Speaker 1: It's a politically charged time, and people aren't staying quiet
Speaker 1: about what they think. They're more likely to take their
Speaker 1: beliefs public in the form of protests and rallies. But
Speaker 1: what happens when your boss or your coworkers don't agree
Speaker 1: with you? When can you be fired for being political?
Speaker 1: This is game Plan. Hi. I'm Francesco Levi and I'm
Speaker 1: Rebecca Greenfield, And this week we're talking about whether and
Speaker 1: when it's okay for your company to take action against
Speaker 1: you for what you believe. Yea. And there are a
Speaker 1: few examples that got us thinking about this, the first
Speaker 1: one being the Google engineer James Daymore who wrote this
Speaker 1: widely circulated memo in which he talked about the biological
Speaker 1: differences between men and women, and he basically criticized the
Speaker 1: company's diversity initiatives. And then the company fired him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When this one public, there was a huge out about
Speaker 1: what he wrote. Um. And then he also had his
Speaker 1: defenders and when he was fired, Um, many people applauded that,
Speaker 1: and many people on the other side said that firing
Speaker 1: him was the wrong move. The company should not have
Speaker 1: sort of quashed conservative viewpoints. Yeah, And there's this argument
Speaker 1: that companies should allow differing viewpoints to exist, and our
Speaker 1: colleagues wrote an article about how this specific incident led
Speaker 1: to a lot of very lonely conservatives in Silicon Valley,
Speaker 1: which is true. But he was also at work and
Speaker 1: criticizing his employers, so they think that they're in their
Speaker 1: right to fire him for that. Yeah, if you go
Speaker 1: public with a really searing criticism of what your company did,
Speaker 1: you can kind of expect there's going to be some retribution.
Speaker 1: I would think, Um, but what about a case where
Speaker 1: you're saying something political and it's totally unrelated to your
Speaker 1: job and you still get fired. The very extreme example
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of is the handful of white supremacists, neo Nazis,
Speaker 1: alt right, whatever you want to call them, that were
Speaker 1: fired from their jobs after pictures of them at the
Speaker 1: rally in Charlottesville went public. Yeah, we can think of
Speaker 1: all sorts of reasons companies wouldn't want these people to
Speaker 1: work at their companies, unjustified reasons for them firing them, Like,
Speaker 1: if you have a diverse workplace, that might be hard
Speaker 1: to work next to somebody who thinks that you're an
Speaker 1: inferior human. Um, you also make your company look bad.
Speaker 1: But I also think that this brings up an interesting
Speaker 1: question of what you do outside of work. The political
Speaker 1: leaves you have may have consequences for you and your job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking about examples of people with right wing ideas
Speaker 1: who were penalized by their companies, but this question is
Speaker 1: actually relevant to anybody who wants to be outspoken and
Speaker 1: involved in a political cause on any side. Suppose you
Speaker 1: wanted to take the day off from work to attend
Speaker 1: the Women's March, or you were active in the Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter movement. You might want to know what your
Speaker 1: company's policies are about political speech and whether those policies
Speaker 1: are legal. And I think you and I as journalists
Speaker 1: have been thinking about this more than other people in
Speaker 1: other fields, because many media organizations and news companies have
Speaker 1: specific codes of conduct and there are ethics policies around this.
