I was looked it up:

In United States law, the Garrity warning is an advisement of rights usually administered by federal, state, or local investigators to their employees who may be the subject of an internal investigation. The Garrity warning advises subjects of their criminal and administrative liability for any statements they may make, but also advises subjects of their right to remain silent on any issues that tend to implicate them in a crime. (See Kalkines warning concerning federal employees.) [0].

The Kalkines warning is an advisement of rights usually administered by United States federal government agents to federal employees and contractors in internal investigations. The Kalkines warning compels subjects to make statements or face disciplinary action up to and including dismissal, but also provides suspects with criminal immunity for their statements [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrity_warning

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalkines_warning

> Someone who works for the government retains their freedom of speech protections, whereas a job in the private sector can be easily lost due to doxxing by an online lynch mob.

Doesn't this have more to do with the prevalence of unions in the public sector?

No, I don't think so. The US government(s) isn't allowed to punish employees for speech outside of work because of the first amendment.

Google suggests that this is the supreme court case that set that precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickering_v._Board_of_Educatio...

That case seems to be about school teachers.

My Dad was a mail carrier for a time in the US. According to his union newsletter, he did not all the full free speech rights outside of work as an average citizen. He was not allowed to talk about work conditions outside of work. He also did not have the right to strike.

I could have the details wrong, this was in a newsletter I read in the 1980s. Oddly, I remember exactly were I was sitting when I read this.

While the case was brought be a teacher the ruling was not limited to teachers.

Can't speak to what your union told your dad. There are some limitations about speech related to work, but that sounds like a more extreme version than I'm aware of being upheld. Can speak to laws about striking even less.

point being teachers are not federal US Government employees, they work for a subdivision of the state. A ruling about teachers seems like it might be not too relevant to Federal workers.

This web pages links to a PDF with a handy flow chart from the ACLU outlining when Federal employee might have restricted speech https://www.acludc.org/en/know-your-rights/know-your-rights-...

It seems hard to tell, given that private sector unions tend towards being at large quasi-governmental corporations. Unions do add difficulty to the firing process, which seems like it should be enough to fend off the employer firing you simply based on not wanting all of the harassing phone calls. But if management and union management still want to go through the process of firing you for what you said, then a government employee would still have the defense that doing so would violate their rights.

The prevalence of public sector unions itself is actually a good example of the trend I'm talking about though!

If you're such a screwup that even your union wants you gone, you'll lose your job, period. Whether it's public or private doesn't matter. Very often the job of a union rep or union legal counsel is to ensure a soft landing. Source: interned with a police union's legal counsel.

One thing to keep in mind about police officers and similarly situated government employees is that maintaining credibility as a court witness is a fundamental requirement of the position. A police officer who's credibility can be easily attacked on the stand has substantially diminished capacity to perform their duties. Part-and-parcel of being any kind of law enforcement officer is testifying to collected evidence on the witness stand.

While the government technically can't retaliate directly for not testifying against yourself in an administrative hearing, failure to be fully forthcoming in such an investigation demonstrates a lack of candor which in turn could be used to impeach you as a witness. If the government has evidence of lack of candor and sufficient motivation to get rid of you, you better start searching for a new job.

Another problem that plays into this is that the US prison system isn't built with "correction" in mind but punishment. So while an ex-con may have been punished, there is no assumption that they've actually changed as a person. Punishment is seen as a deterrent, not a correctional measure.

>"Ultimately, this two class system came about because rights were codified only as protections from the government, as there is no simple way to draw a line between freedom of association and negative consequences."

Can you explain what you mean here by the dichotomy of "freedom of association" vs "negative consequences"?

I mean freedom of association where each party goes their own way, versus unavoidable negative consequences aka punishment.

If I say something you don't like, then we all generally agree you can stop associating with me.

If I say something the government does not like, then we all generally agree they cannot do something to me as a consequence - as the inescapable authority means it would be a punishment.

Those are the two extremes. The middle is a grey area based on power dynamics. For example, someone says something their employer does not like. If they are let go but can simply find another job, then we can argue that employer is merely exercising free association. If they're from a more rural area and get blackballed at every employer in the area, then that effectively constitutes a restraint on speech.

I actually have thought about this sort of thing for a while. Personally, I think that forcing private entities to have more responsibility as they become more powerful is the way to go. Although, I'm not a civics expert by any stretch of the imagination.

Some companies have significantly more power than some governments in existence, so why shouldn't they have to act as if they were in fact a government. So, for example, if a mom and pop wants to fire someone because they don't like what they're saying, then more power to them. They don't have very much power, so their ability to defacto infringe on rights is limited. On the other hand, if Walmart doesn't like what I'm saying, then they have to give me 1st amendment considerations because of their vast amount of power.

The other side of this is that if you're running a small business and don't have the power to deal with employees who are acting in bad faith, then your business might actually tank. However, Walmart has got the resources to deal with employees who aren't just exercising their 1st amendment rights, but who are actively malicious and hurtful. Walmart can rotate the schedules or transfer people to another store or create a special position where the problem is sufficiently isolated. And Walmart can do all this without breaking a sweat.

This of course doesn't fix the "what happens if everyone hates you in a small rural area" problem. Theoretically all the entities in a rural area are going to have sufficiently low amounts of power AND proving collusion is going to be basically impossible (not to mention do you really want to force two people to hang out with a third just because there's only three people in an area and technically the two people have a high relative power base).

One way to fix this is a social safety net. If things like healthcare and the ability to pay rent are not dependent on employment, the worker's effective right to free speech and the employer's right to freely associate are both preserved.

Makes sense, thanks for the clarification.