I've seen reports of this lately, and while I understand the outrage over it, I'm not quite sure it's necessarily outrageous per se.
If one assumes I am acting in good faith, then if I really expect the business climate or particular promised legal changes to occur under a particular prospective Administration, then I think I have an ethical duty to inform my staff of that. E.g.,
"Mitt Romney has said that Program XYZ is wasteful and will be eliminated under is presidency. If you haven't noticed, Program XYZ provides us with 80% of our revenue. If Romney were elected and Program XYZ were terminated, we would be hard pressed to keep the doors open."
I think that would be perfectly legitimate.
Of course, those initial "ifs" are the key here. And it's definitely up to each employee to consider their employer's motivation, and the certainty of what's being predicted (either in general business climate terms, or in terms of specific campaign promises from a candidate).
Indeed, the impact that a particular presidential candidate will have on their job is something workers should already be considering. On that basis, what their employers say becomes one more bit of info to consider. Including, then, the basis for their employer's expressed opinion.
Reshared post from +David Badash
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Business Owners Telling Employees To Vote For Romney Or Else Because Romney Told Them To
Reports are leaking out about business owners telling their employees to vote for Romney or else they may get fired. And now we know why: Mitt Romney told them to.
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Actually, what I've read, is that some employers are saying that if Obama is re-elected they're going to have to lay people off due to tax hikes, etc.
Not "vote for Romney or you're going to be fired". That's just false and more than a little misleading.
I agree.
Now, whether those employers are correct, or whether they have other motivations behind their exhortations, is something the employees need to factor in as well.
Exactly….now, I'm sure there are bottom line issues to consider and, I guess, they're thinking (right or wrong) that said bottom line will be better served with new blood in the White House.
+Mark Means intimidation by bringing that up is pure Robber Baron.
Poor Mitt, shoulda been born in the Nineteenth Century.
+Chris Pitchford, it can certainly be done in an intimidating or fear-mongering fashion, and it could be done dishonestly as well. But neither is intrinsic to the basic idea of letting employees know your opinion about how a given candidate is likely to affect the business.
Sorry, +Dave Hill but "job creators" are anything but. They will lay off people anyway, regardless of who's president or what policies are in place, when it serves their bottom line.
And economic data showing expanding economies under Clinton and Obama supports the notion that Democrats are good for business. The New Deal was a compromise, I read, but Robber Barons didn't amass their wealth through compromise!
And I completely disagree about the disingenuous "letting employees know their opinion" and the audio recording of Mitt shows an abuse of power. I've been a business owner and manager, and I know unethical practices when I see it!
I mean, come on, I work in alt fuel and renewables! There's no way that an ethical manager is going to "express their opinion" without being accused of demagoguery. If it's a question of policies, talk about the policies, not about the votes!
+Chris Pitchford, I am not assuming that the businesses involved are necessarily behaving in an abusive fashion. And I think that business owners can have legitimately (whether or not correct) differences of opinion from you or me about which party or candidate will do the best job growing the economy.
I do agree with you that business owners will made the decision to cut back or increase their workforce independent of who gets elected, but based on business conditions. Anyone who says, "If Obama gets elected, then November 7th you're all getting pink slips" is, in all likelihood, lying. And that's certainly unethical.
+Chris Pitchford You're right in that a business is going to lay off regardless of who's in the Oval Office if they think the bottom lie warrants it. What some business owners are saying is that Obama isn't going to be good for the bottom line.
My main point is that the story is just an outright lie in the way they're spinning. Coming from "ThinkProgress" I can't say I'm surprised as each side is putting any spin they can on any story they can.
You say that a business owner telling their employees that they might have to lay off if Obama is re-elected is "intimidation'? What do you think about a union shop donating funds to a candidate? In doing that, they're saying "This person is who we're going with. We believe they're going to be the best option." That's all these business owners are doing.
Robber Barons….lol. Come on.
I would have a hard time calling it "intimidation." I do think the "Robber Barons" nomenclature fits, though.
Just more of the standard GOP dream of returning to a time period before 09/14/1901.
Robber Barons!
No secret voting!
No unions!
No women Voting!
No Middle Class, except for the Merchant Class!
No Education beyond 8th grade except for the wealthy!
Nope, just history trying to repeat itself, and the GOPs desire to turn the US into a banana republic.
I'd think if businesses really knew that a President Obama would be bad for the bottom line 'in general', they'd already have done their layoffs, since, of course, Obama already is the President. It's much more likely that this a last gasp effort to eliminate health-care reform, much of which goes into effect after the election and which Romney has pledged to repeal.
