zlacker

>>claude+(OP)
> “We support every employee’s right to criticize their employer’s working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against any and all internal policies,” Herdener said.

> Amazon’s external communications policy prohibits employees from commenting publicly on its business without corporate justification and approval from executives. Herdener previously said the policy did not allow employees to “publicly disparage or misrepresent the company.”

Amazon is straight up firing these people for expressing their personal opinions. Amazon isn't even claiming they lied, or pretend to speak officially, or any other reason.

>>advise+ce
Uhh, I don't want to be Amazon defender, but in US most of the employment is at will. In practical terms, they can fire you for any or no reason at all. There are practicalities that come into play that have to do with unemployment insurance and whatnot, but company policy violation is a defensible 'cause' for firing.

I am not a lawyer nor am I condoning this, but them is the facts.

edit: added play

>>A4ET8a+kf
I think people are outraged not because it's illegal, but because it's unconscionable. I think the general understanding is people shouldn't have outside-work activities be held against them, maybe it's time for the law to catch up.

It's pretty easy to come up with a lot of absurd and "legal" at-will policies (e.g. we'll fire anybody who watches porn)

>>alexan+Ej
> It's pretty easy to come up with a lot of absurd and "legal" at-will policies (e.g. we'll fire anybody who watches porn)

My favorite which would work in much of the US is "We'll fire anybody who registers with the Republican party." (Or Democratic, if you prefer.) Especially in a state where registration is required in order to participate in the primary. It is legal, but, I believe, completely unacceptable to just about everyone.

>>mcherm+zq
>It is legal, but, I believe, completely unacceptable to just about everyone.

This is not true in my experience. Many people on the left, particularly under 35, earnestly believe that their political opponents are by definition racist and evil. In a manner similar to how I would not want a literal neo-nazi on my company's payroll, they do not want a registered Republican on the company's payroll.

Edit: In other words, this kind of bigotry is actually acceptable to a disturbingly large number of people.

>>jsheve+Xs
It is my experience that everyone who self identifies as a republican or democrat is brainwashed at this point. The worst offenders are those who are so delusional that they mock anyone who avoids political discourse or abstains from voting. They are so high on political fumes that they can’t imagine that there are things more important than our cancerous political process.

>>SaxonR+8y
From my observations (total anecdata, I am aware), those pro-specific-party people also usually don't tend to participate in politics on more local levels at all (county, state, etc.), despite the fact that those are imo way more impactful and can lead to changes "trickling up" all the way to the national level. Most of the people I personally know who vote in county/state elections can be best described as independents.

>>filole+eM
I think part of the issue is that politics appears to have become something akin to a national sport, where we elect to support team A or team B. Because it is similar to a sport, our hopes and dreams, our entire being is drawn into this particular identity. That is why if team A supports position C ( that happened to be supported by team B previously ) it becomes a valid position. I do not know how to make people dislike sports.

I absolutely agree about the importance politics at local level. In fact, this is likely where regular citizens have biggest chance to actually influence an outcome.

>>A4ET8a+XR
Sports and politics can both give people an easy feeling of belonging to something greater than themselves. Both can give you addictive neur-ochemical rushes while interweaving the experience of victory and defeat with tribal identification and othering.

I used to have a condescending attitude towards people who took sports 'way too seriously', but now I wonder if it is a net gain for society to give people a comparatively harmless outlet for these tendencies. Real harm is done when our policy discussions are dominated by the kind of tribalism, ideological intolerance, and rush-seeking engagement that seems to happen when people bring these tendencies to politics.

>>jsheve+hU
I mean, in lots of Europe, football matches are one of the only places where flag-waving nationalism isn't a social faux pas. It's obviously a harmless outlet for human tribalistic tendencies and thirst for battle. But Europe has gotten ravaged in living history - you can talk to plenty of Brits today who will tell you stories about taking shelter in the subways while the Nazis bombed London. Americans don't really have a living memory of going to war with our neighbors and having our homeland pummeled - wars are a thing waged in faraway lands with people from strange and different cultures, so nationalism is allowed to flourish without any acknowledgement of its toxicity to humanity as a whole.

Tribalism in America goes deep, and you're right: rooting for a sports team is fairly harmless, and rooting for a political party is probably harmful, but I'd argue it's not nearly as harmful as as rooting blindly for an ideology. If you want your party to succeed, you should be engaged in your local politics, talk to people from the other side, listen honestly to their concerns, be willing to change your own opinion on specific policies, and push for those sensible policy changes to be adopted as part of your local party's platform. That's how you win people over, that's how you win elections, and how you enact real change that affects people's lives. Anything else is just yelling into your echo chamber, or getting into bar fights with the guys wearing the "wrong" jerseys.

Ideologies form the axes of socioeconomic space, they're not an ideal point, and the push toward an "us versus them" mentality in politics is embarrassing. It's a quirk that's arisen out of new media, an easily exploitable bug, and the sooner people see through the bullshit and we outgrow this, the better.