patrick.net

This is why we need the "First Amendment everywhere, including the workplace" legal philosophy.

Unless it directly interferes with the business mission, like a salesman telling prospects to buy somewhere else because the store's products suck.

When you are exchanging labor for money, you're not selling your soul, just your labor.

thunderlips11 says

When you are exchanging labor for money, you're not selling your soul, just your labor

He would only be "selling his soul" if he was forced by the company to voice support for political issues that violated his beliefs. All he had to do was simply not comment either way and focus on analyzing baseball.

dublin hillz says

He would only be "selling his soul" if he was forced by the company to voice support for political issues that violated his beliefs. All he had to do was simply not comment either way and focus on analyzing baseball.

Nope, he's free to give his opinion on his own time on his own Facebook account. Company can suck it. Free Speech must be absolute.

This by the way, is the ultimate test as to whether somebody is for voluntary exchange, or supports special privileges for employers over their employees.

thunderlips11 says

Nope, he's free to give his opinion on his own time on his own Facebook account. Company can suck it. Free Speech must be absolute.

This by the way, is the ultimate test as to whether somebody is for voluntary exchange, or supports special privileges for employers over their employees.

Public figures are a reflection of the company and therefore must be held to a higher standard than a typical citizen.

thunderlips11 says

This is why we need the "First Amendment everywhere, including the workplace" legal philosophy.

LOL! The first amendment already applies everywhere (well except for yelling fire in a crowded theater or inciting a riot or the like), but if you think that it should shield you from the fallout of your speech you are sadly mistaken, especially for employees who are the face of the company. Every public word uttered or public post/tweet/email made by these types of employees reflects upon the company they work for, it goes with the territory and they are usually very well compensated. Now for non company face employees, I would expect this to be a much lesser issue unless they are publicly identifying themselves as an employee of such and such while spewing whatever offal floats their boat. I don't think most companies are monitoring employees facebook pages or other social websites but many do review such sites when deciding whether to interview or hire a someone.

Sorry, it's too much feudal power for employers to monitor the speech of employees.

Even for public faces, companies should have to bring a suit (can't just fire unilaterally) and prove a repetitive pattern of harm and financial damage.

ESPN should have to prove that Curt Shilling cost them substantial measurable damages, presumably from their huge loss among the large M2Fs sports fan demographic (LOL!)

I have a constitutional right to a job at ESPN!

HydroCabron says

I have a constitutional right to a job at ESPN!

Holy Strawman!

rando says

ah, so companies can decide to fire all democrats, simply for no reason other than their political beliefs? or they can fire everyone who supports racial integration, or gender equality?

No. They can fire people who are public figures and represent the company when they say things in the public forum which they believe have negative ramifications on the company image due to association. My corp will fire you for speaking to the media, if you are not part of our PR department, and commenting on the company/business. Wrong? I don't think so. Not my job to speak for the company.

If part of your job, is living out in the public eye, better do it well and with the interest of ESPN in mind at all times ... or ... bye bye. Curt doesn't GET a public voice that isn't associated with ESPN. So when he Facebooks, it is one of ESPN's figure heads messaging ... always.

rando says

when you have your employer watching what you say on your own time, you in actual fact do not have freedom of speech.

Again, if you are a news anchor, celeb, media figure, etc. ... you are NEVER not speaking for the company/your product. This guy made an unfortunate mistake and paid for it.

This isn't SJW, PC, or anti-first amendment at all. This is just typical PR business in action. I think the issue this is over is horse-crap, but ESPN is well within their rights here.

"Sorry Curt, your brand and image we do not feel is in line with ESPN anymore. We have to let you go. We hired a sports commentator, not a political pundit."

I'm all in favor of companies hiring and firing whomever they please, but gays are gross so this speech should be protected.

PC education and program implementation is probably a great consulting business today.

Curriculum:
White man - bad. Colored People of Color - Good. Straight white man - Bad. Transgender white man - OK. Spaniard - OK. German - White man.
Dutch man - White man. Slav man - White man/minor Eurasian. Good horse archers.
Irish man - White man (formerly black). Indian from south of the border - Spaniard.

