#1 I would not fire, their ability to do their job is in no way related to their political orientation and good child care is so hard to get these days.
#2 The waiter is using my business to advertise his political views directly to the customers of my business. Whats on his car in the parking lot I could care less.
An example of my own I would also fire.
I run a delivery company and one of my employees applies a “Vote BUSH!” sticker to MY delivery truck. Uh no… he does not have the right to use MY property to advertise his agenda. The employees vehicle is not my property, even if its parked on mine.
#1 I would not fire, their ability to do their job is in no way related to their political orientation and good child care is so hard to get these days.
#2 The waiter I would fire. The waiter is using the draw of my business to advertise his political views directly to the customers of my business. Whats on his car in the parking lot I could care less.
An example of my own I would also fire.
I run a delivery company and one of my employees applies a “Vote BUSH!” sticker to MY delivery truck. Uh no… he does not have the right to use MY property to advertise his agenda. The employees vehicle is not my property to dictate usage, even if its parked on mine.
I don’t believe my hypothetical employer is being unethical in either case. I’d do the same in each case.
If I own a shop, I’m not going to let employees wear or do anything controversial while they are dealing with the public on my behalf. Even if I agree with the employee’s politics, I know that some customers will not, and might be offended and take their business elsewhere.
As for the dogwalker, the sign is in my driveway. If I disagree with the statement, I don’t want it there, as people might assume (with some logic) that it’s my sign, expressing my opinion.
Back to the OP. If I’m the employer, I’m not going to object to a small bumper sticker on one of 50 cars in my lot that says “Kerry/Edwards”. It’s unlikely to offend customers, and no one’s going to assume that it’s my opinion. Also, it’s a stupid rule, because it makes the employer (and his candidate) look bad.
But legally, it’s my opinion that a private employer has the right to do so. It’s his lot, and he decide who gets to use it, and prohibit advertisements (no matter how small) that he disagrees with.
Why limit it to just political speech? I recall a case in Dallas where a business owner declared one day was “Cowboys Day” and encourgaed his employees to wear Cowboys fan items. As far as I recall, nobody was forced to participate. But one employee decided to wear a Green Bay Packers jacket instead and was fired.
Drax, I have no quarrel with the second (third?) of your recent posts. The first (with the 11:13 pm time stamp), I do take issue with.
With respect to the eye color hypothetical, I’ve already said that if eye color discrimination is disguised racial discrimination, it won’t fly. Otherwise, it’s perfectly legal. Your post says nothing different.
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have used eye color as a hypothetical, because it tends to correlate with race. But I stand by my point - If the employer establishes that he fired the plaintiff because he had blue eyes (and not because the employee was white), the employer is not guilty of any legal wrong, and should win his case. Eye color is not a protected class, and neither is political affiliation. (Once again, we’re talking about a private employer, so there are no First Amendment/speech/freedom of association issues.)
As for your other point, your hypothetical employee would have a hard time proving that his vote was affected or coerced. He isn’t being kept from the polls, and no one is watching him mark his ballot. (This point might seem ridiculous, but there’s actually a history of just that kind of employer activity in this country. Employers actually gave employees pre-marked ballots and followed them into polling places to make sure the ballot wasn’t changed.) Cite:
That’s the reason for the laws you cite (and also one reason for laws against electioneering at polling places, which is the issue addressed by the US Supreme Court in my cite.))
I’m not going to do research tonight (for that matter, this is my last post, because I have to be in court early tomorrow), but there’s been a fair amount of litigation on similar issues. Assuming a private employer, employee buttons/leaflets/cubicle signs can be restricted. There is a narrow exception for union buttons, but that’s based on Federal labor statutes and not general legal principles.
If that is the case, please kill me. I hate small towns and I hate coffee.
A large sign is a bit different than an average-sized bumper sticker. Were it a bumper sticker, like the story in question, I would not say a thing about it. Were it an ostentatiously large sign, seeing as its parked in front of my home, I would ask her to remove it or park in back.
Now, parked off to the side of my disgusting, evil coffee shop where people come to drink that putrid, vomitous liquid (because employees have no business parking in front of a retail establishment)? I probably wouldn’t mind the sign, unless it was really, really big… in which case, it’s not comparable to the
Again, not comparable. Were I to own a business, I would have a very, very strict dress code for employees. There would be no buttons, no flair, and no fucking nametags either. No facial piercings or tattoos, either. That’s a dresscode issue, which again, is totally fucking different than a small bumper sticker on a car in the parking lot.
So why don’t you ask something comparable?
Would I fire an employee for having a bumper sticker supporting that evil, if-there-were-a-God-he’d-have-painful-cancer human postule Bush? No. End of questioning.
It wasn’t based on voting status. It was based on not wanting that sticker to be in the company’s parking lot. She can still vote for Kerry. She just needs not to bring her sticker onto company property.
Precisely. No coercion was being made as to how she was voting and bumper stickers are unprotected.
At my company we follow the lead the boss has set. He doesn’t put any political stickers on his Lexus so I don’t put any on my ten-year-old Ford. There are no political bumper stickers on any cars in our lot so we don’t offend any customers, whatever their parties.
(Although my boss – a small business owner – hates Bush, he suggested that it would be bad for business if I kept the bumper sticker on my Jeep and used the Jeep to visit potential customers. He didn’t tell me to take it off though. I did take it off, but I still have one on my motorcycle helmet. )
What if the owner of the business was not the owner of the parking lot, such as in a case where many businesses lease space in a large building? Just curious.
I am surprised that his tactics, of quashing her expression, firing her, and putting flyers in the paychecks, aren’t considered coercion. If discussing sex can be harassment, then isn’t punitive behavior also harassment? Hasn’t he created a “hostile working environment”? The bumper sticker incident alone might not cut it, but combined with the other acts he sends a pretty strong message.
fessie, harassment is legal. Sexual harrassment is illegal, as is firing someone because they are part of a protected class (see Random’s post above), but these are exceptions.
What would happen to her if Kerry won? It’s not as if campaign workers who happen to be on the winning side automatically get invited to work in the administration. As it so happens, one of my co-workers has a son who is a higher-up in the Bush campaign. No guarantee that even he’ll be working for the GOP come mid-November.
Here in California, there’s a law against firing someone for off-duty conduct. Seems to me if the car wasn’t parked on the premises, driving to and from work would clearly be an off-duty activity.
Of course, it didn’t happen in California, and we don’t know if the car was parked on the premises, but I thought it’d be interesting to bring it up anyway.
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