Speaker 1: A lot of journalists aren't supposed to participate in political
Speaker 1: gatherings and are supposed to seem more unbiased, so it's
Speaker 1: something we're used to thinking about. But now I think
Speaker 1: people in other industries who don't have to see him unbiased,
Speaker 1: but are just working at jobs that might not have
Speaker 1: anything to do with politics. It's something that they are
Speaker 1: going to start thinking about too. Yeah, this question is
Speaker 1: getting a lot of airtime. And of course whenever one
Speaker 1: of these incidents or examples goes viral, it spawns a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand online experts in employment law and First Amendment
Speaker 1: protections who say, on one side, um, at well, employment
Speaker 1: means that anybody can be fired at anything, for any
Speaker 1: time and there's nothing anyone can say about it, which
Speaker 1: isn't quite right. Um. And then on the other side,
Speaker 1: you know First Amendment, The First Amendment protects everybody and
Speaker 1: you should be able to practice free speech at any cost,
Speaker 1: which also isn't exactly right. And so as confident as
Speaker 1: these experts are, we wanted to talk to an actual
Speaker 1: expert about what really can get you fired. Art Leonard
Speaker 1: is the Robert F. Wagner Professor of Labor and Employment
Speaker 1: Law at New York Law School. He has focused on
Speaker 1: employment law, aids law, in lesbian and gay law for
Speaker 1: over thirty years, and he has his own monthly podcast
Speaker 1: called l g B t Q Law Notes. So a
Speaker 1: big question a lot of people are asking right now,
Speaker 1: can you lose your job for doing something political, even
Speaker 1: if you keep it totally out of the office. It
Speaker 1: depends who you work for, and it depends the nature
Speaker 1: of your job, and it depends exactly what are you
Speaker 1: doing outside of the office. In fact, you'll find the
Speaker 1: lawyers answer to almost all these questions is always it
Speaker 1: depends on so many different factors. We have to distinguish,
Speaker 1: for example, between public employees and people who work for
Speaker 1: non governmental agencies and companies. Well, maybe we should start
Speaker 1: with that distinction private and public, because with with public
Speaker 1: employees the First Amendment comes into play. That is the
Speaker 1: constitutional protection for freedom of speech. And also state constitutions
Speaker 1: have protections freedom of speech, but their protections that you,
Speaker 1: as a citizen have against the government. And if you
Speaker 1: are a public employee, of course you're also a citizen,
Speaker 1: so you still have that First Amendment right. And if
Speaker 1: the government is your employer, the government is restricted to
Speaker 1: some extent by the First Amendment. The problem is that
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court has constructed a relatively complex body of
Speaker 1: rules governing the degree to which First Amendment rights attached
Speaker 1: in any particular situation to what public employees do very
Speaker 1: comp located. It dates really in terms of modern Supreme
Speaker 1: Court law to a case called Pickering, which goes back
Speaker 1: half a century now. Pickering was a high school teacher
Speaker 1: who was very upset with the austerity budget proposed by
Speaker 1: the school board in his district and he felt they
Speaker 1: weren't adequately funding activities at the high school. And he
Speaker 1: went public with this with a letter to the editor
Speaker 1: of a local paper, and he got fired. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: I have a First Amendment right as a citizen to
Speaker 1: speak about a topic that's before the public. The public
Speaker 1: has to vote on the austerity budget. Shouldn't I be
Speaker 1: in tided to speak about that and the school She said, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you're an employee of the school district and you're
Speaker 1: being disloyal and you're criticizing the board of Education and
Speaker 1: you're poisoning your relationship with the administration. How should that
Speaker 1: be resolved? Does he have a First Amendment right to
Speaker 1: write to the newspapers? And the Supreme Court said, well,
Speaker 1: he's writing about a subject of public interest that is
Speaker 1: pending in the political process. So it's clearly it's commentary
Speaker 1: that should be at the core of the First Amendment
Speaker 1: that protects democracy right and the right of individuals to
Speaker 1: participate and articulate their views on questions of public interest.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, the school district has a
Speaker 1: right not to employ people whose activities are disrupting the
Speaker 1: operation of the education system. If they can show that
Speaker 1: his activities disrupted the smooth operation of the school, then
Speaker 1: the First Amendment shouldn't protect him from being dismissed. But
Speaker 1: they have to prove that. The school has to prove
Speaker 1: that allowing him to continue to be a teacher at
Speaker 1: the school will disrupt the educational process. And the court
Speaker 1: wasn't convinced to that. They said, you know, the school
Speaker 1: is going to be put to a high burden to
Speaker 1: show that it's disruptive because core political speech is heavily
Speaker 1: protected by the First Amendment. So when I say it
Speaker 1: always depends, it depends on the facts of any particular case.
