Reply #4: Nosy Employers--An Even Greater Danger to Our Online (and Other) Freedom of Speech

[wordsmith2007]

As frightening as the threats facing our freedom of speech and
expression online and elsewhere coming from Congress might be,
there is now yet a greater and more terrifying threat to our
most basic freedoms today, especially when it comes to the
Internet as a tool for free expression and organizing for
change--*out-of-control private employers who see it as a
great way to snoop into our off-hours political activities*
and, in many cases, punish anyone not willing to swallow
Corporate America's right-wing line by firing, refusing to
hire or promote, or otherwise adversely treat employees and
job applicants.

As a longtime progressive political activist, I have found
that many people, especially in today's deliberately
job-scarce economy, are now hesitant to take part in any form
of political activism--writing a letter to a newspaper,
calling a radio talk show, posting something on the Internet,
taking part in a march or a rally--for fear that their
employer might somehow frown on such actions.

Have any of you ever actually encountered employment
discrimination for your own off-hours political activities,
known of anyone else who has, or merely experienced the fear
of it or encountered it from someone else? If so, tell us your
story on this board. Your experiences--and this vital
issue--matter to us all.

Today, the Internet, credit bureaus, and like means make it
frighteningly easy for employers to snoop into job applicants'
or employees' personal beliefs and activities.

Indeed, five years ago, during a long job hunt after a layoff,
I was once denied a plum job as an editor with a nonprofit
educational association in part because of what the employer,
when I challenged its vague (and contradiction-ridden) claim
of things being simply a matter of "subtle factors"
involving "fit"--meanwhile, I suspected and alleged
sex discrimination (the editorial department involved was
all-female and stayed so)--called, in McCarthyesque terms, my
"record" of involvement in "controversial
issues," namely, feminism and children's
rights--certainly never brought up in any interview or
correspondence, but found after the "responsible"
employer decided to do an Internet search.

Employment discrimination based on one's off-the-job political
activities, indeed, seems to have risen in our
"Bushed" economy to a level not known since the era
of McCarthyism, with its blacklisting and "political
clearances."

For example, as has been widely reported, including in a story
on CBS's _60 Minutes_, Lynne Gobbell of Alabama was in 2004
fired from her job at a manufacturing plant for having a John
Kerry bumper sticker on her personal car. (After the case made
world headlines, she was offered a job--indeed, one with
health insurance--by the Kerry campaign, but few employees
thus treated are that fortunate.)

This sleazy practice, too, while disturbing and reprehensible,
is in many states (mine included) still legal. 

This, coupled with modern technology, leads down even darker
inroads against your and my most basic rights. In the name of
making sure that only the "right" types of people
are hired, perhaps in the name of making sure employees have
the "right" attitudes and, to use that now-favorite
corporate buzz word, are a good "fit" (read: are
sufficiently cowed and properly docile to accept existing
abuses and any possible future ones the employer might decide
to inflict), why not require employees and job applicants to
submit to employer monitoring--don't laugh; the technology for
this is already widely available!--of whatever they, even
(indeed, especially) on their own time and off employer
premises, read, watch, or listen to; who they associate with
and what kinds of organizations they participate in; what Web
sites they visit and what they send or receive online; and the
like?

We can't have employees who read, much less write, postings
like this one, read books like David Sirota's _Hostile
Takeover_ or Thom Hartmann's _Screwed_, or otherwise explore,
much less spread, ideas about "controversial
matters" that the employer might not like, such as
notions about fairer tax policies and a stronger "social
safety net," or--horror of horrors--about (gasp!)
employees and job applicants actually having rights and about
even daring to regulate business to stop privacy abuses, pay
inequities, the destruction of health-care, pension, and other
benefits, or the like, now, can we?

Heaven knows that any such person might actually think--and
question corporatocracy, get others to do the same, or,
perhaps worst of all, even think that decent pay and benefits,
due process on the job, and--gasp!--labor unions--are good
things!  Such people might actually start spreading such ideas
to fellow employees and other working people!  Gotta protect
that almighty bottom line and the freedom to select our
employees and run our businesses as we see fit!

