismissed under President Donald Trump, because agency prosecutors concluded that their opposition to the company collaborating with immigration enforcement wasn't legally protected, according to their lawyer. But that decision was reversed after President Joe Biden fired and replaced the labor board's general counsel.
Google has been roiled over the past four years by a wave of activism by employees challenging management over issues including treatment of sub-contracted staff, handling of sexual harassment, and a contract with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, which some of the fired workers accessed internal information about and circulated a petition against. Google has denied wrongdoing, saying in a Monday statement that it encourages "open discussion and debate" but terminated staff in response to violations of its data security policies. "Google terminated these employees not because of their protest as such, but because in the pursuit of their protest, they accessed highly confidential information that they had no right to access," its attorney told the judge Tuesday.
Federal labor law prohibits retaliating against employees for collective action related to their working conditions, but the exact scope of that protection has been debated for decades. Biden's appointees have signaled they interpret the scope of what that covers much more broadly than their Trump-era predecessors. Latham said he isn't aware of any case in the labor board's eight decades of existence in which it has held "an employer's choice of customer" to be an issue workers have a right to protest. "What we have here is a protest that does not seek to improve employees' terms and conditions of employment," but rather "a purely political protest that sought to use Google's government contracts, or potential government contracts, as leverage," he said.
Google has been roiled over the past four years by a wave of activism by employees challenging management over issues including treatment of sub-contracted staff, handling of sexual harassment, and a contract with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, which some of the fired workers accessed internal information about and circulated a petition against. Google has denied wrongdoing, saying in a Monday statement that it encourages "open discussion and debate" but terminated staff in response to violations of its data security policies. "Google terminated these employees not because of their protest as such, but because in the pursuit of their protest, they accessed highly confidential information that they had no right to access," its attorney told the judge Tuesday.
Federal labor law prohibits retaliating against employees for collective action related to their working conditions, but the exact scope of that protection has been debated for decades. Biden's appointees have signaled they interpret the scope of what that covers much more broadly than their Trump-era predecessors. Latham said he isn't aware of any case in the labor board's eight decades of existence in which it has held "an employer's choice of customer" to be an issue workers have a right to protest. "What we have here is a protest that does not seek to improve employees' terms and conditions of employment," but rather "a purely political protest that sought to use Google's government contracts, or potential government contracts, as leverage," he said.
I have to agree. (Score:5, Insightful)
What about their company motto? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't agree. Say your company worked for Epstein (before he didn't kill himself), I think it's valid to protest that. Working for the Taliban?
Yes, you can quit and lose benefits, medical etc. That's not exactly a good option. Yes, there should be limits on anything but employees don't protest reasonable things. They protest outlier events like that.
Also this is Google. "Don't be evil" is a joke for most of us, but for the guys inside... They actually believe that nonsense. I think these are the people who
Re:What about their company motto? (Score:5, Insightful)
Irrelevant. You are there to work for the company to promote its goals. If the company is doing something that is illegal, you have legal avenues to protest it. If the company is doing something legal and you just don't like it, you should become a company owner and raise the issue among other stakeholders.
The basic concept of "employee should be loyal to the employer" is so fundamental to the concept of employing people, that even socialists and communists demand it when they function as employers.
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An employee's loyalty should go so far as their notice of termination. If the company is not in the habit of giving two week notice before terminating employees, it has no right to expect a two week no
Re:What about their company motto? (Score:4, Interesting)
No it is not. Not in anything that resembles a healthy or free market.
What you're describing is a Rockefellerian dictatorship equal to monopolism that allows extortion, and it's officially not even just one, but multiple crimes.
It's funny, how the very people that always scream "FREE MARKET!", always argue against an actually free market, and ONLY and exclusively ever mean "free for THEM". Like "free to take other people's freedom".
TL;DR: Everybody gangsta 'till the Amazon death squads show up.
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There are no market considerations once the contract is signed. Market considerations are for when one looks for employee/employer. That is where selection factors are in play.
Once you're locked into an employment contract, selection factors are over. You have made your choice, and so did the other side.
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Re: What about their company motto? (Score:2)
Re:What about their company motto? (Score:5, Insightful)
No it is not. Not in anything that resembles a healthy or free market.
You don't seem to understand "health and free market".
You are wrong because the healthy, free markets says you can sell your services to other companies. If you don't like what your company starts doing or who it is doing business with then you can quit and find another job. That is the employment healthy and free market.
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Well, if you are a responsible adult, you have savings for a "rainy day" right?
That should include enough to cover health needs while you are between jobs.
