I used to work for a bank, and they made us attend a meeting where they discussed a PAC, or Political Action Comittee. The PAC is basically a lobbying group that goes to Washington and tries to convince politicians to change banking laws in the banks favor. Employees are urged to contribute money to the PAC.
I don’t think us grunts were expected to do anything other than bitch about it. But the general consensus among us non managers was that manager level and above were sort of “expected” to contribute. The higher up you were, the more you were “expected” to contribute. Of course they can’t outright punish a person for not contributing to the PAC, but it was thought that managers who failed to give were removed from the “fast track”.
I don’t know if this is true or just a company rumor, but having been personally exposed to situations where people were “encouraged” to work overtime, I believe it. Failure to work overtime would result in constant discussions with supervisors that went along the lines of “Ok, we encourage people to work overtime, but it’s not required” over and over again until the person got the message and put in their unpaid overtime. Particularily dense people (or rebels) were pulled aside and told that “personal overtime is mandatory”
This is all a bit different than being told who to cast your vote for, which is highly illegal and I doubt if any company would take the risk of doing it. They can make one sided political information available all they want, yes, and there’s nothing illegal about that. I think what they usually do is put out company literature to the effect that “we endorse canidate X”. Asking people who they voted for or punishing people who voted for the wrong guy is a big no-no.
Hmm, how about 42 US 1971(b): “No person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall intimidate, threaten, coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote or to vote as he may choose, or of causing such other person to vote for, or not to vote for, any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, presidential elector, Member of the Senate, or Member of the House of Representatives, Delegates or Commissioners from the Territories or possessions, at any general, special, or primary election held solely or in part for the purpose of selecting or electing any such candidate.”
I suspect that this “hmm” is meant to be sarcastic, but until your cite offered, there was absolutely no basis for someone to say that it was “highly illegal.”
Can you give examples (i.e., judicial applications of the law) of an employer’s merely suggesting (as the OP states) an employee to vote a certain way has been considered intimidation, threat, or coercion?
Whoa, no need to be hostile. I was just brainstorming a possibility. That’s what I meant by “hmm.”
I don’t think a mere suggestion would be coercion. But it’s easy to think of circumstances in which a suggestion by someone who controls your employment circumstances can be coercive. I’m looking now to see if this theory has ever been argued.
The best I can come up with is a few cases in which teachers claim not to have been re-hired because of the way they voted with regard to desegregation. In each case, the court never gets to whether 1971(b) would appropriately apply, instead finding other ways to reject the cases. But it certainly feels like if this theory didn’t have any validity, they could have just tossed the cases on that basis.
I doubt very much that a mere e-mail suggestion rises to the level of coercion unless it occurs in a context in which you know a retaliatory employment action will be taken unless you follow the suggestion.
But to address one of the tangents in this thread, doesn’t this statute pretty much mean an employer can’t fire you for voting the wrong way? That strikes me as clear intimidation/coercion. It may be that this scenario has never arisen since almost all voting is secret, but it would still be theoretically illegal. All we need is a test involving a caucus!
This certainly is interesting. To clear up a few things:
Telemark: I don’t necessarily think any particular part of it is illegal, I’m merely curious.
Freddy: The expending resources angle would be difficult, I imagine, as the only resource used would have been the man-hours of one or two workers who put together the nice looking email with pictures.
HeyHomie: The ballot measure in question has to do with sales tax which has nothing whatsoever to do with my employer as we don’t do any kind of retail transactions except buying coffee and filters for the machines in the kitchens on every floor.
Apocalypso: The PAC is a whole other ball of wax, but I’ve heard the same thing about ‘mandatory voluntary donations’ from manager types.
Liirogue: In that case I’ve probably already said too much.
More generally, I’m not stupid enough to express my misgivings about this (or my eventual vote) in public. Also, I would be interested in expanding the discussion to other states/nations if people had direct knowlege.
For example, my girlfriend works for a company that promotes “voluntary” contributions to United Way at Christmas. Employees are encouraged to contribute.
So far so good.
The names of those who do not contribute are documented by managers and submitted to HR so a notation is made in the personnel file.
Rather than fight, my girlfriend contributes 1 cent a year.