The power employers thus wield over every aspect of our
lives--including our ability to seek and win improvements in
our lives at work, in our pocketbooks, and elsewhere--must be
ended.

We need state and federal legislation like California's, which
specifically forbids employers from dictating or attempting to
dictate employees' political activity. Better yet, every state
and Congress should adopt legislation, as a few states have,
protecting the right of employees and job applicants to engage
in any lawful off-hours, off-premises activities they choose
without fear of employment discrimination.

Generally, such activities are none of an employer's business
unless they pose an actual and substantial conflict of
interest or otherwise materially and substantially impair
one's ability to do one's job. Mere dislike of or disagreement
with a worker's political views or skittishness about
"company image" or possible "controversy"
is not enough.

Ironically, the fear that many workers now have of employment
discrimination based on their political activities is the very
thing that keeps them from taking the steps, both as
individuals and with others, to bring about an end to this and
related abuses. It is also a significant brake on long-needed,
long-overdue social and economic progress in America--indeed,
to efforts to stop this country's headlong rush, especially
under George W. Bush and his ilk, back to the days of Herbert
Hoover--indeed, of William McKinley.

It is time to reclaim your and our rights--before they are
lost forever, before we are all forced to live at the mercy of
out-of-control employers in a nationwide, high-tech version of
the company town that controls not only our work tasks but our
other actions, our minds, and our souls "24/7." It
is not about the bottom line; it's about power and control.
We, the people, must reclaim our rights.

In the famous words of Wisconsin Supreme Court chief justice
Edward G. Ryan, words that indelibly impressed University of
Wisconsin student Robert M. La Follette--later to be widely
considered Wisconsin's greatest governor: "The question
will arise, and arise in your day, though perhaps not fully in
mine: 'Which shall rule--wealth or man? Which shall
lead--money or intellect? Who shall fill public
stations--educated and patriotic free men, or the feudal serfs
of corporate wealth?'" (Of course, I'd prefer Ryan have
used nonsexist language!)

So write your state and national lawmakers, your governor,
and, yes, even President Bush, and urge them all to support
legislation protecting the rights of employees and job
applicants to engage in lawful off-hours,
off-employer-premises activities without fear of employment
discrimination. 

Urge them also to replace the dangerous prevailing concept of
"employment at will"--under which an employer,
absent law or contract provision to the contrary, may fire any
employee for any reason, no reason, or even a bad or morally
wrong reason--with a "just cause" standard, similar
to the law now in Montana.

Every worker deserves and has the right to this most basic of
protections. "Employment at will" (read: employment
at whim) literally does mean that "they can fire you if
they don't like the way you part your hair." This, too,
is outrageous. This must end. 

As Alexander Hamilton said over 200 years ago, the power over
a person's subsistence is a power over that person's will. The
history of liberty and justice in America has often
involved--indeed, required--regulating and limiting not only
the power of our public governments but the power of such
"private governments" as corporations and other
employers over individuals, their choices, and their rights.
So take action today!

Let's say to employers: Our skills, attention, and loyalty are
yours eight hours a day, 40 hours a week; the rest of our
lives belong to us, and to us alone. For not only ourselves
but our fellow citizens and future generations, we are taking
back our lives, our privacy, and our rights.

For more information about these and related issues, check out
these links:

http://www.workplacefairness.org/

http://www.workrights.org/issue_lifestyle/ld_legislative_brief.html

http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacy.cfm?ID=14172&c=132

http://www.aclu.org/WorkplaceRights/WorkplaceRights.cfm?ID=8359&c=178

Let us all know what you think of this.

Thanks for your time and thought--and even more for your
efforts!

"In a certain sense the suspicious Tories and militant
philistines 
are right:  intellect *is* dangerous.  Left free, there is
nothing it will 
not reconsider, analyze, throw into question."

--Richard Hofstadter, _Anti-intellectualism in American Life_
(1963)