[Hitch]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

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 The models they made might now be old, outdated and replaced with other, better widgets.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 Among her concerns are that Person A, who made that original not-so-good and/or outdated widget is now in charge of overseeing the production of widgets end emplying those who make widgets.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:

1. What the widget is doesn't matter.
2. What made the old widgets outdated and less good that the new ones is irrelevant.
3. What WidgetCo is as an organization doesn't matter.
4. 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.

Thank you for the widget argument. I concur that I would not wish to work for or be overseen by RWA, given their behavior in this matter. I still have major issues with the genesis, mind you (and person C's, for that matter, behavior)--but vis: RWA, your analysis is spot on. Freedom of Speech only matters if it's allowed for everyone, not just people with whom we agree.

Hitch