Leave aside for a minute Oklahoma’s proposed law making it illegal to fire a worker who brings a firearm to work in his or her car.
Now, if we deal with this issue on a more general level of what rights the owner of the car and the owner of the business should have over what is in/on someone’s car in a company parking lot, what comparison do you think can be drawn between this case and the one discussed in this thread, where a woman was fired for refusing to remove a pro-Kerry sticker from her car in the company parking lot?
In my view, mhendo, the owner is within his rights to fire the pro-Kerry woman and Weyerhauser is within its rights to fire the gun owners. Of course, both are wrong morally, but that’s their right.
Homebrew, if you can’t seem to understand the difference between someone getting fired and someone being murdered, then let me try to show you:
When someone loses his job, that means there was a formerly mutually beneficial contract that came to an end because one person in the contract no longer found the relationship mutually beneficial. No one loses anything that belonged to him – the worker does not “own” the job and the company does not “own” the worker.
When someone loses his life, well, that’s pretty self-explanatory.
Furthermore, when someone agrees to take a job then he agrees to obey certain rules. One of those rules for Weyerhauser was for the worker not to bring a gun on Weyerhauser property. The worker broke the agreement and is then fired. No one agrees to be murdered as a part of his job. Therefore, any action by a company to massacre workers is not even in the same category as our discussion here. Don’t try to equate one with the other.
Society has made a decision that we will protect, as a matter of public policy, certain things. We have drawn a line at “some things you are born with.” But that’s not a line derived from any objective truth - it’s what society has chosen. By the same token, we forbid sexual harrassment on private property. We forbid discrimination against pregnant women on private property.
If you concede the power of the state to do those things, then you concede the power of the state to do the other things, to; you just object to where the line is darwn. But you don’t object to the existence of a line.
Instead of focusing on the the specific cases mentioned why don’t you try to address the general question Bricker is getting at. What limitations are there on a company’s rights to make any rule, however arbitrary? Where is the line drawn? You seem to think it’s perfectly fine for a company to make any damn rule it wants.
I disagree. My rights, especially those protected explicitly in the Constitution of the United States or the state where I reside, are more important than the “right” of an artificial person to make stupid rules that are not related to the enterprise for which they hired my labor or services.
I was not equating murder with stupid firings. My mention of Ludlow was to point out that unfettered corporate barons can be as bad as Feudal Lords. What’s the practical difference to the serf?
I have addressed it. I think the company has the right to make whatever rules it wants. The worker also has the right to decide for himself whether or not that rule is something with which he would like to comply with that rule. If he does not, then he can seek work elsewhere.
However, don’t misunderstand me that I think it’s “fine” if companies do this. While I think it should be legal for them to do so, I think that many of the rules companies enact (such as the gun rule) are completely stupid. However, because I think it’s stupid, I don’t think a law should be passed.
You misunderstand the Constitution. It has absolutely no bearing in this case. The Constitution is about a citizen’s relationship to the government and about what rights are protected from government interference. No constitutional rights were violated in the Weyerhauser case. Well, I guess one set of constitutioal rights were indeed violated as soon as the state passed a law limiting what Weyerhauser could do on its own property.
No one has a right to bring anything on someone else’s property without the owner’s consent. Weyerhauser owns the property. They get to set the rules.
The difference is that no rights were violated in the gun case. The right to life was violated with Ludlow. There is absolutely no comparison between the two.
Jeez. Yes, I know the Constitution deals with what the government can and cannot do. What I’m wondering is why people chafe at government imfringing on their freedom and liberty but will gently assent to any damned thing the bossman wants. Governments are established to protect our rights not just from government but also from each other.
Where in the constitution is the idea of an artifical person, a corporation, having any rights?
What “Right to Life”? The reductio ad absurdum of your above mention that the “Constitution is about a citizen’s relationship to the government” means that there is no right to life that was violated at Ludlow, since “rights” only relate to the government. At most, there was a violation of the law against murder. If the government has the authority to make murder illegal, then why not the authority to protect the right of people to bear arms?