Don't forget, Italians are white now and can join the KKK instead of being run out of town by them as inferior types.

Meanwhile, at ESPN:

We lost the lucrative Transgender Sports Fan market because of you, Curt! Do you know how many there are?

It's a bit ironic that the icon of non-PC (the Donald) has said that he dislikes the NC bathroom law. Will he change his opinion when he sees how his followers feel, or is he starting the pivot.

The reason for the swift change in corporate culture is that the majority now side with the LGBTG crew. When 55% were saying ewe, gross, they are ruining culture and raping our children, corporations were happy to play along. Now that 55% of the population says what the hell, let LGBTG do what they want, corporations are also projecting that image. The corps are not worried about the 1% that are actually TG. They are worried about the 54% who side with the TG. Yes, I made the #s up, but whatever the tipping point is, it's a calculus of what type of image the corporation wants to project to capture the most business.

Many of the people who were once in the majority, and now find themselves in the minority are collectively freaking out at this phenomena. There are still politicians who service the now minority. Those pols will keep writing these bills when it helps them get elected even if it is bad for the state in general.

Blurtman says

PC education and program implementation is probably a great consulting business today

However, when most people originally form their views, it comes from the institutions of family and peer groups and they are unlikely to be PC. Therefore, "PC education and program implementation " cannot possibly have an unfair advantage in the battle for hearts and minds.

dublin hillz says

institutions of family and peer groups

Church. Subliminal messages in video games.

It is how the card works. If you against about my pet cause, you are a hate filled brute, who doesn't like blacks, gays or breastfeeding women. You are to be shunned!

Blurtman says

It is how the card works. If you against about my pet cause, you are a hate filled brute, who doesn't like backs, gays or breastfeeding women. You are to be shunned!

This problem is not exclusive to the right or the left, in fact it's present in any wing extremism. Some people are simply extremely opinionated and cannot tolerate dissent due to lack of willingness to debate academically and because they have not done proper introspection on the issues at hand.

it's a joke. j-o-k-e.
a play on babyCher...
now laugh.
hahahaha

HydroCabron says

Dungeness says

OTOH, you want this john goodman lookalike staring at your schlong at the urinal when her birth hormones kick in?

Oh ... My ... Gawd!

Sooooo scary!

astronut97 says

Dungeness says

I was referring to Billary charging 250k per speech.


What the fuck is wrong with you???

Well maybe you should have said that rather than "No free speak in libbyland". What is a person supposed to think when you say that?

www.youtube.com/embed/66X8a-hY0kE

Yet IHLillery GETS a private email server that IS associated with the US gov.
Libbylogic.
I see.....

Rew says

Curt doesn't GET a public voice that isn't associated with ESPN.

Both.

YesYNot says

Will he change his opinion when he sees how his followers feel, or is he starting the pivot.

Dungeness says

Yet IHLillery GETS a private email server that IS associated with the US gov.

In both cases a private account was being used in an official capacity.

Curt didn't separate his private and public life. He could of/should of used an alias account. He didn't seem to know better. Bad judgement.
Hillary used non-sanctioned/non-secure methods for official comms. Bad on all sorts of security levels.

And if you think Hillary has any hope of saying much that isn't in the public eye, well, you are dreaming. She only has her secret service guards, family, and friends behind closed doors for that. I'm pretty sure she is smart enough to know things she posts on Facebook are subject to public scrutiny as a public figure though.

depends on the employment agreement with ESPN and what constitutes "representing ESPN" while on personal time.

may be a really good case for wrongful termination.

If you can't separate your personal and public responsibilities, you are not competent to be president.
She can have her private email server, just not give out the address to anybody working for the feds.
It's an extremely simple concept.
The average office grunt knows enough to separate their work email from their personal gmail/yahoo/microsoft/apple email.
Her excuse is lame. She is as corrupt as the sky is blue...

