One person, the employer, can give out a list of who everyone at a company should vote for, maybe put up campaign posters and hand out buttons even.
But they have the power to censor everyone else in the work environment or as a representative of the company from doing the exact same things.
So, exactly how is that freedom of speech?
Because the 1st Amendment says that the government can’t restrict your right to free speech. There’s nothing illegal about a private business or a private person from doing so. I can have a rule that we don’t talk about soccer in my house, and there’s nothing illegal about that. A business can have a rule that no employee can put up posters or hand out buttons and there’s nothing illegal about that.
It may not be equivalence, but there’s a similarity in the situation. Unions can intimidate their members, and they can restrict the work of someone whose politics they dislike. Neither the business nor the union can tell who their employees or members are voting for, but it’s the blatant politicking which usually involves scare tactics that are distasteful.
There is one big difference though, there is no war against business undertaken by the unions. The unions depend on successful business, but many businesses and one of the big political parties has set out to destroy unions.
I’m not sure about your union, but my union can’t intimidate me nor restrict my work in any way. They have absolutely no control over, or even awareness of, what I do every day. I don’t even know who my union leaders are and I can guarantee you, they don’t know who I am either.
My union certainly can’t do any of that, and if they tried they’d find themselves placed in trust by the international at the very least or decertified by the federal government at the very worst. And any pension funds and general funds would likely be lost by the litigation that the aggrieved member would bring against it.
Do you have a cite that shows that unions can do what you think they can do?
True that.
Ever hear of the Hatch Act?
Also, if this were true, courts would be unable to give their imprimatur to lawsuit settlements that require parties to remain silent about details of the settlement.
Regardless of legality, employers telling their employees how to vote is bullying at best, and coercion at worst. For Romney to urge employers to do this sort of thing is just piling on in the “just how reprehensible a human being is this man?” file.
Four years ago I offered my employees one hour “paid leave” either before or after work on election day as an encouragement to be a part of the process. I’m doing it again this year. There wasn’t/isn’t any requirement for proof, although a few people wore “I Voted” stickers.
We do not talk politics at work.
Did he say that? I thought his position was that (1) he sees the laws as serving a valid purpose, (2) it is being done through legal means, and (3) the intentions of those pushing through are irrelevant given 1 and 2.
I think both those policies are commendable.
As a Federal employee, they’ll give us enough time off so that we’ve got either 3 hours between when the polls open and when we get to work, or between when we leave work and when the polls close, whichever involves fewer hours of leave. So if the polls are open from 6am to 7pm, and I normally work from 8-4:30, I get to leave at 4 on election day.
How much political discussion goes on in the hall probably varies from one office to another. Where I am now, I hear almost no political conversation, and I get my fill of it on the Web.
I won’t go quite that far, but I will say that my boss strongly urging a given candidate (let alone implicitly threatening job losses if the other candidate won) would at best be null information, and might push me in the other direction.
I hope I’m wrong, but I see this issue right now positioned to the top of a slippery slope–much like the way, say, US-sanctioned torture used to be considered verboten, but has inched closer to acceptability over the past 10 years. Here’s an example of where we’re heading next, from an editorial describing a federal judge’s decision in a Colorado election lawsuit:
I fear that at some point in the future, the folks who really want to control democracy will have lined up dozens of tiny legal decisions which–once they’re coronated by the inevitable landmark 5-4 SCOTUS decision–will allow employers to check on how their employees voted, and retaliate against those who don’t toe the company line. Of course it will never be framed that way, but for all practical purposes this is what will be achieved.
I’m going off of what’s been told to me by union workers, though none of it very recently. One case was from the late 90s, there was an excess of union electricians, the union worked very hard to place these guys, sending them throughout New England for work. One of them described that he felt it necessary to support union politics in order to stay at the front of the line for these assignments. I can’t say if the union could or would make decisions on that basis, but the perception is what makes the difference here. I have some hearsay evidence about union operations in the NYC area during the 70s and 80s, but I don’t think you’d be surprised to hear about the problems there.
ETA: My point was to highlight that is about the perception by employees who are the targets of the political speech. I certainly wouldn’t want to be hearing this stuff from my employer, and I doubt many people want this kind of thing to be part of their work environment at all.
Or employers will be allowed to hand out pre-filled voting forms, to be signed and returned, as “mere suggestions” as to how their employees should vote. This will be couched as “helping folks to vote”.
That’s kind of how the old political machines used to work. They’d give a voter a pre-filled out ballot. The voter would go to the polling place and get a new, fresh ballot, but deposit the filled-out ballot in the box. Then take the blank ballot back to the pol as proof that he had voted their way. The pol would fill out the ballot and hand it to the next guy.
What I find trying faciniating is how one of my ultra conservative Facebook “friend” (in truth a college fraternity brother who I haven’t spoken to in 18 years) posted the BigAppleBucky’s story about David Siegel as an example of someone with the “courage to speak out”.
Ah well. I guess that’s what happens when you receive your entire education through Master’s level within a 30 minute radius of the town you grew up in.
Well there ya go! It has a long and storied tradition in American politics. Anyone who is against this must be Anti-American.
Knock it off. Bricker is not posting in this thread and your initial assertion distorts what Bricker has actually said on this topic.
Stick to actually laying out your own arguments and leave uninvolved parties alone.
[ /Moderating ]
I’m glad I work for state government. We can’t so much as bring a 7-11 cup into the office with our candidate’s name on it.
A 7-11 cup with… huh? Waitwaitwait!.. don’t tell me there’s an Obama Slurpee?!?
That’s an October Surprise that’d work on me!