I remember that case. Yeah - she deserved to be fired. She used an internal security tool to push her personal political views. How could that not be a fire-able offense?
An analogous situation seems like if the company had a big cork board for safety/security messages and someone posted a paper with that sentence on it next to something the company posted that was perceived as anti-union.
It's unclear to me if that other scenario is protected or not: I understand that you're legally protected when posting notices informing your peers of certain rights on company property, but presumably you couldn't stick such notices just anywhere.
I think we can generally agree that if they were on a team maintaining protocol buffers and they baked an unnecessary ignored message into the encoded stream (about whatever) there should be repercussions for lack of good judgement.
Generally speaking, I am for workers self-organizing if they feel it is appropriate. It's not clear to me that Spiers should have been fired for this seemingly minor offense.
I don't think it was broadcast, it was displayed if one particular website was visited. That seems very analogous to permitted organizing activities such as using your employers email system to organize or posting on a cork board.
> they baked an unnecessary ignored message into the encoded stream (about whatever) there should be repercussions for lack of good judgement.
Would you be fired? I'm not so sure. It is pretty obvious that this firing was not unrelated to the messaging.
I'm glad that the very conservative interpretation of labor law that most on HN seem to believe is not the reality of labor law in the US, although more should still be done.
Nor use company resources/infrastructure to distribute it.
https://www.post-gazette.com/business/career-workplace/2019/...
I wonder what the restrictions were before. It specifically says emails were allowed. But I wonder if a person maintaining an intranet site could post a banner on it with the same message. I'm guessing not since it isn't designed for that type of communication. I'm not sure where the plugin would fall. Seems like the message didn't fit the intended plugin scope.
I would also guess the plugin only covers prohibited use and does not cover allowed uses (ie does the plugin say you have 1st ammendment rights when visiting Facebook?). I doubt the documentation states that the plugin shall provide users with their rights. It probably says something like the purpose is to provide users with policy or law information related to the site they are visiting so they don't break the law/policy.
The message merely stated that employees have the right to organize. Without additional context, I don't see how that is a concerted effort to improve the workplace. There would have to be a "unionize to improve health coverage, or wages, etc" type message. Otherwise, I could just stand at my desk all day and tell people as they walk by that they have the right to free speech, to own a gun, and protections from unreasonable searches, etc. It's not a concerted effort to make the workplace better, so it doesn't matter if I'm telling people about their rights (not to mention I would not be doing my job while on the clock).
Using a plugin to communicate that message is likely a subversion of it's intended purpose and would be inappropriate - similar to if she were maintaining the company intranet site and posted a banner with that information. They aren't mediums for individual communication (such as email or chat apps) but rather for company-to-employee messaging and for the sole use of the company. In this case, she misused company-to-employee infrastructure outside of its scope for her own communication purposes.
This is (a bit) like google buying property around polling stations and then preventing anyone from passing through to vote. They're not hurting google by passing through, but they keep shouting "get off my land!" Why would we let them weaponize property law to prevent others from enforcing their rights vis-a-vis google?
Your voting/property analogy is completely off-base. It completely ignores right of ways and public property. And if you have people actually trespassing on private property on the way to a polling place then they are in violation of the law and can be cited. I see no legal way that you can "weaponize" property law to prevent access to a polling location. Also, there's nothing stopping employees from exercising their right to concerted efforts off company time and property.
Informing employees of their legal right to organize isn't a political belief.
Companies have active interests in suppressing this sort of information, and put forth efforts to try and convince people that literally stating the laws of the country that one resides in is somehow pushing a political agenda.
If you read the next sentence in the linked article, the NLRB disagrees:
Spiers was fired after she created a pop-up for Google employees visiting the IRI Consultants website. “Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities,” the notification read, according to The Guardian. The company said Spiers had violated security policies, a statement that hurt her reputation in the tech community. Now, the NLRB has found the firing was unlawful.Again, reasonable for her to be fired.
The NLRB is where decisions like this are argued. They weighed the evidence, with a much fuller view than any of us here, and came to the conclusion that the firing was illegal.
Also it seems reasonable to me her complaint that this hurt her reputation, after all you're a Google employee and here you are smearing her in a public board. I know you're gonna say "I don't speak for my company", to which I will reply: It seems you're a Google employee, and you're speaking as a Google employee. It's distasteful that a Google employee find the need to accuse her in public like this. Is that a view shared by your co-workers? Do you all usually go in public boards to speak ill of past employees? To reveal why they were fired?
