That's the opposite of meritocracy. And abuse of power on your bosses part. Don't know why so many in this thread seems to support obviously corrupt behavior.
I'm standing here thinking "yup, that's about right" and other posters are thinking this is "so not right as to be obviously corrupt".
Seriously, under which definition is firing employees for their criticism considered good leadership?
To be absolutely clear, politely communicating with fellow employees is absolutely the constructive way to handle work disagreements. The problem here obviously wasn't the constructiveness, but that there was any disagreement at all.
That's toxic leadership, but no surprise given the leader of the company.
if an employee undermined leadership's authority, it is likely that they won't last long.
Good leadership means being able to recognize criticism from your employees, but this can't come from grassroots effort within the company - it must come from the top.
If the employee disagrees with the direction of the company, and the leadership doesn't want to change (e.g., after voicing the opinion thru sanctioned feedback channels), their only option is to quit, or acquire a controlling share and _become_ the leadership.
Trying to undermine leadership through collective action via other employees is akin to a threat and an internal coup in a country ruled by a dictator - and you know how that will go.
This comment is so close to realizing why our current corporate structures are bullshit. Keep going, you're almost there.
It is hilarious that you (and many other people in this thread, it seems) would consider this letter "undermining leadership's authority". If someone's authority is undermined by a letter like this, they are not much of a leader.
I have worked at companies led by other zillionaires you may have heard of, and seen letters circulate and questions asked live in an all-hands meeting that went much farther than this letter. Those employees got good faith answers to their questions, and still work there. Now that's leadership.
That's like claiming bank-robbery is fine because "there's no law against holding money in your hands, everyone does it." For some reason you're leaving out all the most important details that make things different than normal.
In this case, those details are that certain "disagreements"--an obvious case being "we're underpaid, let's unionize"--are disagreements which that CEO is not legally permitted to fire you for.
If I had bad boss who isn't doing anything illegal or breaks company's policy, I would likely switch my job rather than taking the impossible task of fixing them if they don't want to fix themselves.
Abuse is abuse regardless of whether it is normalized in a company, but it is also against the law in this case specifically, so it is obviously not 'the norm'.
> If I had bad boss who isn't doing anything illegal or breaks company's policy, I would likely switch my job rather than taking the impossible task of fixing them if they don't want to fix themselves.
That's nice. It is also irrelevant.
Law IS the norm. And I could definitely bet there is no law in US which says that employee can spam other employees about how their boss is bad.
That is exactly what this case is alleging is the law that was violated. What do you think this is all about?
> The case is scheduled to go before an administrative judge in early March unless SpaceX agrees to a settlement beforehand. A spokeswoman for the labor board said it was seeking make-whole remedies like reinstatement and back pay for the workers.
The sheer number of historical atrocities this would excuse is almost hilarious.
Domestic abuse was always abuse. It always looked like abuse. We always knew it was abuse.
But, for a very, very long time, society was totally cool with it.
And what happened to the employees in this case who tried to challenge that norm from within?
What they initially wrote the letter about the boss doing might not have been illegal, but it sounds like the government agency whose job it is to monitor this sort of thing thinks firing them for it is in fact illegal.
> It's fine in most companies to complain about the boss to HR or to the boss themselves, but not fine to complain it to someone else.
There's "fine" and "not fine" as personal opinions, and then there's "legal" and "illegal"; both of those things you listed are in fact legal regardless of whether you personally consider them "fine", but firing someone for them is not.