I also believe that arguing the semantics between 'fired' and 'laid off' is disingenuous – IT contractors may be comfortable with the difference, since they deal with the difference frequently, but for most folks, 'laid off' and 'fired' both simply mean 'you don't have a job anymore'. In that sense, the suggestion of being laid off is a threat, and one a typical worker ignores at her peril.
To play Devil's Advocate, +David Wintheiser, one of the things they may be expecting / predicting / fearing will hurt them are the ACA provisions that will be going in. There may also be concerns that an Obama not running for reelection again will then be free to Run Amok (amok, amok) into some zany Socialist Revolution that would presumably hurt business. How things like the Bush tax Cuts get resolved, and the Sequestration drama as well, both of which could have economic impact on some companies, will be influenced significantly by who wins.
No need to play Devil's Advocate on the health-care reform/ACA question – I agree with you that's probably the motivator here. I'm just less sanguine than you that this is caused by CEOs suffering a mass-attack of ethical concern for their employees.
As for the likelihood that Obama will 'run rampant' once the threat of re-election no longer restrains him, well, I'll just say that given how Obama has governed these past four years, that fear says more about those CEOs' ability to make cogent decisions than about Mr. Obama. If those companies do go under, I know who I'd blame.
I don't think I ever asserted this was driven by altruism or ethical concern for employees. I think a CEO or business owner can be concerned over their company and its profitability, and still act ethically by sharing that concern with the employees (who, similarly, have an economic incentive to want their company to do well).
If they lie in doing so, that's certainly unethical.
I think an employer can be entirely truthful in this situation and still be unethical. The question is, is the employer simply sharing this info with his employees, or does he expect that this info will persuade his employees to vote for Romney, or at least dissuade them from voting for Obama? That's a form of voter manipulation that's far more impactful than the problems that Voter ID is supposed to prevent.
And given that all but the most brazen CEOs will assert the former even if they intend the latter, it only seems sensible to assume the latter. Let the burden of proof be on the actor in this situation that the act was not intended to manipulate voters.
I don't see it as unwarranted or unethical "manipulation". Indeed, any discussion of what impacts a particular candidate (or ballot proposition, etc.) would have on business would have to have the potential of some effect on the listener. One doesn't share data without expectation that it will have some influence, esp. in a business setting.
Except in this case, we both seem to agree that the motivating factor in this situation is the perceived impact of ACA/health-care reform.
Workers should see significant benefits from this change, so in effect, the "influence" in this case is to persuade voters to actively vote against their long-term interests in favor of the CEO's interests.
In nearly any other context, this would be extortion – yet in the current situation, this is just good business sense? This is the kind of behavior I'd expect from a Leverage villain, not a responsible CEO.
Here's the other thing: Unless your employer goes into the booth with you, how can they prove one way or the other?
You can ban political talk in the workplace, perhaps, but you can't REALLY control votes from your employees unless you have access to their ballots.
I fail to understand how it is extortion, +David Wintheiser . It's providing information at its most basic. Joe Sixpack is getting election information from TV, radio, billboards, friends, the phone, door-to-door, to try to inform him where his best interests lie.
Further, while the CEO is motivated to his own best interests, both have (to at least some degree) a shared best interest in the company prospering.
If the CEO of Windmills 'R' Us were telling his employees (assuming they don't already know) that Romney is on the record opposing extending tax credits on wind farm construction, but Obama is not, and thus if Romney gets in it's likely that the company will have to shrink, that's not extortion, that's telling the truth, not extortion. It doesn't matter if the CEO is more concerned that he might have to sell the company jet than that his staff will suffer, they have an interest in the matter, too.
+Derrick Mims, yes. Which is why extortion / intimidation doesn't apply here. Heck, unless everyone at the business are all voting in one small precinct, the Evil CEO will not even know that all of her underlings did (or didn't) vote the way she commanded it.
The wild card here is intentional distortions and lies from the Evil CEO. But that's a lot harder to prevent.
If you get a chance to chat with someone from legal/compliance, you might want to ask them if the "I can't prove that they did what my threat motivated them to do, therefore it isn't extortion" theory works. I'm guessing that person will say 'no'; otherwise the police couldn't arrest anyone for extortion until after they'd been paid, and threats on behalf of a third-party (say, Anonymous threatening to hack a company's customer database unless the company contributes to specific organizations) would be all but impossible to prosecute.
Two points on the otherwise excellent wind power counter-example:
1) The real cause of the problem would not be the election of Romney per se, but the act of approving laws to cut wind power subsidies. (You don't generally craft specific legislation to cut budget items, but that's an oversimplification we'll live with for the purpose of this example.) Competent legal counsel would recommend focusing on the latter, if one's purpose is truly to inform employees of the importance of wind power subsidies to one's business, especially given that the mere election of Romney may not in fact be sufficient to cause the problem you're warning about. (If the Democrats retain control of the Senate, for instance, then no such legislation cutting wind power subsidies may even reach Romney's desk.)