Rew says

And if you think Hillary has any hope of saying much that isn't in the public eye, well, you are dreaming. She only has her secret service guards, family, and friends behind closed doors for that. I'm pretty sure she is smart enough to know things she posts on Facebook are subject to public scrutiny as a public figure though.

astronut97 says

workers can be let go without cause as long as it can't be proven that they weren't let go because of race, religion, sex or other protected class

so how exactly is freedom of religion different from freedom of speech?

they are both in the bill of rights. why is it that you can not fire someone because of a publicly announced religious belief, but you can fire someone because of a publicly announced political belief?

rando says

so how exactly is freedom of religion different from freedom of speech?

The Bill of Rights is protecting us from the government interference, you are comparing apples and oranges when you apply this to companies firing people. Also, Schilling wasn't fired for a "publicly announced political belief", he was fired for repeatably spouting off on social media in such a manner that was embarrassing to his employer. And again, he is a public face of ESPN and so they had every right to fire him for his behavior.

Everyone does have free speech but if you were to start spouting off about hating black people and start posting pictures of yourself dressed in KKK garb sitting in a company vehicle with the company logo displayed, you may find your self fired. Free speech may not be free from backlash.

What sort of protections from firing would you like to see? Should someone be able to say absolutely anything and I still have to let them work for me even though it would now poison the workplace (i.e. the individual hates all -----s and -----s work at your company) environment?

This is a moot point in Florida and other "right to work/fire" states, as I could be let go without notice or cause at anytime. So they wouldn't need to say they are firing me due to my publicly shared views.

astronut97 says

The Bill of Rights is protecting us from the government interference, you are comparing apples and oranges when you apply this to companies firing people. Also, Schilling wasn't fired for a "publicly announced political belief", he was fired for repeatably spouting off on social media in such a manner that was embarrassing to his employer. And again, he is a public face of ESPN and so they had every right to fire him for his behavior.

Everyone does have free speech but if you were to start spouting off about hating black people and start posting pictures of yourself dressed in KKK garb sitting in a company vehicle with the company logo displayed, you may find your self fired. Free speech may not be free from backlash.

What sort of protections from firing would you like to see? Should someone be able to say absolutely anything and I still have to let them work for me even though it would now poison the workplace (i.e. the individual hates all -----s and -----s work at your company) environment?

This is a moot point in Florida and other "right to work/fire" states, as I could be let go without notice or cause at anytime. So they wouldn't need to say they are firing me due to my publicly shared views.

That's a valid view/position as long as you keep it consistent and allow businesses and their employees to refuse service to anyone if they deem so. The problem is that the government (and their extension - the lawyers) interferes in one way, when business and employee are aligned (such as the infamous gay wedding cake incident), but doesn't when firings like those happen. You can't have it both ways, and the employee is always fucked, either for having their employer fire them due to their "views" or because the government passes laws to sue businesses out of existence that have a good relationship with their employees but piss off a few customers who couldn't go next door. Furthermore by your logic it should be allowed for any business to fire their employee because they engage say for example in LGBT causes or women's issues on a public facing social media if it doesn't fit their corporate image. Can't have it both ways. It has to be either protection for both or for none.

mell says

That's a valid view/position as long as you keep it consistent and allow businesses and their employees to refuse service to anyone if they deem so.

This is a totally different issue and not related at all to Schillings being fired. Businesses that provide services to the public should not be able to not serve certain classes of people at their whim. That would be a huge step backwards.

Schilling was hired by ESPN for his reputation in baseball and the people that he would draw to the network. His spouting off damaged his reputation and his ability to garner viewership for ESPN and so he was let go.