You can buy your own private insurance, I've done such when contracting, no big deal.
And again, you can get another job and pretty much all W2 employment opportuni
Re:What about their company motto? (Score:5, Insightful)
Depending on the market, you may be "between jobs" for a much longer period of time than you think. And I don't know when the last time you priced COBRA or private insurance, but unless you're young, tip-top healthy, and SINGLE it is astronomical. With either, if anything serious actually happens it can be financially catastrophic.
Healthcare tied to employment is a very big power hold over people. It was a major driver with JFK obsessing over Medicare and Johnson picking it up after JFK's assassination.
This is just normal life and has been that way for far longer than I've been alive.
Just because something has been done a certain way for a lengthy period of time doesn't mean it is the right way, or can't be improved upon. Wrong but old is still wrong.
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And when your employer controls your health care... that isn't a free market any more.
When you quit your job, you qualify for COBRA. When you quit your job, you qualify to sign up for ACA insurance policies. What you are whining about is the fact that you will lose your employer paying for a lot of your health insurance. You are complaining about you being cheap and not saving money. You are upset that if you leave your job you will lose the benefit of your employer paying for your insurance.
It isn't healthy or free when your employer holds so much power over you and even that of your family.
See, that is a lie. Your employer doesn't hold power over you and your family. You hold the power. Wh
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Correct. Correct. Cor. R. Ect. Yeah, Google said "Don't Be Evil" 20+ years ago when the whole magilllah was beta.Until about.. oh.. 8-10 years ago, I would *so* be reacting negatively to this because, very briefly, I knew Sergey Brin in my youth, YEARS AGO, and was, again, *so* down with Google being the solution to everything. Ptthb.
And anyway, this is beyond the founders now. It's a regular company that, like many others, compels employees to sign things (that these dummies probably did sign without read
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Irrelevant. What you do on your own time without using company resources is your own fucking business, even if it's against the company's interest, otherwise, how would you defend union workers protesting on the public lawn in front of the company?
This is not exactly true. You are not completely free to work against your employer on your own time and expect continued employment. There are limits such as if your efforts damage the reputation of the company or interferes with their legitimate business. They can dismiss you. You may not like this or it may violate some sensibility you have but that is typically the way things work.
Union protests have limitations as well. Picketing when not on strike may be considered an illegal wildcat strike and
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Re:What about their company motto? (Score:5, Informative)
I assume you have some case law backing this up?
The US has At-Will Employment; it's the exception to the rule that a case of termination could even be challenged in court and get anywhere. Your boss can terminate you for almost any reason they fucking want to, Unless you got them to sign an employment contract stating otherwise, including anything they find out about you that happened off the clock.
They absolutely can; they can even terminate for outside activity that is completely innocuous - it don't even have to be against the company. If your boss goes to a restaurant when your not working and sees you wearing the wrong color of socks, they can fire you the next day for "poor wardrobe taste", and they'll be 100% legally in the right. Employers can fire anyone they want for almost any reason or no reason whatsoever.
There are only a few narrowly-taylored exceptions.
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The obvious next question is "what's coming to them in that case"?
Because in this case, the answer appears to be "nothing". The lawsuit appears meritless and brought in for political reasons with change of administration, a fairly common feature of US political system where new administrations upon coming in does certain things to reward certain interest groups.
This feature is utterly agnostic of "what administration is coming in" and is a universal in US political system. It's in fact one of the more visib
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Irrelevant. What you do on your own time without using company resources is your own fucking business, even if it's against the company's interest
Current legislation of most western countries completely disagrees with your ideas.
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Private organizations are not required to provide you with free speech.
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The basic concept of "employee should be loyal to the employer" is so fundamental to the concept of employing people
Never be loyal to a company, because the company will never be loyal to you.
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Fun part: most Western nations will legally require you to be loyal to your company.
Unless by "loyalty", you mean "never look for another employer". I don't, and neither does the law.
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I don't know what you mean by "loyal"
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Google the following words: employee's duty of loyalty to employee common law
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Typo, should be: employee's duty of loyalty to employer common law
Though you'll probably get pretty much the same results.
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The basic concept of "employee should be loyal to the employer" is so fundamental to the concept of employing people, that even socialists and communists demand it when they function as employers.
I don't think you are right.
Employees delivers their time and knowledge in exchange for money. They do not sell their soul.
Speaking as an employer.
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I'm confused how you went from "loyalty" to "selling soul".
Could you fill in the gap between the two?
