Sunday Scribblings

Politics in the Workplace

A couple of American friends who know I am interested in this sort of stuff, recently sent me an article from The Wall Street Journal. The article is about US employers coming down hard on political activism in the workplace.

Microsoft fired two more staffers Thursday for engaging in on-site protests against the company’s work with the Israeli military. The move, following the firing of two employees who occupied an executive’s office this week, is the latest example of business leaders cracking down on political dissent.

Alphabet’s Google last year called in police, then fired dozens of workers who engaged in a similar protest. Tesla ousted an employee after he created an anti-Elon Musk website and plastered his Cybertruck with protest slogans. Some companies are restricting even nonpolitical debate, as JPMorgan Chase did after an influx of employee comments complaining about the bank’s return-to-office mandate this year.

The WSJ article raises questions about whether the workplace is the right place to raise and push political issues.

Let me state my position upfront: no, it is not.

Anyone who reads anything I write knows that I am left-of-centre, but on this matter, my view is clear. Workplaces should be places of work, not of political activism. If you want to be politically active, do it on your own time. For me, being involved in politics is a civic virtue and to be encouraged. Just not in the workplace. There needs to be a dividing line between work and politics.

I have no problem with what might be called the “politics of the workplace” itself, with employees organising, formally or informally, to protest workplace conditions and to demand their improvement. I call that workplace bargaining, whether a union is involved or not. We all have a right to ask that the conditions under which we work be made better if we believe that they are currently not good enough.

For example, I consider the #MeToo protests to be perfectly legitimate collective action by employees because they speak to sexual harassment in the protestors’ workplace. The protests are a way of addressing unacceptable conditions at work – conditions that the protestors’ manager can address.

Sexual harassment is a violation of the respect and fundamental decency with which employees should be treated. It is always, almost without exception, a demonstration of male managerial power over female colleagues. It should never be accepted or tolerated, and I consider it to be legitimate to protest it.

If employees protest, they can attempt to force a change in policy through pressure on the managers who make that policy. There is the potential for an outcome, there is a chance to make things better.

Focused protests over working conditions in individual workplaces can work because managers can make changes in response to the protest. I am not so sure about general protests over wider social and political issues. First, disrupting the workplace to put pressure on managers with little or no say in the wider, socio-political scheme of things doesn’t make much sense.

Second, there is little evidence that such protests gain any long-lasting traction or that they have ever delivered any significant change. They are often spontaneous and ad-hoc, giving those involved a “feel-good” moment. They lack sustained organisation. Generalised demands that “things must change” is not a strategy. It is “clicktivism” rather than genuine activism.

Apart from the right to organise to demand better working conditions, I am not persuaded that it is appropriate for employees to demand that the company for which they work should take political positions or should act on the political beliefs of small groups of employees. The business of business is business, not politics.

Microsoft has around 230,000 employees worldwide. Is it supposed to change direction because a handful of employees demand that it does so? What if other employees wanted it to take a different course? You have to figure that if you have 230,000 employees, you are going to have a multiplicity of political views and opinions, often strongly held. And often clashing.

Back to the opening quote from the WSJ. Whether a company wants to do business with Israel should be for the company itself to decide. Doing business with Israel is not illegal, last time I checked. I can understand the feelings of employees who do not want the company they work for to deal with the country, especially if their products or services, such as software, cloud computing capacity, or Artificial Intelligence, are being used by the military in Gaza.

But employees are not volunteers in a company. They are paid to do a job, whatever that job might be. The job comes with terms and conditions. One of the conditions is that you do not get to dictate who the company does business with, provided that the business the company is doing is within the law and does not run afoul of government policy.

When you work for a company, you should leave your own politics at the door. If you do not like the people with whom your company is doing business, then you have a choice: exit. Leave and go work for a company that more aligns with your values.

Now, I can already hear voices saying that workers should be able to protest if their company is doing business with immoral counterparts. But how do you define “immoral” in a business context, especially if no law is being broken? What you consider to be immoral, I may not. Nor may many of your co-workers. What you consider to be “immoral” is a value judgement, and the world is full of competing value systems that make very different judgements about the same issue.

For example, suppose my politics are right-of-centre, let’s say they are Trumpist, and I object to my company’s support for global climate change initiatives. I believe in “Drill, Baby, Drill” and support the use of fossil fuels. Suppose I and fellow Trumpists stage a sit-in in the office of the CHRO to protest company policies that support climate change initiatives. Those who are outraged over the firing of the Microsoft Palestine-supporting activists, would they be equally outraged when I and my fellow Trumpists are fired for our on-site political activism? I suspect not. Why? Is it because “progressive left-wing” activism on the part of employees is acceptable, but “reactionary right-wing” activism is not? Who gets to decide?

The world is morally and politically complex. Business decision making in a morally and politically complex world is difficult. It gets more difficult by the day. “Simplism”, the belief that there are simple solutions to every problem, is all too prevalent and all too wrong. The world is not morally black and white. There are more than fifty shades of grey.

Employers should stay out of politics, and that includes giving money to political parties. But I am not so naive to think that is going to happen. Business, money, and politics have forever been entangled. Who got the contract to supply the stones for the Pyramids in ancient Egypt? I suspect money changed hands, probably during a lunchtime meeting at some beachfront property called Pharaohs-a-Lago, involving a sun-tanned property developer and some shady politicians.

When I say employers should stay out of politics, what I mean is that they should not take sides on the hot political issues of the day, unless those issues directly impact their business. The workplace should be politically neutral. Politics should be parked at the door. Best for business not to pick sides. But if a business wants to pick sides, be prepared for the consequences. They may not be pretty. It is also worth remembering that if you pick a political side today, that side may be out of power tomorrow, with all that means for policy. Think how things have changed in the US when it comes to all those DEI initiatives that every company signed on for a few years back.

Employers should be clear and consistent. This is the business we are in. This is who we do business with. This is who we might do business with. If you are comfortable with this, we would be happy to talk with you about working with us if you have the talent and skills that we need. Otherwise, look elsewhere.

Best to be honest upfront. It avoids problems later.

Coda

Yes, I know there is some US case law around these matters such as Eastex, Inc. v. NLRB, 437 U.S. 556 (1978) and more recent cases involving Black Lives Matter. I have US legal friends who make sure I know about such things. My point is this. Given the toxic and divisive nature of politics today, it is better for businesses to keep politics out of the workplace. Not necessarily easy to do, but best for all concerned if it can be done.