It's quite a stretch to call this a political issue.
Personally I think that modifying a work tool to achieve political goals is wrong.
It's about as political as informing someone they have a right to be paid the minimum wage.
"plaster it on everyone's screen" did you read the same article I did? The alert was triggered off a single consultancy's site. I really doubt it was a common hang out spot.
Yes, of course.
Apparently this "security tool" exists to notify Googlers of policy, and the notification just linked to a Google policy notice with a warning not to violate it. This is apparently the actual notification that was displayed:
https://miro.medium.com/max/2000/0*1BTVYLTvuHiJVvp_.jpg
> Do not violate go/nlrbnotice. Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities.
> Does that seem appropriate to you?
Yes. It's a tool for showing notifications related to the page being visited. Not to mention the whole thing is appropriate on moral grounds, regardless of any technicality.
Just to be clear: her "opinion" is "don't take actions that would cause the company to break federal labor law."
If that's was an actual requirement, can you make or point to a statement in an official Google capacity that states the notices displayed by the tool she maintained had to be written or pre-cleared by Google's legal team? If you can, was the requirement for legal team involvement established practice and not some post-hoc rationalization for her firing?
"Common sense" often isn't as common or as sensible as some people think.
You often make seemingly-authoritative statements like "it wasn't her role." Avoiding post-hoc rationalizations based on the fact that she was fired, can you explain to me how that was communicated to her?
> Do you really need someone to tell you that if you work on security it’s not your told to disseminate information about hiring?
Maybe if you're fully indoctrinated into a particular corporate culture that very hierarchical, siloed, and highly biased towards management and shareholders.
However, Google, at least for now, has a very unusual corporate culture.
> I created a little notification, only a few lines of code, that pops up in the corner of the browser whenever my coworkers visited the union busters’ website or the community guidelines policy. The notification said: “Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities.”
https://medium.com/@ksspiers/google-fires-another-worker-for...
Don't think that is true from the story, if you read it.
But if you look at, say, the UK, then unions actually fund one of the major political parties and have tremendous influence over it. Unions have in the past managed to topple elected governments. Beating the unions was Margaret Thatcher's flagship effort when she was first elected. And union membership has been in steady decline.
It's certainly not a USA specific thing. Union/management wars in the UK got very nasty indeed.