2) If you've built your business to be, in effect, reliant on government patronage, and have no plan for what to do if the government changes, then perhaps you should blame your business plan rather than the government? (Note: this criticism doesn't really apply to the original ACA-related problem, though one could view changes in government regulations as similar to changes in technology – an industry either adapts to the changes or perishes, right?)
Lastly, while it is true that workers and management both have a vested interest in being part of a successful company, that's not quite the same thing as saying they both want to see the company prosper – if ownership/shareholders take the fruits of the company's prosperity for themselves, why should workers feel beholden to continue to expand such prosperity?
My last job was with a foster care agency. We were 100% dependent on money from the State of Colorado and the various counties whose children we placed into our foster homes.
It didn't come up, as I recall, but I could easily have seen such a discussion from management revolving around the election of governor and state legislature (and even federal offices). There's no case for a backup plan — where else would we have gotten the money?
Note, I left that job after three years because we were laying off left and right, and I needed to get out while the gettin' was good. That's what comes of being 100% dependent on government funding for your payroll.
Undiversified companies — which include ones that provide a service to the government which in turn provides them with all or most of their income — are always at risk.
I think there is a problem in your counterexamples on extortion, +David Wintheiser, because an extortionate threat has to have a verifiable quid pro quo. There's no way the extorting company can confirm that they've been paid off by the individual employee, given the secret ballot (unless there was a demand to bring back a mobile phone picture of the ballot conformation screen or something).
And if it's a communal "punishment" if the election doesn't go the way Montgomery Burns wants, then he's a crappy businessman.
If someone's going to close a business because a particular person or party is elected to office, they are being foolish. They might anticipate based on campaign promises and previous records that the person/party will make the business less (or un-) profitable. They may even cut the business back some — including layoffs — in anticipation of leaner times ahead. Those are all legitimate business decisions. Letting the employees know that beforehand still strikes me as legitimate, though in demeanor it can seem threatening or extortionate.
(And, at that, police usually will wait until the payoff has been made, simply because that demonstrates the extorter was serious about it.)
The wind power example goes right along with that. One difference from what I said vs. how you reframed it is that the tax credits in place expire at the end of the year. Obama has said he will fight to extend them, post-election. Romney has made it clear he will not do so, and, presumably, would actually veto such extensions if passed by Congress. So this is, effectively, a case of crafting legislation to cut subsidies, through inaction.
(This is actually a very real issue here in Colorado).
Hmmm. I wonder if it is clearer on the other side. "As you know, employees of Windmills 'R' Us, Obama has said he will work to extend subsidies on wind power installations, and supports programs to expand wind power's use. If you vote for Obama, I expect the improved business climate that results means I will be able to open up a new plant, hiring more workers, providing the opportunities for promotion of veteran workers here at this plant, and probably increase pay and reinstate production bonuses."
Does that count as a bribe (if stating the negative is "extortion")? Because I see that sort of thing a lot more often.
Good points on extortion vs bribe, though again, I'd have to think that the message would be framed more as "if the credits are renewed" vs "if Obama is re-elected", as the latter is never a guarantee, despite candidate promises. (A very sensitive issue for numerous progressives who feel disillusioned about Obama's first term.)
Thankfully, it's not an issue I need to worry about personally, at least in theory, as the specific negative behavior I'm talking about is prohibited by Minnesota law:
"A person may not directly or indirectly use or threaten force, coercion, violence, restraint, damage, harm, loss, including loss of employment or economic reprisal, undue influence, or temporal or spiritual injury against an individual to compel the individual to vote for or against a candidate or ballot question. Abduction, duress, or fraud may not be used to obstruct or prevent the free exercise of the right to vote of a voter at a primary or election, or compel a voter to vote at a primary or election. Violation of this section is a gross misdemeanor."
That is, unless my employer decides the cost of a gross misdemeanor is a small price to pay for coercing my and my co-workers votes en masse…
As one of those progressives, I feel that sensitivity …
And, yes, I agree with the reframing, but that was one of the reasons why I noted (somewhere early on) that it's up to the employee to evaluate the truth, or accuracy, of what's being argued.
Interesting Minnesota law. So I suspect that someone who said, "You can't be a Catholic and vote for Obama" could be zapped for indirectly threatening spiritual injury.
I still think that there's a difference between "Vote for Romney or you're all fired" (clearly a threat, albeit an unenforceable one because a person cannot be compelled to vote a certain way), vs. "I'm afraid if Romney doesn't get in our business will be hurt and we'll have to lay off workers".
Heck, if the latter is not allowed in talking to employees, can it be said while talking to the local newspaper, and what's the effective difference?