Re: What about their company motto? (Score:2)
You made a great many assertions in your post. Which of them are backed by law, which are your opinion about how things inevitably work in practice, and which ones are your opinion about how they should work?
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100% of them are backed by law. Employee loyalty has been codified in Common Law and pretty much every system that came from it for at least three hundred years. Likely longer. They form the basis for having employee-employer relationship that extend beyond one sided affairs that they were before such thing was codified.
To my knowledge, this exists primarily in State law (rather than Federal law) in US, where all 50 states mandate duty of loyalty from employee to their employer. Typical definition is among
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Irrelevant. You are there to work for the company to promote its goals. If the company is doing something that is illegal, you have legal avenues to protest it. If the company is doing something legal and you just don't like it, you should become a company owner and raise the issue among other stakeholders.
Or, being inside a company you can influence the decisions and ways that companies are run. Management through dictatorship is a mark of a shitty company, and wholly shit do you sound like you would make one arsehole of a manager.
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Nothing you said is in conflict with the obvious point I stated above. A part of employees loyalty is to inform the employer where they believe that employer is making a mistake.
But they don't get to publicly protest your decisions after you considered their argument and rejected it, nor do they get to access private data within your company because they disagreed with your decision. This is what employees in question did, and why they were terminated.
P.S. Google are advocates of the opposite of free speech
Re: What about their company motto? (Score:2)
The thing with protest is... it's the last step before violent action, or sometimes even hand-in-hand with it. So, well, you get to protest whenever the fuck you want, any way you want, against whatever you want. This is why it's called "protest" and not "recourse".
You also get to live with the consequences, i.e. being out of a job.
(Yes, there are a limited number of forms of protest that must be tolerated by government per le constitution, like peaceful gathering. But this doesn't mean that anything labele
Re:What about their company motto? (Score:5, Interesting)
Having read most responses in this thread so far, I think people are getting hung on the word "loyalty". It seems that most people don't realise that this is a well established concept in Western jurisprudence and often defined in law.
For example, in my home nation, I'm required by law to be loyal to my employer.
https://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/... [finlex.fi].
This covers things like not disclosing business or professional secrets or any other kind of information that may cause economic harm to employer (unless it's about whistleblowing on illegal activities such as fraud). Relevant jurisprudence will literally use an word loaned from English: "lojaliteetti" to describe what standard worker should be held to. Yes, it's literally "loyalty" just adapted in a different language.
You will find similar clauses (they're almost all drawn in some from either original Common Law clauses or comparable Napoleonic Code version) in almost all Western nations, and many Commonwealth nations and former colonies of other Western nations. It's a deeply ingrained cross-cultural norm that was present for centuries. I'm genuinely surprised that this needs to be spelled out, I never thought this would be unclear to anyone who held gainful employment in a Western nation during their life.
Re:What about their company motto? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a company owner I want my employees to tell me if I went too far.
A) There is a difference in employees telling one if one went to far and employees protesting their employers when the employer decides the employees are wrong.
B) I doubt you are a company owner but let's pretend you own a dry cleaner. You employees come to you and say they don't want you dry cleaning police uniforms because the employees hate the police. You disagree because you aren't an idiot and know that most police are good and refuse to stop dry cleaning the police uniforms. So, your employees start protesting while at work by wearing shirts saying your company supports criminal cops and treats employees badly, opens a website saying the same thing, and protesting on the sidewalk outside the store. What do you do? Give up a significant amount of income or replace the employees?
If you give up the income you are a bad businessman.
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Have you considered taking your own advice?
"valid", sure. A legally protected class? No (Score:5, Insightful)
> I think it's valid to protest that.
Sure, it could be "valid" for me to protest the company changing the color of their logo. I might have a valid opinion about that.
That's not the question.
The question is - is it *illegal* for the company to fire me if I keep trying to get in the way of what the company is doing? Of perhaps I start making YouTube videos saying that the color they choose was also used by Nazis, and if I refuse to update the web site with the new color?
The answer is - no, it's NOT illegal for the company to fire someone who is trying to sabotage the company's efforts.
It's illegal to fire someone bases on race. It's illegal to fire them because they won't date you. It's illegal to fire them because they talked to co-workers about the time-off policies that you both work under. It is NOT illegal to fire someone who is trying to sabotage a $400 million contract with the government.
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That's a fair point. I'm not a lawyer. I think there's a nuance here similar to the one we have for speech (yelling fire in a crowded theater). I think this specific protest for this specific company isn't grounds for dismissal.
If an Oracle employee made that protest then, well... You know where you signed up to work...
