I think calling on people to bring materials for the blockade of your employer is reason for sacking regardless of when the call was made.

Isn't that what a picket is?

Is that also a sacking offense?

Picketing is simply standing on public land outside the gates, holding slogans.

Blocking the way in either direction is usually an offence (you can get arrested).

Picketing is free speech; I fully support the act.

Blockading access to the site and impeding operations goes beyond legal/supportable picketing. This I do not support and would support an employer who sacks an employee for it.

The original post I was responding to said:

"Amazon sacks employees who publicly expressed their support for Yellow Vests' blockages"

So that doesn't seem to be 'calling on people' to bring material as you wrote in your previous post. I'm also unsure if your post is referring to employees directly partaking in blockading? Please clarify we are on the same page here, because as far as I'm concerned, this is supporting, not partaking.

I wont argue with you regarding the nature of 'blockage' because I don't know but 'blockages' could mean picketing or blockading to me.

From the article: "Il faut du renfort et des palettes, les amis !"

which translates roughly to: "It takes reinforcement and pallets, friends!"

That is what I read as "calling on people to bring blockade materials." (My French is somewhat halting and far from fluent, but I don't think I've mis-understood here.)

Pallets don't have a place in free speech/supportable picketing, IMO. They do have a place in illegal blockades.

Pallets are commonly broken up for firewood for pickets, especially in the middle of winter.

Pallets certainly don't say blockade to me.

So again that could be read either way.

If there's a blockade and that blockade is using pallet material, I would expect the ex-employee to lose that argument.

If it's just for fuel, I agree with your point.

Agreed :)

I'm afraid it is not more nuanced. As a private individual you have duties to your employer and those duties do not stop when you leave office.

Your employer on the other has has duties to support political expression, free political expresion is a basic right in a democracy, as basic as it gets. Last time I checked, the Yellow Vests were not a prescribed movement.

What I really do not get is the support for employers and the lack of support for labour on this site. Why is this?

Mmm. It's not a proscribed movement either.

Its quite reasonable to not support your employer if there are disagreements. But one might be at the wrong job in the first place then, although not all have the luxury to choose. That's why there are unions and strikes and stuff. It's quite strange Amazon would fire them. Google didn't fire anyone for not supporting or cheering for various government work. But I guess, warehouse workers have less rights/power, and that's what this comes down to. Which strangely enough might also be the reason the went on the streets in the first place.

It is true in the sense that there is a legal concept called "duty of loyalty"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_loyalty

It should be pretty obvious you can't compete with your employer. If you want to compete then quit. You can't steal their trade secrets even if it's off duty. There's lots of other things covered by the duty of loyalty concept and if you explore them they almost all make perfect sense. It easy to see how the world wouldn't function without it.

That's for shareholders or corporate officers. That doesn't seem to cover employee/employer relationships. Am I reading that wrong?

> Let's say that is true...I don't think it is, but let's say that it is...where does it end? Can I speak ill of them in public, like at a bar or cafe? What about on the phone? What if my employer contributes funds and energy to causes that are directly opposed to my well being?

Of course, you're free to speak ill of your employer at any time. And they're free to fire you for anything they hear about.

It may be shortsighted of them to do so; with a good employer, you should be able to criticize in a productive way and work to change things. But that's not an issue of legality.

We're still talking about France, right? What employers get away with in the US isn't really relevant.

I didn't say "in the US" at any point. I was responding to someone suggesting that there was some kind of inherent right to speak ill of your employer with no repercussions.

It's the same in France. As some Amazon employees have discovered...

It's not even close to being the same.

The duties of an employee to his employers are essentially the same. And breaching those obligation is valid cause to be sacked.

The user you replied to wrote: "Of course, you're free to speak ill of your employer at any time. And they're free to fire you for anything they hear about."

That's broadly how it is in France (there is obviously a threshold with regards to what you say)

Quick Google:

"Un salarié critiquant violemment la politique des dirigeants de son entreprise et dénigrant son employeur ainsi que d'autres salariés. Faute grave. (Chambre sociale, arrêt n° 10-16929 du 27 septembre 2011)"

Well, yeah, if you zoom out enough they are 'essentially', 'broadly' the same. If you use those modifiers I agree with you.

Then when the case hits the courts the outcomes will be markedly different.

It's really quite simple.

Imagine that you are the employer and an employee of yours, on their free time, goes around agitating others to explicitly hurt your company. Can't get any more nuanced that this.

Depends on what "hurt" means, doesn't it? If you are "agitating" to organize political action, then the most reasonable course of action is to get the interested parties to a negotiating table and come to an agreement that works for everyone.

If "hurt" means "anything that keeps me from making as much money as possible to the exclusion of other people's interests"...

Hence the "explicitly" qualifier in my comment. Any hostile intent aimed directly at the company itself.

Does that mean a material loss of property or just potential loss of profits?

I think you get where I'm going with this.

If I go around campaigning to introduce a carbon tax, reduce plastic use, some other initiative. Does my employer have some right to sack me because it might tangentially hit their bottom line?

Am I duty bound to vote for, and encourage others to vote for, any party that would lower corporate taxes?

Do I have to (in this example) do all my shopping through Amazon, or am I also allowed to shop at competitors?

So yes, I think you can get more nuanced

> it might tangentially hit their bottom line

Take your strawman back.

I didn't say "tangentially", I said "explicitly". Anything that is aimed directly at the company itself. Like suggesting to nail the office door shut to prevent any work from being done.

How is it a straw man?

You wrote "to explicitly hurt your company". I'm not sure the word explicitly actually changes the meaning here. I could campaign to introduce a carbon tax. I'm not doing it to explicitly hurt my oil company employer. Even if I know it probably will at some level.

There's degrees of 'explicitness'. What about campaigning against fossil fuels if you work for an oil company? What about a car company? Theres a line, and I'm willing to bet it will differ from employee to employer.