Well, in the first case, the argument seems to be that the guns are to be used merely for harmless personal recreational purposes off-site. The fact that they happen to be in employees’ cars on-site is nothing but an accidental consequence of the workers’ commuting schedules, and there is no intention or need for the workers actually to use them until they leave company property. Thus the guns shouldn’t be scrutinized or restricted any more than any other sporting equipment.
In the second case, the argument seems to be that employees’ bringing guns onto workplace property must be protected because they have a constitutional right to have access to their guns, even on other people’s property, because such access is crucial for maintaining the security of a free state.
Trying to combine the two arguments doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t see how hauling around harmless sporting equipment exclusively for your own recreational use in designated recreational areas contributes in any way to helping maintain state security. That doesn’t mean that I object to your doing it, as long as the equipment is properly secured, but I just don’t see that it has anything to do with defending fundamental freedoms.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the root of the problem isn’t gun ownership per se (which I have no problem with, assuming a certain minimum amount of regulation that already exists in most places), it’s the Second Amendment. The colonial-era notion that private gun ownership somehow provides any kind of “well ordered militia”, or is in any way “necessary” or competent to maintain national security, is a complete anachronism in the 21st century, IMO. (Some gun-rights advocates offer various “Giant Squid” scenarios in which the rule of law totally crumbles and only heroic bands of riflemen stand between the populace and an illegitimate dictatorship. But in addition to finding those scenarios pretty implausible, I think constitutionally-specified rights should be relevant to real life under the ordinary rule of law, not just to unprecedented national emergencies and violent stasis.)
Most rational people are probably capable of working out sensible compromises between safety considerations on the one hand and the reasonable use of firearms on the other, just as we make such compromises for other hazardous objects like cars. But the chuckleheaded Second-Amendment fanatics who imagine that anything involving a gun somehow automatically makes them a patriotic hero, and any kind of legal restriction involving a gun is somehow intolerable tyranny, are really muddying the waters. (To be fair, so are the chuckleheaded anti-gun fanatics who think that any kind of gun ownership or use whatsoever is somehow intolerably dangerous.)
I say we do with gun ownership what some suggest we should do with abortion: Keep it legal, but trash the far-fetched notion that it deserves to be constitutionally protected as a special right.
Because you have a choice when it comes to what you “give up” when you contract with an employer. With the government you have no choice. If the government tells you that you can’t speak up against it, then you have no choice in that matter. When a boss tells you that you can’t speak up against the company, you can simply quit and then do as you please. You really give up no rights when you go to work. You simply agree to do certain things while you are employed at a certain place. No rights are gone.
Yes, but that has nothing to do with the Constitution. You said that there were consitutional issues at stake here, but there aren’t. It’s a private company setting rules on its property, not the government taking away the right to keep and bear arms. No one’s rights were harmed by anyone in this case.
What does this have to do with anything? Are you saying that Weyerhauser should not be able to own land?
Sorry, but you must be mis-reading my posts. I never said that the only rights are those granted by the Constitution. I never said that “rights” only relate to the government. I said that there is no constitutional issue in this case. There is also no constitutional issue in the Ludlow case.
However, I believe that people have certain natural rights, such as the right to life, and that when those rights are infringed up on by others the government has a duty to step in. Murder and theft are two obviouls examples of this. These things are not “unconstitutional,” however.
Because there was no violation of anyone’s right to keep and bear arms here. Weyerhauser did not say that anyone in that Oklahoma town could not own a firearm. It simply said that if you own a firearm, then you can’t bring it on their property. How is that a violation of any right?
So how is this different than feudalism? If there are no limits to the condititions our corporate overlords put upon us, then they own us. But you do have a choice with the government also. You can suffer the consequences of jail, fines or disappearing. While jail is a more extreme method of coersion, depriving someone of their livelihood is coersion.
Really? Did you read the story? Drug sniffing dogs were brought out and the found nothing. But certain people were forced to open the trunks of their cars - with no warrant, no suspicion. Is that not an unreasonable search? If the government is restricted from such searches, why are employers given that leeway?