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Yeah exactly. There's a difference between whether I agree with something vs that something being illegal.
You mentioned free speech. I strongly disagree with Aighearach thinking that black people are too stupid to learn to read, and unqualified to make their own decisions. Yet, I'm very much aware that it's legal for him to say that. I disagree with it. That doesn't make it illegal.
Though to be fair, if he ever fires any person of color, his comments will make it *look* like the firing was probably illegall
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Sorry, but last time I checked "Activist" wasn't a protected class. Imagine if people you disagreed with protested like this any time they wanted.
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I don't agree. Say your company worked for Epstein (before he didn't kill himself), I think it's valid to protest that. Working for the Taliban?
Valid and certainly reasonable to protest, But Not your legal right to be protected from being fired when doing so as an employee.
The NLRA's Section 7 protected rights are a special thing to protect employees engaged solely for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection for employees. It includes activities like strikes and walkouts
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Well they did officially delete "'Don't be evil" a long time ago as their motto.
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Re: What about their company motto? (Score:2)
If the secretary of Epstein's lawyer refused to work, should he be able to fire her for cause?
Re: What about their company motto? (Score:2)
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Yes, you can quit and lose benefits, medical etc. That's not exactly a good option.
So what if it isn't a good option for you? The world doesn't revolve around you.You are hired to do a job. If you don't want to do the job or you don't want to work for a company that does business with someone you disapprove of then you quit the job. If you protest, you can and should be fired. And, when you are fired, you don't necessarily get the benefits one gets when one quits.
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There are consequences to taking a moral stand. If you aren't willing to bear them in order to show the world that you are serious, don't even bother. If these em
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You're the type of person who'd say the holocaust was OK because it was the law. --.--
Call us when you became an individual.
Re:I have to agree. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the employees don't approve of the clients, they can leave. Google is not holding them hostage.
Protests should be limited to events that are illegal, such as employee discrimination or harassment.
Wow! Protests should only be about criminal actions? No protests for *anything* else? Should the protestors wait until after a conviction? Imagine what today's world would be if there had never been any protests.
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You have the right to protest just as much as google has a right to terminate you for such a protest.
That's literally the argument being made.
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It was less about the protesting and more about accessing company data they did not have permissions to access and then leaking it. Every employee at nearly every company signs NDAs and other documents which clearly spell out certain actions that they can be terminated for. There are legal protections for legitimate whistle blowing of illegal activities. This was not whistle blowing. This was employees not happy with certain government contracts trying to make their employer look bad to political activi
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Legally that is the case but it's probably not a great way to run a company if you want to retain the best staff. Good people can and will switch jobs.
Re: I have to agree. (Score:2)
A lot of good people are getting a little fed up with histrionics too. I suspect selecting for those will benefit the company in the long run.
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Wow! Protests should only be about criminal actions?
The question isn't about if protests should exist, it's about what protests should be afforded legal protection.
What if they cut off the free bagels? (Score:2)
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When they make public protests that discourage clients, most employee contracts are pretty clear about political activity that harms the employer.
This was precisely what James Damore did, internally at Google, when he published his concerns about Google's "ideological echo chamber" and his concerns that gender diversity efforts were ignoring biological distinctions among Google employees. He was quickly fired, and filed a discrimination lawsuit against Google rooted in the laws that protect people from term
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"patriarchal society" give me a break.
No. You don't get a break from reality. It is on all the time, and there is no off switch except on you.
As if the women, who have always been more united than men, were not equally responsible for hanging "witches" so that their children can claim it.
In fact they were not, as they were not allowed to make decisions in their community. That right was reserved for men.
And witch burning was not universal. cancel culture is.
I note you just gloss over the other stuff I mentioned, because it's inconvenient to your argument. That shit will not fly with me.
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Can you please rise to the intellectual discourse I am trying to have?
No, that would be literally impossible. I could sink to it, but I'd rather use my brain.
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My question is this: "Should there be consequences for speech?"
I believe the answer is yes. You are free to say anything you want in public, but if the public doesn't like it you face the results. Being unemployable because you said shitty things online is a result and I'm fine with that. Losing your business because people don't like your political views is also a thing I"m fine with. If the people who cry cancel culture disagree they can hire that guy and shop at those stores. Simple capitalism and freedo
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The equity and inclusivity people that Damore brought his concerns to *told* him to write them down and send them around for comments and feedback. He did so. He was ignored by one group, so he sent it to another.
And another and another and another and another. And another and another and another. For a month.