I don't believe businesses in general should fire people for their views and shouldn't go snooping on social media for bad behavior of its employees. But employees that are basically the face of the company can and do get fired all the time if they act up in public and embarrass their employer. Think of the Taco Bell exec (Benjamin Golden) who beat up an Uber driver and was fired or the Doctor (Anjali Ramkissoon) would also did this and was put on administrative leave. Now these two incidents involved some violence but there have been other times when just verbal rants from and exec or some badly thought through tweet got someone fired as well (i.e. Justine Sacco for tweeting "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!").

rando says

they are both in the bill of rights. why is it that can not fire someone because of a publicly announced religious belief, but you can fire someone because of a publicly announced political belief?

astronut97 is correct in saying the bill of rights protects against government interference.

mell says

government passes laws

Different levels of government enact different laws, in a structure resembling a pyramid: the federal government has the highest but narrowest authority, while state and local governments have broader authority subject to federal pre-emption in some areas. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits many businesses from discriminating on the basis of race/color/national origin or religion, but it does not mention political belief. The reasons are mainly historical: there had been a history of discrimination on the basis of race/color and/or religion and/or national origin ("Irish need not apply"), so a coalition formed to enact legislation to change that. The 1964 Act also prohibits discrimination on account of sex, and has been clarified since to state that sex discrimination includes discrimination based on pregnancy, and litigation has clarified its application to related matters. In general, most federal civil rights legislation deals primarily with relatively larger institutions affecting interstate commerce, though as usual the commercial media report loudly on the exceptions to the general pattern; a Martian relying on American commercial news to understand life on earth would think that every plane crashes and would have no idea why anyone buys a ticket.

In this instance, no one sued as far as I know. The employer and professional sports generally depend on advertising. Advertisers want audience attention, especially younger audiences who buy a lot of sports gear and are choosing which brands to identify with. (Do you want to be a Pepper, or buy the world a Coke, or join the Pepsi Generation? You probably decided as a kid and left it at that.) Management decided to identify the company brand in ways that would resonate with young audiences, and an employee who was already on warning for other issues chose to undermine publicly management's decision. BTW, in commercial media, companies invest heavily in building up the profile of on-air talent, and usually the on-air talent are team players who want to build their own brands and raise their own profiles in ways that increase their own leverage and make their own prospects more lucrative. I had never heard of this particular guy before, but he seems to have been in a mode of wanting to step off the ladder. Government had really nothing to do with it: the issue was only how a commercial network and an on-air employee wanted to manage their respective brands, and they disagreed, as they had apparently disagreed about other matters, so the employer chose to terminate the relationship. It wasn't even about political correctness really: the ESPN team built up this guy's profile into a platform, and if he had used that platform to publish written declarations that football should be banned and he hates sports and disagrees with network and league management, after previously having antagonized his employer regarding other issues, then the result would likely have been the same.

astronut97 says

This is a totally different issue and not related at all to Schillings being fired. Businesses that provide services to the public should not be able to not serve certain classes of people at their whim. That would be a huge step backwards.

Ah but it's not different at all. It's done all the time, by private businesses such as bars and nightclubs, gyms etc. Even by the government via affirmative action. Same difference. If you advocate for no discrimination laws then that should lead to immediate abolishment of affirmative action and any special protection laws for any classes as well as abolishment of any firings or admissions at universities and employers that are based on anything but merit.

Mell, you are essentially trying to say that if a company can fire someone for calling black people niggers, then another company should be able to refuse service to blacks.
Replace black with trans or gays, and you pretty much have your opinion.

astronut97 says

The Bill of Rights is protecting us from the government interference, you are comparing apples and oranges when you apply this to companies firing people. Also, Schilling wasn't fired for a "publicly announced political belief", he was fired for repeatably spouting off on social media in such a manner that was embarrassing to his employer. And again, he is a public face of ESPN and so they had every right to fire him for his behavior.

So wait, what if he said "Abortion is killing babies, and those who perform it are murderers" on his Facebook. And many ESPN viewers' were deeply offended by it. Should Schilling be fired for that?

mell says

Ah but it's not different at all. It's done all the time, by private businesses such as bars and nightclubs, gyms etc. Even by the government via affirmative action. Same difference. If you advocate for no discrimination laws then that should lead to immediate abolishment of affirmative action and any special protection laws for any classes as well as abolishment of any firings or admissions at universities and employers that are based on anything but merit.

Fully in favor. And testable merit, with no fallible managers making the decisions - a computer should pick the person with the highest test score.