Honestly, the fact that she has the gall to complain to the NLRB about this firing is pretty despicable. Google should be suing her for defamation.
This is such an ill-informed understanding of how labor law works I'm not sure where to even start. You have a legal right to assert your legal rights, as was done here. The NLRB is akin to a trial court that makes the determination and issues judgements.
Winning a legal case is not "defamation".
I doubt that Google spontaneously published the reason for the firing. AFAICT, the former employees went to the press following their firing, and the "violation of security policies" explanation was the response to articles initiated by the former employees. It's not clear to me how the parent's comments are a smear, unless the statement that "she bypassed restriction in our code change system" is not factual (which I don't know, but I have no reason to doubt it).
[Googler, opinions my own]
This is not true. The code changes in question were done normally. The policy "exemptions" were in regard to the rollout of the resulting binary, which are well described here[0].
What more was she meant to do?
She didn't bypass anything.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/4/21549760/uber-lyft-prop-2...
if the owners of the company feels the desire to, they can instruct their employees to perform work to broadcast/promote their (owner's) political beliefs. This is just a case of a company using its resources for a purpose designated by the owner.
An employee co-opting company resources without owner approval to broadcast their (employee's) political message is not allowed, unless explicitly given permission by the owners.
Why people cannot tell the difference between the two situations above is beyond me - it's not like they are similar or confusing.
no that's not what the article says.
The article claims: > NLRB has found Google’s policy against employees looking at certain coworkers’ calendars is unlawful.
Google claimed that she abused security notification system for websites to show a non-security related message (see https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/17/fifth-google...). She could, within her rights, send emails to organize a company wide meeting, or write up a public document to talk about unionization. If google had banned this, then they would fall afoul of the law.
May be google is really using the excuse that she abused security notification systems to fire her. That's something I'm not privy to, and only litigation will reveal this (if it even does).
The NLRB ruled both firings were illegitimate and their actions protected under labor law. So no, she was within her rights and the NLRB said she’s to be reinstated.
The NLRB has no direct enforcement power, so how it resolves itself will be dependent on if the NLRB pursues Google in the U.S. Court of Appeals, they settle out of court, or otherwise. My guess is that they settle because an NLRB ruling against you isn’t likely to work in your favor in the event of an employment lawsuit. But regardless, what Spiers did stands as a favorable precedent for workers in the event of other disputes with similar circumstances.
So yes, there is a big difference.
To state the law* for internal users who visit one specific website
And to people who are trying to justify this by process being "technically possible" - there is a non empty set of Apple and Google employees who can technically push any code to your phone remotely. Is it still acceptable for them to use that to push their political agenda?
Because it comes down to trust. You trust people who can push code to your devices to not abuse it.
This developer's change was much more narrow, it modified an internal tool that only Google employees see. But it's still breaching professionalism. If the message instead was, "Unions are corrupt and deprive people of individual agency" would that be acceptable? Especially with the unique position Google is in as our gateway to information, it's prudent to avoid employees that cannot refrain from making changes to production software to further personal politics.
"Nobody has the right to ..." is your opinion.
And it looks to me that's just what the GP poster was trying to do - challenge others to argue with a truism while pretending that the context in which it was stated isn't relevant.
ICI consultants isn't a criminal organization as far as I know, and without really knowing anything about them, I would assume the consulting services they provide don't tell companies to perform illegal acts.
> She used an internal security tool to push the law
Even for messages I agreed with, I would still find this a questionable activity and disruptive as an employee.
Seems like if that's the status quo, it should be disrupted.
"Oh, I'm just informing people of their constitutional rights? What's the problem? I thought this was 'merica"
Until Trump's NLRB overturned the precedent late last year, workers had stronger protections than getting fired for a minor slip-up in the course of organizing. But today, your intuition would be correct.
No, that is not true. Some of us take security seriously.
But I wonder if anyone would be have been fired if it were an April fools prank?
https://www.post-gazette.com/business/career-workplace/2019/...
Sounds like a non profit startup opportunity, to provide tools to empower workers to unionize and vote remotely. With remote normalizing, as long as you stay off corp gear (stay off corp gear for any activities not directly related to your employment!), your employer isn't going to know you're working towards organizing, preventing them from interfering with your organizing activities (which does them a favor, considering that's illegal under US labor law).