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> I don't know about you, but "Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities." seems pretty political to me.

It's about as political as informing someone they have a right to be paid the minimum wage.



Sure you have the right to say it. But you can’t follow me to the bathroom stall and keep telling me. She didn’t post it to a common area. She took it upon herself to plaster it on everyone’s computer screen.


According to her Medium post it only appears on two websites.

> I created a little notification, only a few lines of code, that pops up in the corner of the browser whenever my coworkers visited the union busters’ website or the community guidelines policy. The notification said: “Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities.”

https://medium.com/@ksspiers/google-fires-another-worker-for...


And how does that still not show that she over reached her responsibility?


"But you can’t follow me to the bathroom stall and keep telling me."

"plaster it on everyone's screen" did you read the same article I did? The alert was triggered off a single consultancy's site. I really doubt it was a common hang out spot.


She was using a security tool to spread her message. Does that seem appropriate to you?


> She was using a security tool to spread her message. Does that seem appropriate to you?

Yes, of course.

Apparently this "security tool" exists to notify Googlers of policy, and the notification just linked to a Google policy notice with a warning not to violate it. This is apparently the actual notification that was displayed:

https://miro.medium.com/max/2000/0*1BTVYLTvuHiJVvp_.jpg

> Do not violate go/nlrbnotice. Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities.


Yes email exists to notify employees too but just because I can email the entire company doesn’t mean that I should take it upon myself to notify them about anything that’s not in my job description.


You keep moving the goalposts every time someone refutes one of your points.

> Does that seem appropriate to you?

Yes. It's a tool for showing notifications related to the page being visited. Not to mention the whole thing is appropriate on moral grounds, regardless of any technicality.


So that means she should be able to inject her opinion on any site that she doesn’t like?


> So that means she should be able to inject her opinion on any site that she doesn’t like?

Just to be clear: her "opinion" is "don't take actions that would cause the company to break federal labor law."


Is she part of the company’s legal team?


> Is she part of the company’s legal team?

If that's was an actual requirement, can you make or point to a statement in an official Google capacity that states the notices displayed by the tool she maintained had to be written or pre-cleared by Google's legal team? If you can, was the requirement for legal team involvement established practice and not some post-hoc rationalization for her firing?


Some things are just common sense. It wasn’t her role to disseminate information about any type of compliance outside of security. As a professional, you should know what’s appropriate in a workplace based on your position.


> Some things are just common sense. It wasn’t her role to disseminate information about any type of compliance outside of security. As a professional, you should know what’s appropriate in a workplace based on your position.

"Common sense" often isn't as common or as sensible as some people think.

You often make seemingly-authoritative statements like "it wasn't her role." Avoiding post-hoc rationalizations based on the fact that she was fired, can you explain to me how that was communicated to her?


Do you really need someone to tell you that if you work on security it’s not your told to disseminate information about hiring?


So you can't answer the question, then.

> Do you really need someone to tell you that if you work on security it’s not your told to disseminate information about hiring?

Maybe if you're fully indoctrinated into a particular corporate culture that very hierarchical, siloed, and highly biased towards management and shareholders.

However, Google, at least for now, has a very unusual corporate culture.


> She took it upon herself to plaster it on everyone’s computer screen.

Don't think that is true from the story, if you read it.


rights are inherently political. they vary by state and country, they are proposed and opposed in elections by politicians. they are debatable etc.




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