I’d rather these ride-or-die Joe Biden-heads splinter off onto their own network instead. They could make it so whenever you start to even type “Hunt-“ you get a modal that says “Did You Know: Actually Energy Expert Hunter Biden added way more than $50,000/mo worth of value to Burisma.”
It’s unfortunate, but this is useful in that it’s easier to pronounce than any other alternative. I guess MANFAG is just as good and saves the spice for the end.
For sure, can you point me to the labor law stating that company issued equipment is primarily for the personal use of the employee? I couldn't find anything at the federal level.
My info was out of date but pre-Dec 2019 (Caesars Union Suit), electronic communication channels were treated like break rooms- if they aren’t already restricted to only work chat, and you could shoot the shit, then they can’t block or specifically spy (or appear to spy) on protected union activity. Post that ruling, I don’t really understand where the line is. Apparently if there is no other way to communicate outside of work with your co-workers, then they have to let you do it. Maybe you could argue that’s the case during coronavirus unless you can easily get everyone’s personal emails. Shrug
Except maybe by word of mouth spread the existence of external forums for communication that don’t involve leveraging company paid resources and some kind of entitlement to use said resources for non-company purposes. Using external resources and word of mouth may not be the most convenient result but it’s realistically fair.
> This includes your right to distribute union literature, wear union buttons t-shirts, or other insignia (except in unusual "special circumstances"), solicit coworkers to sign union authorization cards, and discuss the union with coworkers. Supervisors and managers cannot spy on you (or make it appear that they are doing so), coercively question you, threaten you or bribe you regarding your union activity or the union activities of your co-workers. You can't be fired, disciplined, demoted, or penalized in any way for engaging in these activities.
I think this is the central point. You can do all those things, but are you entitled to use company equipment to do so?
The term spying becomes less clear-cut in that context too. It's spying if I get your personal private communication, but monitoring one's own internal network would not normally be considered spying.
The other prong of this that is still possibly illegal though is spying on union-specific activity, and leaving that information out for employees to find, which fits under the criteria of making employees believe they’ll be spied on for unionizing - even not on company IT systems.
There’s already an NLRA complaint against amazon (source: Matt Bruenig on Twitter) over the Union-spy job posting. It’ll be interesting to see where that goes and if this gets tacked on.
I think you’re wrong and exposing some weird form of entitlement to resources that don’t belong to you. Of course you can talk to people and organize. None of that grants you the right to use their systems, equipment, or resources to pursue those activities. Company email isn’t “talking” to people, you do that with your mouth. Company email is an IT system the company implements for whatever company business and communication they chose to allow. You are not entitled to use the company’s systems in any way they don’t allow, and they have every right to monitor communications on those systems.
? Not entitled nor even saying it’s a good idea. Unionizers all recommend doing it in secret anyway. I was more interested in talking about the legality
I am a huge supporter of organizing and in general POWER TO THE PEOPLE. I believe that with my heart and soul. But the idea that you should be able to force the company to let you use company resources and systems that they pay for, for this purpose seems truly stupid to me.
Since the old, crufty, established incumbents aren’t agile enough to meet the new requirements, seems like there’s a hole in the market for a disrupter.
OTOH all he had to do was throw in a quick throw away phrase and it was like a tarpit for you. You were so hung up on it you never got to explaining why his post was poorly argued.
> OTOH all he had to do was throw in a quick throw away phrase
He did it repeatedly in the article.
> why his post was poorly argued
I pointed out that he neglected to account for why the oil companies existed - because people want gasoline. It isn't the oil companies emitting CO2, it's the gas consumers.
He shouldn’t have been fired I think, but he also shouldn’t be a tattle-tale against his co-workers. We need solidarity with our co-workers + an end to at-will employment.
Relatedly (but not specific to this situation), if we had stronger employment guarantees people probably wouldn’t taddle to try to get people fired as much. Win-win-win all around.
Wow I never knew how much I loved typescript until reading this. Never had a blog post worth of complaints, at worst just cast to ‘any’, write a comment to recheck after the next update, and clock out at 5. And maybe pray for forgiveness from God for my code having side effects if I’m feeling guilty.
How charitable, now to implement that everyone has to prove their level of income and assets before receiving aid and will unnecessarily screw people on the margins in situations you didn’t imagine up front. Stuff like that gets implemented (usually, in America) as a non-refundable tax credit meaning the poorest get nothing as well.
Just cut the check, tax the rich, and don’t make more paperwork.
