Instacart director says she was fired for Democratic congressional campaign | Hacker News Reader

Instacart director says she was fired for Democratic congressional campaign

washingtonpost.com

47 pointsreaperducer15 comments

“The lawsuit says Instacart violated a California law that bars companies from preventing their employees from becoming candidates for public office, among other complaints.”

That’s an interesting right. Does that mean someone who continuously runs for office is de facto impossible to fire?

I wouldn't say so, no. At least, nothing you quoted would suggest that.

Nothing about firing someone would intrinsically prevent them from running for office, unless you fired them for running for office.

No more than someone with a disability. Which isn’t that difficult if there is an obvious issue not related to the disability.

What gets you in trouble is not being consistent in applying rules and standards. If you fired one person for a violation but you let other people get away with it, it becomes arbitrary.

My country has laws similar to this, they mostly side with the employee but judges are not blind to a clear abuse

> Does that mean someone who continuously runs for office is de facto impossible to fire?

No, it means you can't fire them for the fact that they are a candidate.

You can choose to fire them for the fact that (say) they don’t show up repeatedly to their scheduled work. You could even deny them time off they want to use to campaign when they have time off on the books, too, so long as you did so because of legitimate business needs where you would have denied a vacation request even if it was not for the political campaign (if the trier of fact in a lawsuit challenging it finds that you did so because of the campaign, that's a problem.)

I don't know why people equate “you can’t fire people for X” with “you can’t fire a person if X”, but only for certain values of X. Like, you can’t fire a person for their gender, but no one thinks that means you can’t fire a person if they have a gender.

Reading comprehension is sad.

No, and what's interesting is why do you think that's what it means or in any way could possibly be interpreted into meaning?

Seems pretty cut and dry. The fact that they even have that process is seemingly in violation of the labor code.

It's probably cheaper, on average, for them to get sued and pay her out than risk ticking off the current administration. Is there more to the equation than this?

Not any director. Her job is Director of Government Affairs. It's a clear conflict of interest for her to be launching her own political campaign while employed as a corporate lobbyist. Her frivolous lawsuit will get tossed.

It isn't clear that the law in question makes exceptions like you're making. Did you read somewhere that it does?

Also, people who work in politics are allowed to run for office, and people who run for office are allowed to work in politics, so what specifically do you see as a conflict of interest? Remember, the company claims this wasn't about politics, so your answer can't involve politics.

It is a conflict of interest, sure. But it shouldn't disqualify her completely from her current job or elected office. She would cut ties if she won the election, which there are only slim chances of.

o_o what's odd is it's usually the other way around. they start in government, do favors for the private sector (ie declare oxy safe and nonaddictive), and then get a sweet no-show/no-work gig with full bennies after you 'retire' from government.

Movement between government relations in private industry (in government relations/lobbying/consulting roles) and government, in either regulatory, policy staff, or elected roles, is very well known to work in both directions, the common saying being that is a “revolving door”.

https://archive.ph/igK6M

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