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freedomfreedomPosted Mar 22, 2013 18:56 UTC (Fri) by michich (subscriber, #17902)In reply to: Was firing an over-reaction? by HelloWorld Parent article: Blum: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
I understand why you may feel it is a bad thing, but please let's try to rethink the general issue more thoroughly. First I would like to say something about two phrases that you used in your comment:
"freedom of speech" - How do you understand the phrase? Does it mean the freedom to say whatever you want to whomever you want and never have to carry any possible consequences? In my view that would be a too wide definition. There is no way to prevent the people who hear me talking from making their own opinions and expectations about myself and consequently adjusting the way they act towards me. Freedom of speech means that I can say what I want to whomever I want and never have to fear the application of organized violence (i.e. the power of the state) for it.
"being fired" - Always both the employer and the employee are acting human beings. They associate because they both expect to gain from their mutual cooperation. They both value what they get more highly than what they give. If at any later time one of them no longer believes so, this voluntary cooperation ends. What right does anybody have to force him to associate with the other person any further?
My conclusion is that although the existence of the possibility of "being fired for exercising your freedom of speech" intuitively sounds bad at first, it is actually necessary for freedom. The alternative "being forced (by violence or threat of it) to associate with people against one's will" is truly bad.
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freedom Posted Mar 22, 2013 20:07 UTC (Fri) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
Employers have a social responsibility. Firing someone has the potential to ruin that person's life, it should therefore only be possible in a limited set of cases. This is why many countries have employment protection laws. Expressing an unfavourable opinion about another company isn't one of those cases as long as you don't make stuff up.
> Freedom of speech means that I can say what I want to whomever I want and never have to fear the application of organized violence (i.e. the power of the state) for it.
freedom Posted Mar 23, 2013 5:12 UTC (Sat) by ghane (subscriber, #1805) [Link]
> Employers have a social responsibility. Firing someone has the potential to ruin that person's life, it should therefore only be possible in a limited set of cases.
What about:
Employees have a social responsibility, too. Leaving a job has the potential to ruin a company, it should therefore only be possible in a limited set of cases.
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freedom Posted Mar 23, 2013 5:35 UTC (Sat) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
> Leaving a job has the potential to ruin a company
If that is the case, you're not running the company right.
freedom Posted Mar 23, 2013 11:27 UTC (Sat) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
Sure, and you'll find most places which don't have "at will" likewise do not permit employees to just arbitrarily down tools and walk away from the job without consequences.
Our systems administrators had to give 90 days notice when they more or less simultaneously quit. That was enough time to identify any important work that hadn't been documented, start hiring replacements, figure out what our plans were for the interim and so on.
But if your business will collapse without just one person you're in trouble anyway due to Bus Factor. That one person might be kidnapped, have a mental breakdown or indeed get hit by an actual bus.
freedom Posted Mar 23, 2013 13:57 UTC (Sat) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]
> Firing someone has the potential to ruin that person's life, it should therefore only be possible in a limited set of cases.
If firing can ruin person's life, this is a big problem with society. Laws against management abuses are noneffective when the employees feel that they must work or face a possibility of ruined life. Consider if a social protection would be enough so prospects of finding new work are very OK, then the problem of bad managers would solves itself without any laws. People will simply leave.
freedom Posted Mar 23, 2013 17:05 UTC (Sat) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] If firing can ruin person's life, this is a big problem with society. I don't think there's much one can do about that. For many people their job is among the things that gives their live a purpose. Therefore even if your material needs are catered for by social security benefits, being unemployed still bores the hell out of people and makes them miserable. And an elderly person in an ailing industry will have a hard time finding a new job in any society. Also, one of the (few) things that I remember from my economics classes is that there's a natural rate of unemployment, so as long as we live in anything vaguely resembling a market economy, full employment simply isn't going to happen.
freedom Posted Mar 23, 2013 19:29 UTC (Sat) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]
> I don't think there's much one can do about that. For many people their job is among the things that gives their live a purpose.
From my experience of living in Norway people here much less attached to their jobs. It could be a cultural thing, but a social protection must be playing a role here.
> And an elderly person in an ailing industry will have a hard time finding a new job in any society.
I know a person (as me he was also an immigrant) in Norway who, after loosing his engineering job here, first literally enjoyed few months of doing nothing while getting 75% of his salary, and then became a rather successful art dealer. Such stories of people of any age trying different things after quitting their jobs willingly or unwillingly are common.
I suspect that "alien industries" is a rather artificial notion caused by too much fear of loosing jobs so people stick to theirs even if long-term prospects are not good. Add to that corporate laws that favor executives like in US and the result in excessive number of big companies and industrial mono-culture and ghost towns when the companies finally die.
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