Amazon Union Vote - Pee bottles and metrics

Maybe we shouldn’t have gutted the NLRB and associated legislation. Just a thought.

Are these meetings on the clock? Meaning, the employer is paying you to be there?

I’d be surprised if they weren’t on the clock, but mandatory propaganda meetings don’t get any less wrong just because it shows up on your paycheck. Optional propaganda meetings I’d be fine with.

Generally, yes. They’re mandatory meetings and the employees are paid for their time to be there, as well as threatened with disciplinary action if they don’t attend. It is the latter point that is at issue.

I dunno, if the employer is paying you to be there, it kind of doesn’t matter what the topic of the meeting is. They’re paying you for your time.

I’ve certainly gone to a lot of mandatory meetings on lots of things that I don’t really like going to, or didn’t find valuable… but I had to go, because I was paid to do so.

Do you really think that? Would you be okay with topics like “How Democrats stole the election from Donald Trump”, “Gay people are deviants and child predators”, or meetings of that nature?

You should try rebutting the legal argument that has been presented.

Yeah, there’s that too. :) I admit I’m not up on labor laws, but if it’s anything like that document says then it’s time to go after businesses that pull stuff like that.

I think that’s a fair question.

For something like politics, I think maybe it’s ok for a company to push a political view on employees? At least as far as saying, “Hey, these politicians benefit our business, etc.” I would tend to think that’s generally going to be a waste of the employer’s money, as employees aren’t generally that receptive to that kind of thing, but it’s their money to waste.

For pushing ideas like the overt bigotry you describe in your second example? I mean, that’s going to be illegal on the basis of OTHER labor laws.

Yeah, I don’t know enough about the legal basis for their argument to determine whether it’s right or wrong from a legal position. That’s something the court will decide.

Fair enough! I may have read your “if they’re paying you it doesn’t matter what the topic is” too strictly/literally. :)

And it totally may be the case that the existing labor laws say its illegal to have mandatory meetings about unions… I’ve never encountered that particular case, and there may be laws that specifically prevent that singular type of meeting.

I was thinking of it more from a general perspective of, “Well, I’ve had employers pay me to be in dumb, useless meetings, sometimes pushing what could be seen as propaganda” and I never doubted the legality of those… they just seemed dumb.

I wonder if it’s illegal for a company to force its employees to sit through a meeting about how great a political candidate is and how terrible his/her opponents are.

Seems like it should be.

The legalities on that would be interesting. I think the danger there is that it becomes a campaign activity at that point and campaign finance laws kick in. But considering how toothless those are these days I’m sure someone could wave the magic PAC wand at and make it all okay.

It isn’t.

No thanks.

I sat through an hour-long meeting with our president and COO this morning, and I’d have PAID THEM to let me out of it.

I checked the floor where they were standing afterwards to see if we needed to mop up shit, so much of it was coming out of their mouths.

Haha what

I have had employers push political beliefs, but only obliquely. When I worked briefly at a company dealing with mortgage finance there was meetings that digressed into leadership rants about how horribly totalitarian and un-American the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau was. This was AFTER 2008 and done without a trace of irony.

Let’s remember that Timex believes that as long as someone is paying you, they are allowed to commit whatever abuses toward you that they wish. After all, you could just quit if it was really that bad.

(Said with love)