It's completely expected for a company to get rid of individuals on the payroll who are badmouthing the company they work for.
Why would anyone willfully employ people to work against the company's interest?
It's obvious why you would fire someone for trying to start a union, or for turning down your sexual advances.
These are not the same thing at all.
In the US, talking about improving working conditions is also protected, but it's also not whistleblowing, either.
As a lawyer, i can tell you a lot of people badly misunderstand what "protected concerted activity" covers. It is not about your individual complaints. Explicitly not.
See, e.g., https://www.employerlaborrelations.com/2019/04/30/nlrb-publi...
"Charging Party 2 posted a 23-minute live video on Facebook during work hours and while in uniform talking about the discipline for wearing improper shoes and the confidentiality provision in the disciplinary notice, referencing the wage-and-hour lawsuits, making crude and disparaging jokes and comments about a supervisor, and stating that by asking Charging Party 2 to sign something interfering with free speech, the conduct of the company’s officials was “against the United States Constitution and you need to be shot on sight.”
As far as i can discern, hacker news would consider this protected because it complains, somewhere, about their working condition, and was in fact done as a direct response to being disciplined.
However, NLRB says
"The Division of Advice found that although Charging Party 2 referred to subjects in the video that could have been relevant to employees’ mutual aid or protection, the comments were entirely individual complaints and there was no indication that Charging Party 2 was speaking for other employees or seeking to act in concert with others. ... "
(They found it okay to fire this person)
In fact, the company had filed defamation lawsuits against the charging parties over the facebook videos, and the NLRB found that was okay too, because they weren't for protected activity.
It's the same old discussion about whether something is right just because it's legal or allowed. Just because a company has a right -- and an incentive -- to do something, doesn't mean that's a morally or ethically right thing to do.
In my opinion, what Whittaker is doing is, in a way, analogous to civil disobedience. And, just like with civil disobedience, reprisals are expected. It's worth keeping in mind that those reprisals aren't automatically right by virtue of being expected, just as her actions aren't automatically right by virtue of being similar to civil disobedience.
In other words, some of us feel we can't afford to, as another commenter put it, "leave your politics at home and let me do my job in peace". I believe this attitude -- that science and engineering should somehow remain orthogonal to and decoupled from ethics and morality -- to be downright pernicious to the society.
Thing is, part of Googles identity is "don't be evil". A vital part of this is stopping whenever you (unintentionally) do something evil. This should not be a problem for Google at all or reason to loose trust in an employee. Unless, of cause, the company has changed. And that's what those story's area about and why we need them: To make sure the public image of google actually reflects what the company now actually is.
Btw: To those saying "why don't you just quit as protest"? For one that makes it easy to be dismissed as disgruntled ex-employee. But more important is the same reason you don't just leave your country of family whenever you disagree or have a problem with those. Cutting ties is a last resort that shouldn't be necessary.
I definitely don't. I definitely applaud efforts to improve things (relationships, companies, ...).
But going public ("airing your dirty laundry") is a kind of an ultimatum - "I have no other option to enforce what I want than to public shame" - and, while potentially effective, it's also damaging for the other party (and, ultimately, the "whistle-blower").
And at that point, it seems that the values are already so misaligned (whether the employee, or the company, changed is ultimately not relevant) that "divorce" seems like the only option. I definitely wouldn't want to stay in a relationship with someone if they intentionally hurt me (regardless if it was "my fault" or not).
Publicly badmouthing the company you work for is indeed sabotage.
It's actually not about legality. I didn't even suggest that.
>Just because a company has a right -- and an incentive -- to do something, doesn't mean that's a morally or ethically right thing to do.
As I said, it is expected to do it. Because companies have their own interests. The interests of the shareholders in Google's case. And Google is expected to act to protect them.
This includes getting rid of employees that act to sabotage the company, in this case by publicly badmouthing it.