Speaker 1: But in the public sector of the First Amendment has
Speaker 1: heavy protection. Now, I think if a public high school
Speaker 1: teacher was out there on a picket line holding a
Speaker 1: banner with a swasticker and yelling racist and anti Semitic things,
Speaker 1: I think the school board would have a pretty good
Speaker 1: case to discharge them, even though their demonstration is in
Speaker 1: some sense core political speech, because it's probable disruptive effect
Speaker 1: is very easy to imagine because what they're doing is
Speaker 1: so incendiary that it's going to upset the people that
Speaker 1: they work with, the co workers, the students, the parents.
Speaker 1: There will be all kinds of disruption. I can imagine
Speaker 1: school board meetings with shouting parents, screaming, and fights breaking out.
Speaker 1: So in a situation like that, I think it's likely
Speaker 1: that the school board would win if that person was
Speaker 1: discharged and brought a First Amendment lawsuit. But say are
Speaker 1: COG and some bureaucratic machine working for palvinu and Services
Speaker 1: or that, I rus that they might have a harder time.
Speaker 1: They might, They might. It depends on the facts of
Speaker 1: the situation. It depends on the conduct the person engages in.
Speaker 1: If they're engaging and very incendiary conduct and their court
Speaker 1: on the media and their picture and they're bearing a
Speaker 1: torch and they're screaming epithets and things of that sort,
Speaker 1: the chances that that will be disruptive are much much
Speaker 1: higher than if, like they're writing a letter to the
Speaker 1: editor to the newspaper. It seems like it might be
Speaker 1: harder to do something completely in your private life nowadays
Speaker 1: if your name is attached to something, even if you
Speaker 1: don't say I'm an employee of such and such an organization.
Speaker 1: It's pretty easy for people to find that out through
Speaker 1: social media or other ways. So does that factor in
Speaker 1: when people are making these decisions like should people be
Speaker 1: worried about that about staying private if they're doing political
Speaker 1: activities outside of work. I think they may have to.
Speaker 1: Part of the problem is that this body of law,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned the Pickering cases from the nineteen sixties. Uh,
Speaker 1: this body of law has developed over time, and some
Speaker 1: of the principles would develop before we had the Internet,
Speaker 1: before we had social media, before it was so easy
Speaker 1: to figure out who people were and who they work for.
Speaker 1: So it may be that the Supreme Court, when confronted
Speaker 1: with cases like this in the future, will adjust some
Speaker 1: of its holdings to reflect the new reality. People have
Speaker 1: to be concerned about what they do outside the workplace
Speaker 1: if they work in a job for the government where
Speaker 1: they can be perceived as somehow representing the government's views.
Speaker 1: And you're saying that public employees are more protected, Well,
Speaker 1: they have the First Amendment, which in some cases will
Speaker 1: protect them. Although the Supreme Court decisions of a time
Speaker 1: have been narrowing and narrowing and narrowing that. But when
Speaker 1: you go outside the government sphere into the private sector,
Speaker 1: it depends on totally different factors because the First Amendment
Speaker 1: is only restriction on government, not a restriction on private employers.
Speaker 1: But there are many circumstances where there are restrictions on
Speaker 1: private employers. For example, there are quite a few states
Speaker 1: that have statutes that say that you can't discriminate against
Speaker 1: or discharge an employee for engaging in lawful off duty conduct. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of the statutes were passed with heavy lobbying
Speaker 1: from the tobacco industry, which was concerned at a time
Speaker 1: where there was talk about employers firing smokers because they
Speaker 1: would present higher health care courts, and the industry wanted
Speaker 1: to protect smokers from being discharged from being smokers as
Speaker 1: long as they're not smoking at work if the workplace
Speaker 1: has no smoking rule. So uh, these statutes were passed,
Speaker 1: and in some jurisdictions they were very narrowly written to
Speaker 1: protect people who were consuming lawful things like alcohol or tobacco.
