I’ve been disgusted by large organizations that kowtow to the loud minority of their employees who make demands driven by politics for some time. The most infamous example was the New York Times, but it’s never been just a them sort of thing.
And far too often, I find myself shaking my head at stuff like that.
While there is a time and place to stand up to your bosses, it should be about things happening in the workplace. If your boss is treating people like crap, sure. Stand up. Make a fuss. Even if you get canned, he’s probably doing you a favor.
But too many of the wokesters like to try to bully management, taking a “they can’t retaliate against all of us” view.
And, frankly, it’s worked at plenty of companies.
It seems that Google, of all places, finally had enough of it.
From my friend Ed Morrissey (Hi, Ed!) writing at Hot Air?
"Nasty, tedious children," as Beege called them yesterday, are now nasty, tedious, and unemployed children. More than two dozen Google employees that participated in sit-in at office in New York and California got fired late yesterday for their attempts to hijack executive strategy in relation to a contract with the Israeli government.
This should send some shock waves around the Left, and it's no small irony to see the New York Times report on the proper manner in dealing with employee revolts too:
Google on Wednesday fired 28 workers after dozens of employees participated in sit-ins at the company’s New York and Sunnyvale, Calif., offices to protest the company’s cloud computing contract with the Israeli government.
A day earlier, nine employees were arrested on charges of trespassing at the two offices.
“Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior,” a Google spokeswoman said in a statement.
The NYT learned this lesson in workplace management, too ... eventually. Management infamously caved to an employee revolt over the publication of an opinion column from Senator Tom Cotton in 2020, firing longtime op-ed editor James Bennet to appease the mob, giving the employees the (accurate) impression that they ran the asylum. A couple of years later, however, a new management team sharply rebuked the staff for attempting to silence discussion of detransitioners by reminding them that the door was right over there and that they could find ten people to replace each and every one of the crybullies who chose to walk through it.
I never imagined that Google would be the place to show the wokesters the door.
Yes, the New York Times may have pointed their own bunch toward the door, but Google launched them out of it with a trebuchet, and Lord is it glorious.
Understand that I don’t have a problem with people willing to challenge authority in the workplace. What I have a problem with are people who think their opinions are so righteous that no one in authority would dare challenge them.
Voicing your concerns? Fine.
Staging a sit-in on company property during work hours? Probably just a smidge too far.
Yet they have gotten away with similar antics over and over again. Now, they haven’t. Now, someone else can apply for those jobs and be thrilled to work for the tech giant.
Now, this doesn’t let Google off the hook for all of their other crap by any stretch of the imagination. There’s enough going on inside the company that one “attaboy” isn’t about to replace the legion of “aw craps” they’ve gotten. This is the equivalent of taking a single drop of water out of the Pacific Ocean.
But it is a positive development, and one I hope we start to see happen more and more often.
I’ve been the boss. I didn’t actually care about my employees’ political opinions. What I cared about was whether they would do the job well. You can’t do your job well if you’re actively protesting my company on my property when you’re supposed to be doing your job.
This took place in the middle of the day during the week. This was a disruption to Google’s operations, meaning that it likely kept other people from working. Of course, some will say that’s the point of a protest—to disrupt things so they have to listen to you.
But when it’s the people paying your salary, you can find out abruptly that no, they don’t have to listen to you.
The truth of the matter is that even in states where they try to make it very hard to fire people, this is one of those things that’s likely to get you fired anyway. You’re not going to be able to disrupt the normal business of a company so you can be petulant children on company time.
We in the real world like to call this “fired for cause.”
Good did the right thing. They went further than the New York Times did, but as Ed notes in his piece, Basecamp did it in 2021 and, frankly, after nearly three years, it doesn’t seem to have hurt them in the least.
See, there are times when you need to listen to your employees. If they say that the work-life balance is crap, you need to listen or you’ll lose your best and brightest. If they point out that compensation is low compared to your competitors, you should listen. If they have ideas about how to be more efficient, you listen. You should listen to allegations of sexual harassment, racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination and check them out.
But they don’t get to tell you who you do business with. They don’t get to waste company time and resources by staging a protest against you while on the clock or on company soil.
Google, for once, did the right thing.
Now the question is whether anyone else will.
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Wrongful termination lawsuit under CA law in 3...2...1...
I am going to enjoy this for as long as it lasts! Just because they may or may not be techies doesn't make them unreplacable (sp?)! With all the emphasis on STEM there won't be any shortage of replacements. To the ijits: la la la la la - we can't heeeeeaar you!! Thanks for the first truly enjoyable column for the day, Tom!!