Apparently you don’t know much about Ludlow. The company was restricting the right of the workers to unionize. Or do you not consider that a right?
I’m saying artifical persons have no rights beyond what is necessary for performing the tasks it is chartered to do. The idea that it can make any rule that is not business related is, to me, absurd.
No, because you can always walk away from your job. No one is forcing you to take that particular job.
No, that’s not a choice. It’s the government saying that you do what we say or you will either lose your life, your liberty, or your property. There is no choice in that.
No, it’s not. Depriving someone of a specific job is certainly not coercion. You don’t own a job. A job is a contract between two people. Within that contract is a right on either side to terminate it if one or the other finds the contract unacceptable. No one is being deprived of the ability to earn a living; one is merely being deprived of the privilege of earning a living at a specific place.
The government is restricted in such a search because people have no choice but to comply with a government mandate. A Weyerhauser mandate, on the other hand, can easily be avoided – simply drive your car off the parking lot, or refuse to open your trunk. Sure, you may lose your job, but that’s hardly the same as being sent to jail or shot.
Employers are given this leeway because they have the right to do what they want on their property.
Sure, employees have the right to unionize and companies have the right to fire them. Companies do not have the right to kill them, however.
This still has nothing to do with the Constitution. The Constitution does not discuss employer-employee relations.
Let’s just say that your little world comes into being and these so-called artificial persons only get to make rules that are business-related. Who determines this? Are we going to have a huge government bureaucracy telling business what it can do? Are we going to have know-nothing bureaucrats telling productive men and women that this rule has to go because the bureaucrat, with his limited knowledge, doesn’t think it’s applicable?
Your standard is unrealistic and would only lead to the destruction of business in the U.S. And, of course, workers would be the ones hurt in the end.
My standard is more simple – if you own property, you get to make the rules for it. Why is that objectionable?
Because as I’ve noted some of the rules are objectionable and extend beyond their property. If you want to draw a bright-line and say the company can only make rules that apply on it’s property, then I’ll concede that is reasonable. But for now they exercise more power than that. As long as that continues, then I’ll support laws like the Oklahoma one that specifically protect employees.
Do you think it should be legal to fire an employee if you find out he likes to cross-dress away from work? You say you believe in Natural Rights. Natural Rights arise from ownership of property. The most important propery anyone owns is their own body. My property rights to my body are more essential than an artifical person’s right to tell me I can’t smoke tobacco on my own free time. These aren’t hypotheticals. People have been fired for smoking. People have been fired for cross-dressing. People are fired for being gay. It’s one thing to have a dress code for your business but quite another to have “morality codes” or otherwise seek to control the private behavior of employees.
True, and no one is telling you that you can’t smoke. They are telling you that if you want the job, you can’t smoke. There is a difference. If the government tells you that you can’t smoke, then you have no choice in the matter. If your job tells you that you can’t smoke, you have to weigh what’s more important to you: your job or smoking. You have a choice, and that’s why it should be legal.
And if the employees find it objectionable, they can leave. Both sides lose out – the employee loses a job and the employer loses an employee that was otherwise doing a fine job. But each side decided that there were things that were more important.
A job is not property. A job is an agreement. Depending on the agreement, either side may walk away from it for a variety of reasons.
When you enter into a job, each side has terms that it agrees to abide by. If one of those terms of the job is that you can’t be gay, or the boss reserves the right to fire someone if he or she is gay, then you have to decide whether or not you can accept that term. If you can’t don’t take the job. It’s that simple.
It’s objectionable because the fact that they own the parking lot does not mean they get to set up a little kingdom in that lot. A man’s home is his castle but he still isn’t allowed to have sex with his kids in that castle. They fact that a company bought some land and built a parking lot does not give them unlimited authority in that lot. Why should they have unlimited authority in the parking lot?