Speaker 1: It didn't protect people who were smoking marijuana, although these
Speaker 1: days it might. I guess the question is, then, would
Speaker 1: participating in a on the extreme and a white supremacy
Speaker 1: rally be considered lawful off duty conduct if the person
Speaker 1: doesn't engage an unlawful conduct. Demonstrating for an unpopular cause
Speaker 1: in the United States is not per se illegal. Of course,
Speaker 1: if you engage in violent activity and assaults, if you're
Speaker 1: carrying a weapon openly in a state that doesn't have
Speaker 1: open carry, then you're arguably engaged in illegal conduct. So
Speaker 1: a law of this type wouldn't protect you. But about
Speaker 1: hate speech, hate speech depends again on whether their statutes involved,
Speaker 1: and it also depends on the status of the employee
Speaker 1: and the nature of the workplace. UH. For example, most
Speaker 1: employees are at will employees. That means their status, that
Speaker 1: contractual status with respect of their employer means they can
Speaker 1: quit any time they want for any reason they want,
Speaker 1: and the employer can fire them for any reason it wants,
Speaker 1: as long as it's not an illegal reason. So we
Speaker 1: would have to find a statute that prohibits firing someone
Speaker 1: for a particular purpose, like an antidiscrimination statute which says
Speaker 1: you can't fire someone because of their religion or their
Speaker 1: national origin, of their race or sex, or something like that.
Speaker 1: So if you have a particular statutory limitation. Then the
Speaker 1: mere fact that the employe is an at will employee
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that you can discharge them in violation of
Speaker 1: the statute. But we also have in many states what
Speaker 1: is called the common law rule, a rule not based
Speaker 1: on a statute but just judge made law that says
Speaker 1: you can't discharge somebody for a reason that would undermine
Speaker 1: the public policy of the state. And so we have
Speaker 1: to figure out what is the public policy of the state,
Speaker 1: what is its source, and is it just statutes or
Speaker 1: might it also be constitutional state constitutional protections. California, for example,
Speaker 1: there was a body of case law developed saying that
Speaker 1: the California Constitutions Protection for Privacy protected employees from being
Speaker 1: discharged for various kinds of off duty conduct because they
Speaker 1: had a right to privacy that the employer couldn't intrude upon.
Speaker 1: And uh some states, like Massachusetts, for example, has a
Speaker 1: statute that protects employees from discrimination for their political activities
Speaker 1: as long as they're legal. But some states say an
Speaker 1: employer who doesn't like Republicans can fire someone who they
Speaker 1: discover as a Republican. Depends what state you're ine, and
Speaker 1: it depends on their status. Now they're not in that
Speaker 1: will employee. That's a totally different story. Employees who are
Speaker 1: represented by labor unions are usually not at will employees
Speaker 1: because the union negotiates a collective bargaining agreement with the
Speaker 1: employer that limits the terms on which employees can be
Speaker 1: disciplined or discharge and subjects those decisions to a grievance
Speaker 1: procedure that ends up usually with neutral arbitration to decide
Speaker 1: whether the employer's activity was proper under the contract. Employment
Speaker 1: law is actually a rather complicated subject. Sounds like it, um.