Militaries around the world have spent billions trying to figure out who is cool under pressure, what kind of person makes a good leader, etc. and have few answers, despite countless eggheads monitoring countless tens of thousands of voluntold people over the years, backed with countless dollars, rubles, pounds, and marks spent trying to figure it out.

YesYNot says

Mell, you are essentially trying to say that if a company can fire someone for calling black people niggers, then another company should be able to refuse service to blacks.

Replace black with trans or gays, and you pretty much have your opinion.

Sure, but not because it's my opinion, but because it's a logical conclusion. Just because you consider something amoral doesn't make it necessarily unacceptable under a law. Now if you want to bar people from being racist to others that's great but then you must follow through on all counts and never ever put a program in place that favors any race, gender or whatnot class of people, hence immediate abolition of affirmative action or laws to "strengthen" any groups (men's, women's, LGBTs etc.) rights. And the common law against discrimination must apply for all business interactions in life, which includes the employer-employee relationship, not just the employer-customer relationship.

thunderlips11 says

Militaries around the world have spent billions trying to figure out who is cool under pressure,

Yeah but even the military is being penetrated by the fight for "equality", weakening it at its core. But maybe that won't matter that much though in the distant future of the pure drone wars if women (and any other non-male gender) could get on par with their male ciphers ;)

curious2 says

In this instance, no one sued as far as I know. The employer and professional sports generally depend on advertising. Advertisers want audience attention, especially younger audiences who buy a lot of sports gear and are choosing which brands to identify with. (Do you want to be a Pepper, or buy the world a Coke, or join the Pepsi Generation? You probably decided as a kid and left it at that.) Management decided to identify the company brand in ways that would resonate with young audiences, and an employee who was already on warning for other issues chose to undermine publicly management's decision. BTW, in commercial media, companies invest heavily in building up the profile of on-air talent, and usually the on-air talent are team players who want to build their own brands and raise their own profiles in ways that increase their own leverage and make their own prospects more lucrative. I had never heard of this particular guy before, but he seems to have been in a mode of wanting to step off the ladder. Government had really nothing to do with it: the issue was only how a commercial network and an on-air employee wanted to manage their respective brands, and they disagreed, as they had apparently disagreed about other matters, so the employer chose to terminate the relationship. It wasn't even about political correctness really: the ESPN team built up this guy's profile into a platform, and if he had used that platform to publish written declarations that football should be banned and he hates sports and disagrees with network and league management, after previously having antagonized his employer regarding other issues, then the result would likely have been the same.

I'd argue that ESPN will be losing business over this, esp. if you read the reactions on social media. Sports die-hards are usually not the sensitive, leftoid kind, so I don't buy the business decision for a second. However one could say that Shilling should/could have seen it coming as ESPN has been heavily influenced by progressive-leftist forces in the management for quite a while now. So he was definitely careless. The question is whether we want to live in a society where everybody is afraid to speak their mind because of immediate repercussions and where we thus will become an amorphous mass of zombies under a true Orwellian dystopia and descend from meritocracy to idiocracy.

It is the tyranny of the minority and make believe minority. Sniff test - change the special group of privilege to white men (and versa vicea) and see if it flies. For example, try defining affirmative action as letting in white men with inferior qualifications. Bad idea? Yes, then it is a bad idea period.

This is all made possible by the consolidation of all media sources into a few owner hands. Now that the media is wholly owned by a few billionaires, they set the tone and agenda for the discussion, and choose to publicly shame whoever offends them. This defeats the first amendment freedom of the press before it has a chance to be invoked. And furthermore, sets up this hijacked press to be a kangaroo court in which those with conflicting beliefs are tried and hung out to dry.

astronut97 says

What sort of protections from firing would you like to see? Should someone be able to say absolutely anything and I still have to let them work for me even though it would now poison the workplace (i.e. the individual hates all -----s and -----s work at your company) environment?

i'd like to see employees protected while exercising freedom of speech on their own time just the same as they are protected while exercising freedom of religion on their own time.

if you want to be consistent, you should argue that employers should not have to let a jew/christian/muslim/whatever work for them, because it would "poison the workplace" as you put it.