The employees said they were skipping work to attend a political protest.
The employers said you skip work and you are fired.
The employees said we will make the time up on Sunday.
The employees skip work and get fired.
You can’t tell me that isn’t political.
These aren’t Katy Perry tickets. If the employees had said they would make the time up on Sunday to attend a Katy Perry concert, and the company fired them for skipping work without giving them the chance to make the time up, I’d say that company was a piss poor company to work for.
Insubordination…Yes my Liege. Your word is LAW, my Sovereign.
Fair or not depends on factors we can’t see. If it’s company policy that someone who announces they will be absent and gets a notice ahead of time that such absence will lead to their termination, well, that’s about as fair as anything. If that’s not company policy, then it’s unfair. If in other circumstances, it’s a graduated system of warnings, then it’s possibly unfair (even those systems usually have a go directly to jail, do not pass go egregious violation out).
If it’s something where they can legitimately make up the work later and foreknowledge of their absences allowed me to avoid major disruption, I’d likely warn them and let them make up the work later. The warning would not be for missing work but for failure to follow instructions/insubordination.
Two Many Cats - Your insistence in considering common working practices (you have a schedule, you work to the schedule you’re given) a feudal practice is idiotic. These employees are free to come and go, to work for other companies, to quit at any time. The employer is free to fire employees who are under-performing, who are disruptive to the business, or who chose not to come in when they’re scheduled. Each side as the power to end the relationship at any time.
Further, the fact that these employees put their employer, who obviously hires immigrants, in a bind over a demonstration about how important immigrants are to the US economy is short-sighted.
You’ve never used hyperbolic sarcasm to make a point?
And no, there is no equal balance in powers in an at-will work arrangement. The worker always risks more and faces more disruption and ruin in leaving than the employer does in firing. It’s not even close.
I make the feudal comparison because it turns me sick the way this country worships the corporations, and acts as if even the slightest ripple against the profit grind in favor of the working class is tantamount to treason.
To be precise, the fired workers were team leads. Presumably the teams were willing to work the day the leads took off. can the teams work as effectively, or at all, without he leads? What good would it be for the team leads to work Sunday if the teams didn’t? I don’t know, but it was obviously not a good solution for the company.
It isn’t political. The only reason this made the news s because it involved a protest on a currently hot topic. Substitute pretty much any other reason and you would never have heard of it. The news report tried to make it into a political issue, but that’s what they do. It sells advertising.
That has not been demonstrated. Companies do things all the time that are not in their best interests. Someone just getting pissy and firing lots of people for no good business reason is perfectly plausible. We don’t know the true situation in the OP, certainly not enough to say something was “obviously not a good solution.”
I honestly don’t know if you’re joking or being serious now. Are you really suggesting that an employee should be able to give me less than 24 hours (or even no) notice that they’re not going to show up for work? That’s bullshit.
And ‘we’re going to make it up’ has nothing to do with anything. I’ve had employees suggest that. Unfortunately, when you run a register, the customers aren’t just going to stand in line and wait for you to come in 3 days later. So, in this case, if their work got done, there’s no work to be made up. If it didn’t get done, that’s the fucking problem. If you decide you don’t want to work on the days the boss tells you to work, why should the boss continue to let you work there.
WRT the Katy Perry concert, clearly you didn’t understand what I was saying. What I was suggesting is that you substitute political rally for Katy Perry concert. If he didn’t fire them, then yes, it’s a political issue. If the boss still fires them, then it’s not political, he’s just firing them for not showing up to work.
For the hundredth time, firing someone that went to a political rally is very different than firing someone BECAUSE they went to one. However, it’s still a moot point (unless there’s previous issues showing the boss has done other politically motivated discriminatory things) since they were pretty clearly fired for skipping work, not for going to the rally.
I don’t know why you’re being like this. Insubordination is not doing what you’re told. They were told to come in to work, they were told they’d be fired if they skipped work, they were insubordinate.
If your whole issue is that you just have a problem with authority (based on the above statement) then this different. If you just don’t want to do what your boss says because your boss said it, then you can ignore this post since I’m sure I’m talking right past you.
It looks like - ‘A Day Without Immigrants’ - became a month/year/decade without immigrants. How ironic.
These absent workers were convinced (told?) that they would still have their jobs after they chose to abandon their jobs. The AWOL workers then became ex-employees.
Business owners stand by decision to fire workers who protested -
Well, gosh, I’m as much a Trump hater as they come, but if I skipped worked without permission to attend a political protest I would fully expect to be disciplined for it.
Grownups hold job and deal with the schedules their jobs hand them. If you don’t like it go to a different protest, for Christ’s sake.
Hurting their employer’s business wasn’t even an unfortunate byproduct of them skipping work, it was the point of the protest. They wanted it to hurt their employer, because “You can’t do it without us,” was the entire point of having “A Day Without Immigrants.”
When an employee is deliberately hurting your business for something that has nothing to do with you, you need to get rid of them.
In this specific case it was clearly demonstrated. The employees were told in advance that they would be fired if they took the day off. They did, and were. The company obviously did not consider the counter offer of working on Sunday to be a good solution.
That doesn’t mean that it was not a good solution. Businesses are often wrong. That the business didn’t accept the Sunday substitute does not demonstrate that it was actually not a good solution.
As an analogy, if I complain that my food is getting spoiled too soon and you suggest I should put it in the fridge that’s right beside me and I refuse because gremlins run the fridge, I am rejecting a good solution to my problem.
We do not know whether it was a good solution. We know only that the business rejected it. They can do that. It is their prerogative under most circumstances. That does not require that we all agree with them.
