As a thought experiment:
Let's say that this is about the classic law school widget. Person A and Person B have made widgets in the past. The models they made might now be old, outdated and replaced with other, better widgets.
Person C makes statements about those old widgets. Among her concerns are that Person A, who made that original not-so-good and/or outdated widget is now in charge of overseeing the production of widgets end emplying those who make widgets. Person C is concerned about this and says so.
Person C gets in trouble. They have said something that WidgetCo is not comfortable with. Could be any number of reasons - could be that WidgetCo don't want to damage the sales of the current widgets. Simple reason. Could also be that they don't want someone they have put in a management position discredited as someone who makes bad widgets.
So the WidgetCo Administration tosses out their own rule book for how to handle employee complaints, bars Person C from ever being in a management role at WidgetCo and suspends Person C from WidgetCo activities. All outside of their standard way for handling employee issues.
For purposes of this experiment:
- What the widget is doesn't matter.
- What made the old widgets outdated and less good that the new ones is irrelevant.
- What WidgetCo is as an organization doesn't matter.
- First Amendment free speech still exists.
In my initial post, I mentioned that I would not want to work for anyone who treated their employees this way. I stand by that statement.
Feel free to ignore, but when looked at this way (especially the opinions about the widgets themselves), this issue for me was an employee/employer dispute that was handled in the worse way possible.