Speaker 1: So there's a recent case that got a lot of attention,
Speaker 1: which is the Google engineer who wrote this long screed
Speaker 1: basically criticizing Google's policy, Google's diversity initiatives. That was discharged
Speaker 1: right and he was discharged, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: weighed in on both sides of that argument. So I'm
Speaker 1: saying that he should have had a right to free
Speaker 1: speech or First Amendment protections, which we're learning now he
Speaker 1: probably didn't have a right to Google as a private
Speaker 1: sector company. And if he was an apt will employee,
Speaker 1: if he had a contract for a specified duration and
Speaker 1: they fired him before the terminal date of his contract,
Speaker 1: then they would have to have just cause. They would
Speaker 1: have to satisfy a court that they had a good
Speaker 1: reason for terminating the contract, that somehow his conduct had
Speaker 1: been inappropriate for somebody in that position. Now, Google is
Speaker 1: a very visible company, and it's a company that is
Speaker 1: perhaps vulnerable to consumer boycotts, and they might argue that
Speaker 1: an employee who very publicly articulates a particular controversial position
Speaker 1: could damage the reputation of the company, and that might
Speaker 1: be considered a just cause for terminating a contract of
Speaker 1: specific duration. But it is an at will employe. It
Speaker 1: would depend what state he's in and whether the state
Speaker 1: has a law that forbids discriminating against someone because they
Speaker 1: express a particular political position. It's also interesting because what
Speaker 1: he was doing was directly criticizing the company's policy. So
Speaker 1: even though there was a political element to it because
Speaker 1: he was talking about diversity initiatives, he was also kind
Speaker 1: of taking a stand against his own company. And I
Speaker 1: wonder if that could potentially factor, And if you needed
Speaker 1: to find cause for a firing, I think it probably
Speaker 1: would in in someone who had some kind of contractual
Speaker 1: claim based Let's say he has a five year contract
Speaker 1: or something like that and it's his third year and
Speaker 1: they want to fire him. I think they could probably
Speaker 1: persuade a court that they had a decent justification for
Speaker 1: firing someone who would publicly criticize the company's policy because
Speaker 1: there's no First Amendment protection. There's no freedom of speech
Speaker 1: in the private sector unless the employer wants to grant. Also,
Speaker 1: I believe you mentioned off duty conduct. I believe this
Speaker 1: was happening at Google. Is that different where he was
Speaker 1: circulating this within the company, so it's not off duty conduct?
Speaker 1: And certainly, uh, this is this is one issue that
Speaker 1: has come up, for example, in the context of social media,
Speaker 1: that people will post stuff critical of their company on
Speaker 1: their Facebook page. Can the company fire them for that
Speaker 1: if they're not using a company computer and only their
Speaker 1: Facebook friends can see it. Although we know that Facebook
Speaker 1: posts are leaky and friends forward things and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden things get out. Uh. And I would say
Speaker 1: that a company that wants to fire someone for posting
Speaker 1: something critical on a Facebook page probably can do it.
Speaker 1: Although there is an argument to be made in the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court is actually going to be hearing about this
Speaker 1: whether it violates their rights under the National Labor Relations Act.
Speaker 1: If they're posting something with the intent and hoping to
Speaker 1: encourage fellow workers to combine to protest a particular workplace
Speaker 1: policy or something like that. Is that concerted activity? Because
Speaker 1: under the National Labor Relations Act, employees have a right
Speaker 1: to engage in concerted activity with respect to their working conditions.
Speaker 1: So someone is trying to initiate concerted activity through a
Speaker 1: Facebook posting, and many of her Facebook friends are actually coworkers,
Speaker 1: there's a plausible argument, although the Supreme Court might decide
Speaker 1: it's not so plausible that that is covered by Section
Speaker 1: seven of the National Labor Relations Act, which protects concerted activity.
Speaker 1: Have the courts ever weighed in on what actually constitutes
Speaker 1: political speech, because it seems like there are some cases
Speaker 1: that would be obvious, right if you're if you're canvassing
Speaker 1: for a political candidate in your local district, that's that's political.
Speaker 1: But there are other things that have become so mainstream,
Speaker 1: like to say, support advocacy for LGBT rights or something
Speaker 1: that that may not necessarily be considered political because it's
Speaker 1: it's just more of a broad sort of humanity issue.
Speaker 1: But that generally is considered by politically is broadly interpreted
Speaker 1: as matters of public concern, matter on which members of
Speaker 1: the public may hold different points of view, and matters
Speaker 1: of debate, the kinds of stuff that newspapers and magazines
Speaker 1: and media will report about. That's matters of public concern.
