There's no valid reason for it though. Hand me a letter of recommendation and if I don't like it, I simply won't share it with the next employer. If I'm the one who has the decision to share the recommendation, the responsibility should be on me.
Companies stopped doing these sorts of things because companies got sued. It is very easy to bring a lawsuit, And while it is, perhaps not very easy to win it, someone still can easily have six figures in defending themselves.
If you don’t like that, OK, I don’t either, it is awful. But it is a rational response to a problem that happens.
Oh I understand it. But do you see the big picture here? People should be sueing for them not writing the letter. The NLRB should be taking cases for this as well. This is almost as anticompetitive as non-competes.
Edit: shouldn't have said for not writing the letter, just for a policy forbidding the writing of letters.
This gets awfully close to compelled speech. The only way this could be done is if we remove the right for employees to sue in respect of the content of the letter, which in turn opens up avenues for retaliation.
Written recommendations are bullshit. The ban should be on requesting them.
A ban on requesting them would also work.
Well, now even the omission/refusal to write such a letter might get you sued. A policy that says our managers just don't write such letters is absolutely the safest. 1) the company and its managers don't identify in any way their thoughts on performance in a way that might be found prejudicial; 2) they avoid the risk of a poorly worded recommendation that could be called prejudicial; 3) they avoid having to monitor the standards and risks of such statements across possibly many managers that might write such letters absent such a rule.
Some employers still answer a binary question "Eligible to re-hire? Yes/no" and that tells a lot in one bit of information. Of course some employers are vindictive and they just say no out of spite. Others will not answer anything except confirm dates of employment. Or they provide a good reference on a bad employee just so they leave without having to fire them.
That is what my former manager told me when I left my previous employer. He thought highly of my skills, but couldn't write me a letter due to company policy motivated by these concerns about being sued.
Edit: and remember, this is to file a suit, not win a defamation suit, which can be difficult. However it is very expensive for an employer to defend itself, easily tens of thousands if not six figures of dollars. How the game is played is a disgruntled ex-employee files a suit and then tries to settle for low tens of thousands of dollars, a portion of which goes to the employment attorney they hired.
The first amendment is widely interpreted to mean that you can't compel speech. Requiring a company to write recommendation letters would be compelling speech. That would be unconstitutional.
(And it doesn't matter if an individual manager would like to write a letter of recommendation but corporate policy is against it. The manager is paid by the company, would be sharing company information, and is an agent of the company in this regard.)
It would, but that's not what's being discussed.
The accusation is that the companies are restricting speech by saying that managers cannot provide a reference, even if they clearly state in said reference that the views are their own and not that of their employer. Nobody is trying to compel anyone else to provide a reference, the idea is that nobody should be prohibited from it, especially since for long term employees leaving on good terms their manager(s) is/are probably one of their best references.
A manager's evaluation of another employee's performance is internal company information. There's no reason that a company should be compelled to share that information externally.
It doesn't matter if the manager wants to share it, any more than the manager wants to share all the source code the employee has written.
Companies are allowed to determine what gets shared by their current employees, end of story. On the other hand, it is unconstitutional for the government to override that.
There are exceptions for things like public companies that are compelled to release certain data on a quarterly basis in exchange for the benefits of being publicly traded. And plenty of information can be compelled to be shared privately with the government, whether taxes or for health inspections or whatever.
But absolutely not forcing companies to allow their employees to talk publicly about other employees' performance.
This is trivial to solve: both former employer and employee sign the letter, declaring that information in it is full, correct and they have no objections. It would be much harder to sue if you previously agreed that the letter is ok for you.
when you have current employees talking about former employees on behalf of the company, that is the same thing as the company talking about them.
I don't see it as the same as the company speaking. Things like concerted efforts by the workers to make conditions better are protected and not considered company speech. I guess it's only because they're managers that they don't qualify.