By Emily Mapp Brannon Many Workplaces have their degrees of potential dangers and the medical field is no exception. In fact, healthcare professionals are more likely to experience this more than most other service type professions. They work in an unpredictable environment and need to be ready for almost anything. The Emergency Nurses Association has …
Mike Konczal and Bryce Covert have a new article and paper out that confirm a long-held position of mine: the economic and social agendas of the right are one and the same. As Mike and Bryce show, 12 states are responsible for over 70 percent of the state and local public-sector layoffs since 2011. Eleven of those states were taken over by Republicans in the 2010 election, thanks in large part to the efforts of the Tea Party. Those 11 states were also far more likely to restrict the reproductive rights of women than were other states. Mike and Bryce don’t talk about how those 11 states compare with other states when it comes to rolling back worker and labor rights (though given the higher rates of unionization among public-sector workers, cutting public-sector jobs is obviously connected to that question). I have my suspicions, but it’d be good to see more research on that as well.
As Mike writes, the research he and Bryce have done sheds critical light on how we think about the right:
I had two questions about this that I tried to answer in this article. The first was where these state losses were occurring, and whether there was anything interesting going on with the distribution of lost jobs.
The second question was how the new Tea Party influenced Republican state legislatures, especially Republicans that took over 11 states in the historic 2010 midterm elections, were governing. There’s two theories I saw. The first could be called the “social issue truce” theory, based on a statement Mitch Daniels made. As Dick Morris put it, “No longer do evangelical or social issues dominate the Republican ground troops. Now economic and fiscal issues prevail…It is one of the fundamental planks in the Tea Party platform that the movement does not concern itself with social issues.” They aren’t interested in restricting voter restrictions or reproductive freedoms. (A corollary theory is David Frum’s argument that ”these new majorities will arrive with only slogans for a policy agenda.” They won’t even know what to do as there aren’t independent conservative intellectuals to guide them.)
The second theory could be called the Corey Robin theory, which would argue conservatism is everywhere a “reactionary movement, a defense of power and privilege against democratic challenges from below, particularly in the private spheres of the family and the workplace.” In this theory, beyond just shredding the public sector in favor of the private, the movement would be compelled to combat challenges against the family that come from reproductive freedoms and threats to entrenched power that come from expanded democratic access. They might, for instance, be more likely to pass bills restricting reproductive freedoms as well as voter suppression bills than non-GOP states in this theory, where under the “social issue truce” we wouldn’t see a difference.
I think we were able to get an empirical handle on both questions.
By Sheena Harrison Physical attacks on employees are rare but when they happen, employers should be ready to provide psychiatric resources for victims as they work to cope with trauma. Violent incidents involving customers, co-workers or outside aggressors can leave workers who have experienced or witnessed attacks with depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder. As …
Workplace tyranny: not just at the low end of the service sector but also in a fancy law firm.
On March 16, at least 14 employees of the Elizabeth R. Wellborn law firm, located in Deerfield Beach, Florida, wore orange shirts to work. For this style choice, they were marched into a conference room and summarily fired. Wellborn’s husband declared that the shirts were a protest against working conditions at the 275-worker law firm, and that management would not stand for such behavior. (Early reporting claimed the workers’ dress merely signified a way to easily organize a happy hour outing, although it later came out that while that was true for some, others were dressed in the color of prison uniforms to protest draconian new work rules.)
Aren’t such tyrannical, arbitrary and callous acts illegal? Can management just throw you out on your ear, upending your life and endangering your ability to support yourself, for wearing the wrong shirt? Freedom of speech, freedom of expression, right?
Wrong.
The First Amendment and many of the Constitution’s other protections only extend to the government, not to private employers. Freedom of speech and expression are not protected in the private-sector, nonunion workplace. You could be fired for, say, wearing a pin advocating a particular political party. You could also be fired for sporting a smiley face pin.
“People assume they have a lot more protection at work than they actually do,” says Judith M. Conti, federal advocacy coordinator for the National Employment Law Center (NELP). “People also assume they have some right to be treated decently, and fairly, and respectfully at the workplace. They have the right to freedom from discrimination based on certain immutable characteristics like sex, race and age, but as long as treatment at work isn’t related to one of those characteristics you can be treated badly with no legal recourse. It’s kind of a free-for-all.”
Jake Blumgart at Alternet has the whole story here. (h/t Keven Fathi)
From Poynter:
Richard Prince reports that ESPN has reversed its initial stand against staffers posting pictures of themselves in hoodies to show solidarity with Trayvon Martin. After Fox News commentator Geraldo Rivera suggested that the 17-year-old’s choice to wear a hooded sweatshirt was partly to blame for him being killed, many pro athletes began to post photos of themselves wearing hooded sweatshirts. ESPN staff were at first warned not to join them. Now the network has decided “to allow this particular expression of human sympathy.”
Workplace Tyranny Averted. For Now.
Meanwhile, in the not-so-wide world of the media, Gannett has told staffers who signed a petition calling for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s recall that they would be disciplined. More here.