Speaker 1: Purely private interests and disputes are distinguished from that. And
Speaker 1: there was a case involving an assistant district attorney in
Speaker 1: New Orleans who had some gripes about office policy, and
Speaker 1: she circulated an internal memorandum seeking signatures on a petition
Speaker 1: to get the district attorney to change certain office policies,
Speaker 1: and she was fired. Was she protected under the first
Speaker 1: Amendment and district attorney's a public official? First Amendment should apply?
Speaker 1: But the Supreme Court said that the employer could fire
Speaker 1: her because she was disrupting the office and there was
Speaker 1: no public interest in it, and there was no interests.
Speaker 1: There was no public interest at all. They said it
Speaker 1: was internal office policies and gripes and things of that sort,
Speaker 1: about promotion policies and assignments and things of that. So
Speaker 1: so they do a line they said, that's not really
Speaker 1: a matter of public concern. I might differ on that
Speaker 1: on the theory that it should be a matter of
Speaker 1: interest to any citizen of the city if there say,
Speaker 1: is discrimination in terms of assigning assistant district attorneys to
Speaker 1: particular kinds of cases and stuff, and that's law enforcement,
Speaker 1: that's public policy. But the Supreme Court drew aligned. They
Speaker 1: said that was an internal grievance. I think many of us,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of people can get behind not
Speaker 1: wanting to work along white supremacists or people who are violent. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think there's also a concern of chilling people's
Speaker 1: speech on the office. Are things that they do outside
Speaker 1: of the office. Um. I'm trying to think how to
Speaker 1: should should we worry about chilling anti Semitic and racist speech.
Speaker 1: That's I don't want to ask that question. But it's like, um.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, in the country with the
Speaker 1: first Amendments, when you're not talking about inside the workplace,
Speaker 1: people we generally feel should be free to express themselves,
Speaker 1: and that airing obnoxious ideas in the marketplace of ideas
Speaker 1: gets other people to contradict them and to have an
Speaker 1: argument to try to persuade people of what the correct
Speaker 1: point of view should be or the preferable point of
Speaker 1: view should be. So we generally don't like to see censorship.
Speaker 1: That's the whole idea of the First Amendment and political
Speaker 1: speech being protected, that we allow people to argue out
Speaker 1: their points of view and public but certain kinds of
Speaker 1: speech are considered harmful. That's why we have hate speech laws,
Speaker 1: hate crime laws, and things of that sort, and why
Speaker 1: they are controversial. And the Supreme Court has sometimes in
Speaker 1: one particular case, they struck down hate speech law, and
Speaker 1: some of the lower courts have stricken laws that focused
Speaker 1: almost entirely on speech and said, you've got to show
Speaker 1: that there's more than speech involved, that there's perhaps some
Speaker 1: incitement to illegal activity or something like that. Before we
Speaker 1: finish up, I just wanted to ask you. You've been
Speaker 1: in this field for for decades. Are there things in
Speaker 1: your experience that used to be okay for companies to
Speaker 1: do that are just widely considered not okay or vice
Speaker 1: versa that um companies are doing more and more that
Speaker 1: they never would have considered before. Well, companies are being
Speaker 1: much stricter than they used to be on off duty
Speaker 1: conduct that might affect worker performance in the workplace. And
Speaker 1: when I first got involved in teaching employment law and
Speaker 1: actually practicing before I started teaching back in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties, employers weren't drug testing employees. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a more recent development. Now we have these zero
Speaker 1: tolerance policies, and even if someone's off due to use
Speaker 1: of marijuana or something like that purely recreational and they're
Speaker 1: in a state where it's not illegal, but an employer says, well,
Speaker 1: marijuana can have a continuing effect and it can affect
Speaker 1: people's ability to perform their job, and so we're gonna
Speaker 1: have a zero tolerance policy, and even if it's off duty,
Speaker 1: we're gonna just say if you test, policities of your out.
Speaker 1: That's relatively new, certainly compared to when I first started out.