Your arguement that people who don’t like the rules ‘can just get jobs elsewhere’ doesn’t hold water either. It’s a fairy tale is a better description. For one, jobs are hard to find. An employer may have in his contract with his worker a non-competing clause, which means you can’t get a job in your field at another company. There is probably only one paper mill in that town, after 22 years of expierence, getting another job, with equal pay would be very difficult if not outright impossible.
I would support the company on the issue of saftey and liability. If the state law releases the company from the liability then I don’t see why the employers should be sticking their nose, or a dogs nose, into people’s trunks.
I conditionally agree with Renob. Corporations have long been recognized as entities, and the (certain) rights of entities, even to ban certain items and substances from their property, has also long been recognized.
However, having said that, the corporation must have made some good-faith effort at prior notification, which in the case of the OP, never happened. They just decided to search their emloyee’s vehicles (which I also acknowledge that a signed “consent to search” statement may have been one of the corporation’s “conditions of employment”), and finding items which had been banned, but which the general employee pool had not been warned of being proscribed, commenced firings.
Renob, I believe that it’s the seeming randomness, and arbitrariness of the case in the OP which has a lot of people riled.
Kimstu: People may legally possess firearms for a multitude of lawfull purposes having nothing to do with the debateable “Original Intent” of the 2nd Amendment. The very fact that every state in the union has some form of Firearm Hunting License, and most have some form of public and private shooting ranges, both indoor and outdoor, and has had such for nigh on “generations,” tends to support this belief in practice and tradition.
That the NRA supports the right to keep and bear arms in one instance does not preclude, nor make it hypocritical, for it to support the right in other instances as well. In this instance, the NRA’s support is well within its charter, and its traditions (both older and newer).
My ire is not about this one instance in particular. It’s about corporate feudalism in general. Do you think the other instances of firing people for things they do outside of work on their own time is okay?
I don’t like the law, but Oklahoma is an Employment-at-Will state, so a company there can fire you without cause, aside from the obvious “protected class” reasons. If one wants to argue that the company shouldn’t have fired the people for this, I’d agree, but Oklahoma (prior to the recent law), along with a ton of other states, certainly gave the company the right to do so.
The NRA, as noted above, is a big fan of Employment-at-Will.
I don’y like the policy at all, and I think it ought to be illegal for a company to do something like this. However, employers have the right to submit employees to random drug tests, or to sign waivers stripping employees of many of their rights, as a condition of employment. It’s been 10 years since the Rochester Fire Department required that all its employees be non-smokers. This is not the top of the slippery slope, it’s the bottom. The Oklahoma Legislature is doing nothing about it, except to privilege one particular right, to bear arms, above all the others which an employer can take away. With your “consent,” of course.
If you’ve ready my posts, you’ll see I’ve already answered that in post #53.
[quote=Zebra]
It’s objectionable because the fact that they own the parking lot does not mean they get to set up a little kingdom in that lot.
[quote]
No one is talking about a kingdom. They aren’t setting up an army or coining money or establishing a monarchy there. They are simply trying to control what comes on and off their property.
Completely irrelevant. True, one is not allowed to force another to have sex with him on his own property. One is allowed to control what comes on and off his property, though.
Not unlimited authority, but at least they have authority. It’s their parking lot, after all. What does the concept of property rights mean if one is not allowed to control what comes on and off his property? You seem to suggest that people have no right to control the property they own.
So? That still does not mean that you own your job. Your job is not yours. Your job is a contract between you and another person. Just because a job is hard to find does not mean it somehow belongs to you. It can be taken away for numerous reasons. For Weyerhauser, one of those reasons was having a gun on company property.
Sure, it’s a shitty situation, but that doesn’t mean it should be illegal. Just because someone lives in a town with few work opportunities does not mean it should be illegal to fire him. That’s the fault of the worker who lives in the impoverished area. If he wants to flout company rules, he can either move or get training in a different field. However, if he wants to keep his job, then he should obey the company’s rules, shouldn’t he? He has a choice. It may be a shitty choice, but that’s the situation he’s gotten himself into by either having few skills or living in an area with few jobs.
