You really don't see a problem with this? I consider myself more on the left, but this practice has always seemed highly antithetical to liberal values to me.
If somebody in their off hours says something assinine, and telling (some might call that "snitching to") their employer in a public forum like Twitter (in a clear attempt to get a social media frenzy going to ultimately get them fired) is a good thing, then wouldn't it logically follow that an employer should not only be permitted but actively encouraged to monitor employees 100% of the time so they can fire them if they ever step out of the corporate line? Amazon does this to many low-level employees just on-the-job and most people think that's creepy and unfair, I can't imagine extending that to off-hours as well. At a minimum wouldn't it follow that it would be great for employers to set up a snitch line so anybody could (even anonymously) call to make reports on people? Is that a world you'd want to live in?
On the next line, let's say the person is fired from their job for a gross tweet. Should they be able to get a new job after that? If so, how does the previous history get erased so the prospective new employers don't see it and avoid them (this very type of thing is by the way, a huge problem for formerly incarcerated people especially felons). Add in that there was no trial, no standard of evidence, no due process, just a swinging axe from an executioner. Should this person (and often their families) just be relegated to extreme poverty the rest of their lives? Blacklisted from employment like the communists in Hollywood were?
In a free country, private employers should be allowed to choose who they employ, with very narrow exceptions for discrimination based on race, religion, etc.
In a free country, citizens should be allowed to read what other citizens write in public.
Those both seem pretty obvious, but put the two of them together and it means people can lose their jobs or not be hired for stuff they tweet. How do you resolve that?
IMO the real issue isn’t that employers can make decisions based on this stuff. It’s that employers are far too big. If we had 20 Amazons, getting fired from one of them wouldn’t be such a big deal.
I think you're missing the basic distinction between private parties and government.
Private parties (including companies) largely have freedom of association. There are (theoretically) protections in "commerce" against a company discriminating against a person or group based on "innate" factors (such as skin color or gender).
But largely, people and companies have a wide degree of latitude about what they are and are not allowed to do.
The government, on the other hand, (theoretically) is largely not allowed to stop people from saying things or associating with each other, and when these prohibitions are in effect they're subject to both documentation and review. This is "theory" because the government has done lots of shady things.
The government, similarly (and theoretically), is bound by a variety of procedural constraints, such as due process, right to see an attorney, right of the attorney to request your presence, right to a trial, etc.
There's a categorical distinction between:
I, a private party, am offended that I face consequences of offending someone else when I would prefer not to face any consequences.
and
I, a private party, am abducted by the organization in this country with a monopoly on violence and which interprets all laws, and I vanish with no recourse from anyone.
I mostly agree with you.
> Those both seem pretty obvious, but put the two of them together and it means people can lose their jobs or not be hired for stuff they tweet. How do you resolve that?
If the employer happened to see it, then yes I think that's well within rights. But I think having some random stranger see something and actively campaign against the employee to their employer is a little bit different. It's not illegal, nor should it be, but there are plenty of things that are legal but still not good behavior. I would consider this under that umbrella.
OK, it's bad behavior. Now what? That means nothing.
Harassment can be punished by the law. So that is the "now what".
No, freedom of speech doesn't mean that you can engage in serious harassment of people, their workplace, or their children or family.
The scenario being discussed is employers looking at employees’ public statements, or third parties telling employers about those public statements. I don’t think that’s anything close to harassment.
No actually. It is never just that.
The question was about "to get a social media frenzy going".
And this is never just an employer randomly looking at a tweet, for which they are almost never going to do anything about it. Most employers don't care.
Instead, the much more likely scenario is mass points of harassment, stalking, and death threats targeted at people's friends and family, when such a "social media frenzy" happens.
You cannot ignore the actual mostly likely result of your advocacy. And when you just say that this is all "free speech" you are doing disservice to the massive amount of illegal harassment that these internet mobs cause.
You do not control the mob, yet you are response for its harm anyway if you try to start one.
The topic was someone telling your employer about something bad that you did.
All of this stuff goes hand in hand. If you are getting a "social media frenzy going", to get someone fired, you are also response for when that social media targets someone's friends and family with stalking, harassment, and death threats.
You cannot pick and chose the consequences of your social media frenzy. It all happens at once, and you don't control the mob. And you are at fault for all of the consequences of that hate mob.
The topic was someone telling your employer about something bad that you did.
Through the process of " getting a social media frenzy going".
Regardless of your motivation, when you gather up a social media frenzy, you can't control the mob. It just ends with everyone being harassed en mass by the mob.
And you are still responsible for the consequences of that internet hate mob, if you use it.
Should we encourage bad behavior? I tend to think not. Agreeing it is bad behavior is a critical step! Now we can start discouraging it
Why should we make an exception based on religion but not on political viewpoint? That is logically inconsistent. There's nothing special about religion.
The historical answer is because Congress wanted to be sure that employers could fire Communists for being Communists.
Of course, that's not my view. I think political affiliation should probably be protected, but it needs to be very narrow. You shouldn't be able to be fired for being a Republican. But if you post "Gay people should be executed," you shouldn't be able to hide behind "I'm a Republican, that's a political view!" any more than you should be able to hide behind "I'm a Christian, that's a religious view!"
But if it is political/religious view? I don't quite understand how we can draw a line here. In general, belonging to a religion or political movement literally means that the subject has a set of certain explicitly stated views.
I agree the pervasiveness of at-will employment and the gig economy, when combined with the way our economy is set up to require employment for survival, are a problem.