Speaker 1: Employers are also having much more access to information about
Speaker 1: employees because of social media, And before there was Facebook,
Speaker 1: you couldn't use Facebook to look up job applicants and
Speaker 1: see if they were on Facebook and if they were
Speaker 1: engaged in activity you'd rather not be associated with. So
Speaker 1: one of the big issues now is the degree to
Speaker 1: which it's appropriate for employers to take action on job
Speaker 1: applicants based on research they do about them on social media,
Speaker 1: which didn't exist years ago. So they certainly have been
Speaker 1: big changes well, thanks so much for coming in and
Speaker 1: talk to us. All right, You're most welcome. Lawyers love
Speaker 1: to say that it depends when you ask them questions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you were hoping for um, if you were hoping
Speaker 1: to come out of this interview with a rule of
Speaker 1: thumb for what you should and shouldn't do or what
Speaker 1: you can get away with at work, UM, you were
Speaker 1: out of luck. I do think that part of the
Speaker 1: reason it's so hard to say that there's a blanket
Speaker 1: rule for everyone is all of the you know, the
Speaker 1: different legal the complexity of a legal precedent and the
Speaker 1: state laws that Art was discussing. But also it's it
Speaker 1: has to do with how many things have changed over
Speaker 1: the years about the way we work about technology, about
Speaker 1: social media, so like even the very definition of public
Speaker 1: and private is different. It used to be that you,
Speaker 1: I think we're a lot safer having um, fringe political
Speaker 1: ideas or any political ideas and never having them bleed
Speaker 1: into your work life. Now, if you ever dare to
Speaker 1: take that on social media, UM, or go to a
Speaker 1: protest and get your picture taken, there's so many ways
Speaker 1: that your employer could find out you know, what you're into,
Speaker 1: and then that even goes into like what is on duty,
Speaker 1: what is off duty? Are technology and our work lives
Speaker 1: have changed such that we're always kind of working, so
Speaker 1: it's not as easy to know if somebody was interfering
Speaker 1: with their work time when they did a political activity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking about the white supremacists who got fired.
Speaker 1: The way they got fired was through the practice of
Speaker 1: do sing, which is Internet speak for basically finding the
Speaker 1: personal information of people and posting it online and making
Speaker 1: it public, which is a relatively new practice that came
Speaker 1: out of hacker culture on the Internet. I don't know
Speaker 1: how you would do that in pre Internet times, but
Speaker 1: that that's something that people have to watch out for now.
Speaker 1: He also mentioned so many specific cases where companies were
Speaker 1: able to make creative arguments that these employees that were fired,
Speaker 1: we're doing things that you know, violated their public image
Speaker 1: or got in the way of their work. Um. And
Speaker 1: so it's not to say that you would always lose
Speaker 1: if you took on a company, and he certainly cited
Speaker 1: cases where the company is lost. But I think it
Speaker 1: goes to show that even if you think you have
Speaker 1: studied the case law, or you know what your state
Speaker 1: or your company allows. Um, you're not necessarily safe going
Speaker 1: out and saying any old thing in a public forum
Speaker 1: and knowing that your job is going to be guaranteed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, if a company deems you bad for their
Speaker 1: workplace there, you can turnish their reputation, you can create
Speaker 1: a hostile work environment. They're going to find a way
Speaker 1: to get rid of you. On the other hand, companies
Speaker 1: don't want to chill employees into thinking that they can't
Speaker 1: be part of the political discourse. I wrote a story
Speaker 1: on the fired white supremacist and I talked to another
Speaker 1: lawyer and and what he argued was, you don't want
Speaker 1: it to be political in this case. It's a decency
Speaker 1: versus a hatred issue. You don't want your employees to
Speaker 1: think that they can't have different political views. But white
Speaker 1: supremacy it goes too far. Some things transcend politics. And
Speaker 1: with that, let's go to have big takes, happy they takes.
