Atlantic - "Can Your Boss Threaten to Fire You if You Don't Vote for Romney?"

[TomCADem]

I don't think there is much practical difference between offering people money to vote for a particular candidate versus saying that you will fire them if you don't vote for a particular candidate. Yet, the former is illegal and the latter is considered legal by some legal commentators.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/can-your-boss-threaten-to-fire-you-if-you-dont-vote-for-romney/263709/?google_editors_picks=true

Last week, timeshare mogul and garish home-owner David Siegel was caught sending an email -- largely cribbed from a debunked hoax -- darkly suggesting that his employees vote for Mitt Romney because a victory for Barack Obama would endanger the economy and with it all of their jobs. This week, In These Times' Mike Elk uncovered the impressive array of materials sent to employees at the Koch brothers' Georgia Pacific, largely along the same lines. Up with Chris Hayes found another case at ASG Software Solutions, a Florida software company: "We have been able to keep ASG an independent company while still growing our revenues and customers. But I can tell you, if the US re-elects President Obama, our chances of staying independent are slim to none." And on Thursday, Elk struck again, publishing a recording of a conference call where Mitt Romney encouraged members of a conservative businessowners' group to put pressure on employees to vote for him:

I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. Nothing illegal about you talking to your employees about what you believe is best for the business, because I think that will figure into their election decision, their voting decision and of course doing that with your family and your kids as well.

Is that true? Can your boss really tell you who to vote for? The answer is probably yes -- depending on where you live, and assuming you're employed in the private sector. In most of the country, there's little restriction on such communication, legal experts say.

Basically, employers have freedom of speech. That means they can say what they want, including strongly suggesting that employees vote for candidates and sending sample ballots to them. Your boss can't walk into the voting booth with you, and she can't pay you to vote for a particular candidate, but often there's little else he or she can't do.

In most states, at least. Some have stronger laws than others, as Catherine Fisk, a professor the University of California Irvine School of Law notes. In California, for example, the law states that "no employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity." Those laws tend to be in states with strong union presences.

[Champion Jack]

1. I still don't know how they would know who you vote for

[Live and Learn]

2. You shouldn't have to hide it.

We have laws to protect people from this behavior for good reason. By the way, your voting party registration and your political donations are all public so it wouldn't be hard to deduce who you voted for.

Edited to add: I just add that I am in California which has laws to protect against this garbage but not all do.

[TomCADem]

3. So long as you strip off any election stickers off your car...

... and keep your windows or yard free of campaign signs.

[julian09]

4. You have to deny your own free speech, to keep your job.

can't dicuss politics at work, signs, bumper stickers, are out, unless they are for Rmoney.

[Texin]

5. That's been my thought about all this employer intimidation

Unless these employers have actual voting booths/machines installed in their workplaces, how can they possibly know who their employees are voting for unless the employees are dumb enough to tell them how they voted?

Basically, from what I've heard/read, these bosses aren't actually employing strong arm techniques so much as they are using psychological threats and innuendo, i.e., if Obama wins, it will only because of people like you who made it happen and therefore I'm going to have to close up shop and ship your jobs to China or wherever because I can't afford to operate and pay American workers here.

Disgusting, but possibly/probably? effective when the workplace is already tenuous and filled with worker angst.