Corporations have Constitutional rights only when it please them...
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/sdcounty/article_4a29a1c8-a291-5bc7-a3b4-ed80d625519f.htmlWoman sues for alleged firing over talk show bumper sticker
By: TERI FIGUEROA - Staff Writer | Posted: March 9, 2006 12:00 am
VISTA -- A San Diego County woman is suing her former employer, accusing her manager of firing her on the spot when she saw the woman's car had a bumper sticker advertising a progressive talk radio station.
The suit also alleges that, after seeing the sticker, the employer commented that the woman could be a member of al-Qaida.
In a civil suit filed at the county courthouse in Vista, Linda Laroca is targeting both her former manager, Beverly Fath, and the company she briefly worked for last year, Advantage Sales and Marketing, Inc.
Neither Laroca nor the defendants could be reached for comment Wednesday. Laroca's attorney declined comment.
Laroca, who was hired by the company as a sales representative, is seeking lost wages and damages for wrongful termination for violations of both public policy and the state labor code. She is also claiming state constitutional violations and emotional distress.
The California labor code prohibits employers from controlling or directing the political activities of employees.
According to Laroca's suit, the bumper sticker in question read only: "1360 Air America Progressive Talk Radio."
The nationwide syndicated radio programming from left-wing Air America, which describes itself as "progressive entertainment talk radio" features show hosts such as comedian and author Al Franken. The network programming is carried locally by radio station KLSD 1360 AM.
A call to Clear Channel-owned KLSD on Wednesday afternoon was not immediately returned.
In her Feb. 21 claim, Laroca asserts that on Oct. 8, three weeks after she started working for the marketing company, Fath called her on a Saturday and requested they meet at a nearby grocery store parking lot so Laroca could pass on some documents Fath needed.
During the brief encounter, Laroca charges, the manager pointed to the bumper sticker -- the only one on Laroca's car -- and remarked that it was a new sticker and called it "that Al Franken left-wing radical radio station."
Laroca alleges in her suit that Fath then told her, "The country is on a high state of alert. For all I know, you could be al-Qaida."
A stunned Laroca laughed nervously at the statement, the suit alleges, and then was dealt "the final blow" when Fath fired her on the spot.
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http://www.slate.com/id/2106714/Bumper Sticker InsubordinationA Kerry fan gets fired, and then hired, for her politics.
By Timothy NoahPosted Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2004, at 6:30 PM ET
Listen to this story on NPR's Day to Day Listen to this story on NPR's Day to Day.
One of this column's various mandates is to keep track of people who get fired from their jobs solely for holding certain political beliefs. Firing a person because you don't like his or her politics runs contrary to just about everything this country stands for, but it is not against the law. My interest in this topic was stimulated a couple of years ago when I learned that my childhood friend Michael Italie, who sewed U.S. Navy jackets for Goodwill Industries in Miami, got fired for appearing on television as the mayoral candidate for the Socialist Workers Party, in which capacity he made some predictably provocative statements. Subsequently, I wrote about Bryan Keefer, who lost his job as a research assistant with the Service Employees International Union for writing an online column critical of the coinage, "Enron conservatives." In both of these examples, the extracurricular activities that caused offense were entirely unrelated to the fired person's job and were not performed, or even discussed, in the workplace.
The same is true of Lynne Gobbell of Moulton, Ala., who on Sept. 9 was fired from her job at Enviromate, a company that makes housing insulation, for driving to work with a Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker in the rear windshield of her Chevy Lumina. The person who did the firing was Phil Geddes, who owns the company and is an enthusiastic Bush supporter. (Although Gobbell hasn't done any proselytizing for Kerry at Enviromate, Geddes distributed a flyer to all Enviromate employees explaining why they should vote for Bush.) Here is how Gobbell related her story to Clyde Stancil of the Decatur Daily News:
"We were going back to work from break, and my manager told me that Phil said to remove the sticker off my car or I was fired," she said. "I told him that Phil couldn't tell me who to vote for. He said, 'Go tell him.' "
She went to
office, knocked on the door and entered on his orders.
"Phil and another man who works there were there," she said. "I asked him if he said to remove the sticker and he said, 'Yes, I did.' I told him he couldn't tell me who to vote for. When I told him that, he told me, 'I own this place.' I told him he still couldn't tell me who to vote for."
Gobbell said told her to "get out of here."
"I asked him if I was fired and he told me he was thinking about it," she said. "I said, 'Well, am I fired?' He hollered and said, 'Get out of here and shut the door.' "
She said her manager was standing in another room and she asked him if that meant for her to go back to work or go home. The manager told her to go back to work, but he came back a few minutes later and said, "I reckon you're fired. You could either work for him or John Kerry," Gobbell said.
"I took off my gloves and threw them in the garbage and left," Gobbell said.
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and here is the bad news!!!!! They can do that!!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123024596
Can Bosses Do That? As It Turns Out, Yes They Can
Did you know you could be fired for not removing a political sticker from your car — or even having a beer after work? Lewis Maltby says it's more than possible — it's happened. His new book, Can They Do That? explores rights in the workplace.
As he tells NPR's Ari Shapiro, "Freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment — but only where the government is concerned.
"What most Americans generally don't know is that the Constitution doesn't apply to private corporations at all."
In terms of monitoring its employees, the list of things a corporation can't do is a short one — it's basically confined to eavesdropping on a personal oral conversation, Maltby said. "Anything else is open season."
And outside the workplace, personal blogs or social media pages on services like Twitter or Facebook offer no refuge.
Asked if workers can be fired for things they write on those sites, Maltby said, "Absolutely. Happens every day."
But not all snooping is meant to be malicious, Maltby said. For instance, a boss who suspects an employee might be about to quit, or is perhaps moonlighting for a competitor, might seek out the worker's personal blog.
The worker might not have been doing any of the things the boss had feared — instead, "your boss sees you blowing off steam about him, takes offense — and you get fired."
And workers have very little legal protection against being fired, said Maltby, who is also the president and founder of the National Workrights Institute.
"I've been getting calls from people for 20 years who've been abused in all sorts of ways," Maltby said. "When I tell them, 'Sorry, you don't have any legal rights,' they literally don't believe me," Maltby said.
Companies need the freedom to run their businesses the way they want — and fire people who are seen as doing a bad job. But, Maltby says, those decisions should be based on legitimate business rationale.
Asked how some practices can persist even though a majority of workers are against them, Maltby points to a key flaw in the job market: workers' need for stable income. The need to pay for things like a home mortgage or a child's education tends to complicate matters.
"It sounds nice in theory to say, 'Walk away, and look for another job,' " Maltby said. "But in practice, most people just can't take that risk. They just put up with it."
excerpt from book at link.
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