Speaker 1: You can call in with your half big taken. Leave
Speaker 1: us a voicemail at two one two six one seven
Speaker 1: zero one six six Becca, what's your hot take? That's
Speaker 1: only hot enough for this show. It's about working out,
Speaker 1: not my first halt pig take about working out. Um,
Speaker 1: I like to be in workout classes where everybody is
Speaker 1: more fit than I am. And I've had this discussion
Speaker 1: with other people. I just think, if everyone looks really
Speaker 1: in shape, then if I take the class, I'm going
Speaker 1: to look like them. Yeah. I think that's fair. I
Speaker 1: mean there are people who might be intimidated by feeling
Speaker 1: like they don't look like those people, or I don't know,
Speaker 1: super fit people aren't their type of person. You're just
Speaker 1: in it for purely aspirational reasons. The people who disagree
Speaker 1: with me, yeah that I say they're intimidated, they also
Speaker 1: say it wouldn't be the class for them. I think.
Speaker 1: You know, if you like, go to soul Cycle and
Speaker 1: everybody looks like a Soul Cycle person and you're not,
Speaker 1: You don't look like that. You're like, this isn't the
Speaker 1: class for me. I'm not gonna able to do it.
Speaker 1: But are you talking about You're just talking about the
Speaker 1: like the fitness level based on how they look, not
Speaker 1: like how they dress or whether they seem like Jim
Speaker 1: people part of it. I think, how could it not be?
Speaker 1: You can't separate that, Oh, you wouldn't like me in
Speaker 1: yoga class. I wear like a fifteen year old. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I wouldn't inspire you, and not by my
Speaker 1: outfit anyway, but I can do like I can do
Speaker 1: a meanful wheel. That's really impressive. Thank you. I do
Speaker 1: yogo with you, all right, Francesca, what is your hat? Pictic?
Speaker 1: Call me old fashioned, but every once in a while
Speaker 1: I like to take a break from emojis and go
Speaker 1: with a good, nice old emoticon. What's that I'm young.
Speaker 1: Back in the olden days, we used to make smile faces.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know why, but there are sometimes
Speaker 1: where I really specifically want like okay, sometimes you're using
Speaker 1: an email client that doesn't have a juice available. There
Speaker 1: are some of those old fashioned email clients around, but
Speaker 1: sometimes you just you just want to do the colon
Speaker 1: M dash close per ends, smiley face. It just feels
Speaker 1: it just feels more intimate. It's like a little more
Speaker 1: punk steampunk. Maybe I think it's cool. Like if you
Speaker 1: g chat like I do it just automatically. Well, and
Speaker 1: then on your phone it's you have to like an
Speaker 1: emojis one tap, but you have to work hard actually
Speaker 1: to get the to get it in analog form. But
Speaker 1: I think it's We do have a colleague who sends
Speaker 1: like old school happy faces, and I think he's widely
Speaker 1: considered to be a psychopath for that reason. Maybe I
Speaker 1: am too, because I did it like twice today. I
Speaker 1: like the smiling without the nose. Does that make me
Speaker 1: with or without noses? Yes? There was so much more
Speaker 1: creative expression available before emojis. That's the other thing is
Speaker 1: like you could be a nose person or a no
Speaker 1: nose person. You could be like a really elaborate smiley
Speaker 1: with hair, you know, with the squiggly lines. Now it's
Speaker 1: like it's all taken away from you. You know, it's
Speaker 1: all automated. You're sounding a little cratchety. Also, before when
Speaker 1: you sounded cool, I never sounded cool with this one.
Speaker 1: And this has been a half bag takes, half baked takes.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to game Plan. You can find me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Francesco. Today I'm at rs Greenfield and
Speaker 1: if you want to leave us a voicemail, please do
Speaker 1: at two on two six one seven zero one six six.
Speaker 1: Also check out our weekly newsletter. You can subscribe by
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Speaker 1: on over to Apple podcast or wherever you listen and
Speaker 1: rate and review and subscribe. Thanks. This show was produced
Speaker 1: by Liz Smith and Magnus Henrickson. Head of podcasts is
Speaker 1: Alec McCabe. See you next week. H my show, my show,
Speaker 1: This is my show. It was like, it's my show. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's close up. Sorry,