Right, you said “Stonger laws that would mean no “at will” employment and an increased duty of care and obligations for the employer in similar situations. It occurs to me that those suggestions themselves will be seen as “loony left” by many and certainly by the US political right. Guilty as charged I suppose.”
And I’m saying that (a) that is, in fact, how I see your suggestions, and so (b) I’m fine with offering someone at-will employment, and having them reply “yeah, that sounds fair; I accept.”
But if they instead reply “no, you need to include a severance agreement,” then I’m happy to hash out the details with them before hiring them, or tell them I guess I’m hiring someone else.
And I have already said that I think an “at will” contract should not be allowed in any circumstances. I am fundamentally against them. Indeed they are not allowed in the UK.
But the whole topic of discussion here is that first paragraph. You’re describing exactly what people against cancel culture say should be changed. Even I was saying that a single tweet without waiting for a response should not have been enough for that reaction.
That said, there were other possible responses. There is “we will be putting her on leave until we get to the bottom of this.” There is arguing what I did, that you think it is satire. Still, getting scared and firing her makes sense, as long as they were willing (as they were) to hire her back if things got settled.
The objection in that situation is to the way people overreacted to someone making a joke. without waiting for their response. That’s an actual issue we need to learn from. What it is not, however, is an indictment of “cancel culture” as a whole.
Heck, the fact that such examples will be used to try and say that no one should ever be “cancelled” is exactly why we need to be careful.
Incidentally, AFAIK there has been a lot of money coming to that library from groups that think that was bad, usually liberals and groups that do not demand that specific conservative books must be banned before money is sent.
This is all perfectly fair and I should say that I’m not a fan of the term “cancel culture” and I try not to wave it around as a pejorative term.
Like many neologisms I’m not sure it helps the conversation.
When asking that question I didn’t have specific country in mind. I’m sure there are varying applications of the tactic and I have no doubt that the USA right are more likely to be censorious.
But history shows us that no political side is immune from the temptation of flexing their power in that way.
Just saying, while this board has members all over the world, most posters (and almost all examples talked about in this thread) are in the US.
It is good to keep history in mind, but the problem you have here is to ignore that history is telling us that the authoritarians of today in the US (mostly Republican politicians) are the ones who have not learned their lessons.
Well being UK based I can’t help but have a slightly different perspective and set of concerns and experiences. Though I’d say we all benefit from expanding our thinking beyond our borders now and again. We can’t always know what might be the next issue nor where that’ll come from.
And I apologise but I can’t quite parse the whole of your last paragraph but I agree with your last sentence regarding the Republican authoritarianism here and now in the USA.
Context, while it is true that there are posters from all over the world, the issues discussed in this thread are taking place in the US. It is confusing to drop overton windows that are not really part of an ongoing discussion of problems in an American house.
( Unlike the UK, Double-hung windows are prevalent in homes in the US )
But it’s not the employer who’s being unfair to the worker. Why should they be forced to bare the cost? What’s the cut off where they’re allowed to act to protect their own interests? Do they have to wait to show that they’ve taken a certain amount of financial damage? Is there a process where the employer, having shown that they’ve taken enough damage to fire the problematic worker, can be made whole for the damage they took up to that point?
Sure, there’s no perfect solution. Any approach is going to have benefits and drawbacks. Do the benefits of enacting these sorts of protections outweigh the drawbacks? Considering that the go-to case for this issue was from nine years ago - and that she was subsequently rehired for exactly the same job - maybe indicates that this isn’t really a significant problem.
“Because of cancel culture, a wealthy woman was forced to work at a slightly less highly paid job for a couple years,” doesn’t really seem like the sort of issue that requires legislation to address.
Am I not doing just that? I support Justine Sacco’s right to make tone deaf jokes on line. I support everyone who reads her jokes to voice their opinion of her jokes. And I support her employer’s right to make decisions about who they employ in their business.
Is “minor issue” based on the scope of the protest, or the severity of the initiating act?
It’s a completely fair representation of her employment during the ordeal. You chose to focus on the employment aspect of the situation in your responses, so that’s what I’ve been talking about. If you want to bring in the social effects of being an internet pariah, fine, but that’s not something that’s going to be fixed by making it harder to fire her. You’re going to need a different solution to fix that problem.
The severity of the initiating act. What has the person actua
It is a description of her change of employment status. How an employee is treated during such changes has always been of interest to tribunals. i.e. was someone forced out? was their continued employment made impossible etc. Were they fairly treated?
I’m repeating myself now but I said right at the start that stronger employee protections would not solve all the problems but they might cushion the blow somewhat and force employers to show that they are treating their staff fairly. If not, they are risk being sanctioned at a tribunal.
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