I'm tempted to say "read the room", except he finally sent it to the skeptics group who told him to knock it off because it was basically full of crap (yes I have read it, yes I know what it says, yes
Google IS holding them hostage! (Score:2, Insightful)
Google IS holding them hostage!
Sleeping under a bridge with no health insurance is not an option! [youtube.com]
You're deliberately using their rhetoric and ancient false arguments, to keep up a status quo, that you're suffering under. Stockholm Syndrome much?
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If the employees don't approve of the clients, they can leave. Google is not holding them hostage. Protests should be limited to events that are illegal
Yes and No. Protesting against your employer and keeping the job is not a right . The protection provided by the NLRA (Section 7) is for concerted activity related to collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection of employees.
I don't think people can just claim after the fact that an activity was related to such bar
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If the employees don't approve of the clients, they can leave. Google is not holding them hostage.
Protests should be limited to events that are illegal, such as employee discrimination or harassment.
That is completely wrong though. You don't protest illegal activities - that is very explicitly why we have the law, police, and the courts. Illegal activities such as discrimination and harassment should be prosecuted, like the on-going Activision Blizzard case. You protest against things that are legally acceptable but morally inconsistent / wrong. You can stage a protest against a company's environmental impact, privacy violation, assisting the Chinese government control and oppress its citizens and so o
Google Doesn't Like Employees Like This Guy (Score:2)
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This is not a Nazi situation.
Service cancelled for using wrong pronouns (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Service cancelled for using wrong pronouns (Score:3, Funny)
I sexually identify as always delivering bug-free code on the first go.
Re: Service cancelled for using wrong pronouns (Score:5, Funny)
I sexually identify as always delivering bug-free code on the first go.
Wow I'm turned on. Hard.
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The One Joke is more than a decade old now. Haven't you got any new material?
Re:Service cancelled for using wrong pronouns (Score:4, Insightful)
Who wants their business's Google Docs account terminated for using the wrong pronouns? The response to the Damore affair signaled that Google had adopted left wing campus politics as an management paradigm. It's pretty hard to return to a politics free workplace when you hire a ton of people whose political identity is more important to them than keeping customers happy or shipping good code.
Except none of that happened except in minds of far right nutcases.
Damore was one such nutcase and ultimately couldn't work with normal people.
In the mean time, Google are doing just fine.
Depends on when you protest (Score:2)
You can protest, but if you do it on company time, they have every right to fire you.
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Yeah, just like IBM (Score:4, Interesting)
Nothing bad at all about supporting Germany with Hollerith Cards and some Generic Genocide.
Not that Google would do anything "Evil". Nope, not a chance.
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So much for Don't Be Evil. (Score:3)
but then again, anyone who has read When Google met Wikileaks knows what's going on.
Yay, legalized fascism & dictatorship! (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sorry, Google, but people stood up, and the head of the royalty of France came off.
The same will happen to corporate dictatorships like you.
Because if corporations still hold absolute power over the vast majority of our lives, then we're not yet really living in a democracy.
Yet.
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So, a minority of very vocal employees demanding that the corporation they work for stop accepting business from certain legitimate entities is "Democracy"? A fringe minority demanding that everyone and everything comply with their personal political views or else is "Democracy"? That is actually a small group expecting to dictate their beliefs on the majority.
You need to better understand what Democracy actually is. That it only works when people engage each other and debate ideas. That it does not wor
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Are you claiming that the Reign of Terror was a general improvement over the French monarchy? Or only that it was more democratic?
Companies do not hold absolute power over any part of people's lives. They can tell employees what to do during work hours, and can require them not to misuse information or equipment entrusted to them, but that is because that's how employment works, and those are all limited by the government's laws and regulations.
Google made a rod for their own back (Score:5, Insightful)
Google, in common with other Californian tech companies, actively encourages identity politics and a college activist mentality. It should not come as a surprise when the mob they employed direct their activism against Google's business interests. They're also going to see long term difficulties in hiring talent due both to 'diversity' requirements and people not wanting to risk their careers - quickly ended if one of Google's activists should issue a denouncement.
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Re: Google made a rod for their own back (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. There's no shortage of examples where people thought they could control the revolution, only to later find themselves being escorted to the scaffold. People (e.g. Google) keep making this miscalculation.
Challenging Mega-Corporations (Score:5, Interesting)
I appreciate that what follows is borderline conspiracy theory, so please take with a grain of salt, but it’s worth pointing out just how dangerous it can be for an employee to challenge an all-powerful employer as smart as Google.
