164
CEO who drew ire for posting photo of ‘Lake America’ sweatshirts ‘no longer an employee’ (www.ctvnews.ca)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/LeopardsAteMyFace@lemmy.ca
18 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[+] -15 points 1 month ago (9 children)
[deleted]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 9 child comments
    •
  • [–] 32 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I'm sorry but nowhere in the free speech rights does it say that your employee has to abide by it. It's a right that protects speech from the government, not from your employer or from anyone else.

    In fact, pretty much EVERY single company's employment contracts will include a vague "you can't bring bad press to the company" clause, which covers social media posts etc.

    If the company disagrees with your politics, then yes, they can fire you for it.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    If the company disagrees with your politics

    To an extent, yeah. If you're on Facebook or LinkedIn and posting holocaust denial or arguing that desegregation was a mistake, even if they are your sincerely held beliefs, a company would probably be safe firing you for bringing the company into disrepute with your posts. Unless it's something universally reviled or calls to violence, just posting "I voted for Candidate and you should too" would likely be considered an unjust termination if it just came down to your boss being a hardcore supporter of your preferred candidate's opponent. YMMV with this in the future, though. Of course, if your boss is not a total idiot, they could currently just fire you for your political views and dress it up with any reason, or even not give any cause at all, and most states would be fine with it since they have at will employment laws.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 22 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

    First of all, let's not pretend being pro-fascist is equivalent to being anti-fascist because it really fucking isn't.

    Second, the CEO is the public face of the company in a way that a rank-and-file employee is not. It is entirely appropriate for a CEO to get the boot for behavior that damages public perception of the entire brand.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago

    Exactly. If you say something that I find politically distasteful, I'm not going to associate you with the company that you work for.

    I'm going to think you are an asshole.

    If a CEO says something, they are getting paid stupid money, absolutely gobsmackingly stupid money, to be the face of the company. Many CEOs make in a year what I would consider to be "retirement for the rest of my good life" money.

    I'm going to associate anything they do with the company that they represent.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

    It's not like they were on vacation at Lake Ontario and just bought sweatshirts at the shop and took a photo. They were in Canada, 800 miles from the lake. They were wearing them as an F.U to Canada and to get some laughs about Trump's trolling.

    Edit: they were still in the US and used AI for the shirts

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] [S] 10 points 1 month ago

    The shirts aren't even real. The picture was taken in the US airport, the CEO passed off to AI with a prompt of something like "put these 4 people in Lake America shirts" and posted results to her facebook. They weren't even brave enough to buy and wear real shirts, but they fronted to social media they were.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent