There are a lot of ways you can look at this, but I think one way you have to look at it is the American way: This is America, which means your boss can set all kinds of work rules for you and if you don't like them and they're not specifically enjoined by law, well, tough noogies. And that's what you'd expect the response to be, universally, on the right. Right?
Oh, who am I kidding? Of course that wasn't the response on the right. The response on the right was: One of our guys got mistreated by an employer! Fascism! Totalitarianism!
I gotta go with Steve on this one. These guys have advocated for "the Free Market" meaning "you're an at-will employee serving at the pleasure of your company's HR department." They've been brutally against unions and worker's rights, saying they drive up the cost of labor and make America uncompetitive. Well, one of them found out the hard way what the practical endpoint of all that really means.
Put the shoe on the other foot. Imagine a lefty lawyer/blogger of the previous decade bashing Bush on a blog even as his/her firm labored to maintain chummy relationships with the Dubya White House. Wouldn't Jacobson and McCain defend to the death the firm's right to press the lawyer to quit blogging? They might even howl for immediate termination and clawback of wages, no?
I don't recall these guys shedding a tear when Jason Levin lost his teaching job, or when Eason Jordan lost his job at CNN. So when they beg me to shed tears for Mirengoff, well, I'm unmoved.
Does that mean Col. Mustard's taking up the union cause now for bloggers? That would be a hell of a thing. Welcome to employment in the post crisis era, gentlemen. You are 100% expendable in an employer's market. You can and will be replaced . Mirengoff chose his job over his blog of years and his employer didn't even blink making him choose.
Still think collective bargaining is a bad idea?
Silly Zandar. "Free Market" and "at will employment" doesn't apply if the businessperson is a lilly-livered, injun-lovin liberal.
ReplyDeleteRandian principles of economics are only for the enlightened.
Oh I do think your HR department would be happy to see your thoughts on being an "at-will employee" don't you?
ReplyDeleteI believe I'll share it with them.
Kitty can't blame the employer, even though I completely despise the circumstances. I'm the kind of person that things that the employer has no business telling employees what to do off work hours, but at the same time, pissing off the people your firm works with?
ReplyDeleteAnd also, it seems like the resentful Vaguely Threatening Dude couldn't resist his two cents.
::snort::
ReplyDelete'Oh please Mr. Shadow person! Don't reveal my secret disapproval of being dismissed for things people do outside the job!'
I wonder if the people who own the rights to The Shadow, a beloved archetype of multiple media formats, would like to know that some knob is appropriating their character to lamely threaten people on blog comments?
I'd tell them myself, but who would care?