Kulindahr, you seem to have lost your common-sense barometer.
At my workplace, there's a code of commitment. One of the rules is "if you engage in behavior while off duty that reflects poorly on the company, you're subject to separation from the company."
These kind of restrictions are commonplace, Kulindahr. You can, indeed, be fired for what you do when you're off duty, including anything involving "freedom of speech", which was never intended to apply to business anyway.
Hey, I took a course in basic constitutional law, and one thing that has been said over and over by the courts is that no contract requiring you to give up your rights is valid. So what you're telling me is that invalid contracts flourish! No wonder business is so corrupt.
Of course free speech doesn't apply to business -- but when it's your private life, it isn't business, and what you do in your private life is none of their business. The only way they can tell you not to exercise your right to freedom of speech is to claim to own you, to say that you are not an individual, that you don't have a life of your own, that you totally belong to them. That's so right-wing it's incredible -- and you guys are defending it!
Beyond that, "if you engage in behavior while off duty that reflects poorly on the company, you're subject to separation from the company" is a statement with no meaning -- or a very negative one. What it really says is "we're such fucking cowards about what people might think that we aren't going to allow you to act like a free individual, even though that's a total betrayal of American values because it says that freedom depends on dollars".
Kulindahr, do you have an attorney friend who can explain this to you?
What's to explain? You're defending contracts that tell people they don't own their own lives, the companies do. That's Koch brothers and beyond.
Freedom of speech just simply does not apply to businesses! It never has. It was intended to limit the powers of the government.
It applies to government because it first of all applies to people. NPR said in essence that Williams doesn't qualify as "people", he's nothing but an extension of their corporate structure. That's exactly what all the mega-corporations would love for us to believe, that we are their serfs, that free speech and freedom of expression and all only exist when they say so.
The fact is that free speech and such exist, and both business and government are irrelevant to them. And when either one requires that in my time off I have to act as though I don't have those rights, it's immoral.
Free speech was never "intended to limit the powers of the government"; the government powers had to be limited because free speech is an inherent right of sentient beings. It's in the First Amendment because government has traditionally not cared one whit for people's rights, and was never expected to do so -- that's why the prohibition had to be stated.
Free speech is real -- and anyone who wants to limit your is immoral and tyrannical, regardless of who it is.
Why don't you ask the moderators? They can ban you for what you say on this board, freedom of speech or not.
Precisely -- and that's my point. JUB won't ban me for anything I say on a Yahoo! forum, or in an interview with my local newspaper. What you're defending is if JUB watched everything I say and do everywhere, and banned me for something they didn't like -- not for offensive behavior, but for something they didn't like!
Williams didn't engage in offensive behavior, he performed in perfect accordance with objectivity -- so in reality NPR fired him because he strayed from their PC beliefs, and nothing else. He didn't conform to their expectations that he was their serf, so he got canned.
And if they didn't serve a number of useful functions, I wouldn't be conceding that 1% be cut from what the government gives them, I'd be calling for them to be shut down -- because since they get government funding, they have to be held to a level of responsibility commensurate with that, which means they have to, in all their dealings with their employees, demonstrate what liberty and justice really are. If Williams had gone nude skydiving to land in a Playboy Club to participate in a New Moon festival or something, they should have applauded him as showing what free men do: choose for themselves. But what they did was far, far worse than firing him for that -- they fired him for being honest and objective about his own feelings.
They showed they don't believe in freedom, but corporate serfdom, and don't believe in objectivity, just their party line. That's abominable.