This isn’t a direct comparison, but readers might be interested in taking a look, for example, at the so-called McLibel Case [slashdot.org] in the UK. I’m giving that specific case as an example, because one of the elements of the prosecution against Steel and Morris, the two environmental activists at the heart of the case, concerned a meeting in which the only two participants who were not undercover agents for either the police or McDonalds were the two defendants. I’m citing that specific meeting in this specific case because at that meeting, the prosecution alleged that plans of direct action against McDonalds were made.
The defendants didn’t deny this, but pointed out that the proposals for direct action came not from them but from the under-cover agents working on behalf of McDonalds themselves. In other words, the whole thing was entrapment from start to finish.
Google’s lawyers told the court that in this case the activists were not dismissed for their protests over Google’s choice of customer, but over their access to highly confidential information.
How convenient.
What about everything the lawyer doesn’t say with that claim? Was this super-secret information adequately protected? Did they “hack” to get it? (In which case, why not refer them to the authorities and have them prosecuted under the Computer Misuse statute?)? How did they learn of the information in the first place? How was their intrusion detected? By whom? When? What actions did they take leading up to their access of this specific information - and if there was any suspicious or inappropriate action, were they previously cautioned?
The point I’m trying to make here is that an employer as powerful as Google - any employer as powerful as Google, is always going to be able to find something that they can use as grounds for dismissal. As others in this thread have pointed out, ask James Damore.
The impression this gives is that Google are being, shall we say, “Economical with the Truth” and disclosing only that information that they believe will convict the defendants and not any information which would show the Court that they may have acted to entrap them.
Of course I have zero knowledge of the specifics and have never worked for Google.
But from cases like the McLibel incident and from personal experience with other large employers, I’d say that big companies have learned how to dismiss those they deem to be “troublesome” staff using techniques that aren’t always squeaky clean.
Worth watching for the discovery on this one, methinks.
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The fact you were modded up only shows way to many people think they control their employers and their employers shouldn't be allowed to fire people for insubordination.
The fact of the matter is that no company and no one owe
I think Google is right (Score:2)
In this instance, I think Google is saying the correct message. Activist employees, unfortunately are trying to have it both ways, and are trying to be the tail that wags the dog, so to speak.
The only honourable way to conduct oneself in a political dispute between your employer is to resign. That's something activist employees will rarely do.
If you don't like a customer, leave (Score:2)
Joining a one department does not automatically grant you a right to influence what other department does, unless they're doing something illegal.
If you want to be part of that decision making, apply for a transfer. You're either working at the wrong department, or the wrong company.
Google's new company motto (Score:2)
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Refusing to serve LGBT customers IS a criminal behavior (discrimination), thus you agree with the OP.
Maybe you should choose another argument...
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Google is arguing that is has grounds to dismiss, so their argument is strong by your own definition.
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I was answering the bakery analogy above. The argument Google made is against protests which are speech. If so they are protected as long as they don't divulge company secrets. I don't get the point you're trying to make.
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They are not protected if these protests are publicly against company interests AND not about illegal actions/protected characteristics under law. At least not in any nation I know of. There might be an exception internationally somewhere, but I can't think of one off the top of my head.
In case of bakery, the argument would be about protected characteristics. That's a special category in law that is awarded protections that other subjects are not. Google's employees are not protesting something related to p
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Sure, and the company has the right to fire people who do that, just like they have the right to fire people who noisily assert that one race or ethnicity group is superior to others.
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That's the result of you leaving your morals at the door when you were job hunting. To bad you're now working for a company that is not compatible with your personal moral standard.
To correct this mistake, re-do your job hunt.
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Nobody has said you are not able to express your opinion. You aren't able to do it in a way that interferes with the company's ability to operate.
What you are saying — literally — is that you aren't able to express your opinion if it interferes with a company's ability to operate. But sometimes a company's ability to operate should be interfered with. Further, it's a disingenuous take. Google could still operate even if they stopped doing business with China, they simply wouldn't be able to do some of the things they do now. And frankly, that would be better for humanity.
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You company has the right to fire you for protesting the company. Read your employ handbook on employee conduct.
Companies don't owe you a job. Companies have a right to free association. Companies have a right to free speech too. Your rights don't override the rights of others.
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Your claim is too simplistic and constitutes a false dichotomy.
The U.S. Constitution is a document that defines and constrains the government; it does not state or define what the People can do. The Constitution does not grant freedom of speech as a universal right to the People; what it does do is proscribe the government from limiting freedom of speech. "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech". The distinction this makes is that the Consti