Yes, you have a right to participate in unionization and politics. But you don't have a right to alter company software to spread your political message. There's a big difference between holding a "Vote X" sign on a street corner on your own time, and using your position as a developer to put up "Vote X" signs on your company's website.

But developers at Uber and Lyft can spam drivers and riders with "Tap to support Prop 22" every time they want to use their apps with no consequence? I don't see how anyone can get upset with employees notifying fellow employees of their legal rights when the same tech companies will abuse their platforms to literally broadcast their political beliefs.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/4/21549760/uber-lyft-prop-2...

> same tech companies will abuse their platforms to literally broadcast their political beliefs.

if the owners of the company feels the desire to, they can instruct their employees to perform work to broadcast/promote their (owner's) political beliefs. This is just a case of a company using its resources for a purpose designated by the owner.

An employee co-opting company resources without owner approval to broadcast their (employee's) political message is not allowed, unless explicitly given permission by the owners.

Why people cannot tell the difference between the two situations above is beyond me - it's not like they are similar or confusing.

But the NLRB ruled that what Spiers did was perfectly within their rights, so you’re completely wrong in this specific case. However correct you may believe yourself in the abstract, entirely relies on the lawfulness of the specifics.

> Spiers did was perfectly within their rights

no that's not what the article says.

The article claims: > NLRB has found Google’s policy against employees looking at certain coworkers’ calendars is unlawful.

Google claimed that she abused security notification system for websites to show a non-security related message (see https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/17/fifth-google...). She could, within her rights, send emails to organize a company wide meeting, or write up a public document to talk about unionization. If google had banned this, then they would fall afoul of the law.

May be google is really using the excuse that she abused security notification systems to fire her. That's something I'm not privy to, and only litigation will reveal this (if it even does).

You’re incorrectly conflating the two cases described in the article. Berland was fired for viewing other’s calendars, Spiers for the notifications.

The NLRB ruled both firings were illegitimate and their actions protected under labor law. So no, she was within her rights and the NLRB said she’s to be reinstated.

The NLRB has no direct enforcement power, so how it resolves itself will be dependent on if the NLRB pursues Google in the U.S. Court of Appeals, they settle out of court, or otherwise. My guess is that they settle because an NLRB ruling against you isn’t likely to work in your favor in the event of an employment lawsuit. But regardless, what Spiers did stands as a favorable precedent for workers in the event of other disputes with similar circumstances.

Do you believe those messages were done by developers, on their own initiative? Or by company PR people whose profession is to manage public messaging? The point is, somebody used checked in code to further personal political aims. I highly doubt that is what occurred at Lyft and Uber.

The developers in your example are doing it with the express approval of the company and management. The ones at Google were not.

So yes, there is a big difference.

> using your position as a developer to put up "Vote X" signs on your company's website.

To state the law* for internal users who visit one specific website

There is also a big difference in saying "Vote for X" vs. "You are allowed to vote."

Ok. So it's OK if your webhost provider replaces your homepage with the phrase "you are allowed to vote"?

I think apt comparison is - if some Apple or Google engineer would push a non-authorized OTA update to all Apple/Google phones which would add a permanent political banner to homescreen - would you consider this to be a firing offense or not?

And to people who are trying to justify this by process being "technically possible" - there is a non empty set of Apple and Google employees who can technically push any code to your phone remotely. Is it still acceptable for them to use that to push their political agenda?

Because it comes down to trust. You trust people who can push code to your devices to not abuse it.

Pushing a banner to all phones with a political message would be a brazen abuse of one's engineering position.

This developer's change was much more narrow, it modified an internal tool that only Google employees see. But it's still breaching professionalism. If the message instead was, "Unions are corrupt and deprive people of individual agency" would that be acceptable? Especially with the unique position Google is in as our gateway to information, it's prudent to avoid employees that cannot refrain from making changes to production software to further personal politics.

So if she instead put "Nobody has the right to enter this country illegally" it would be fine because she's just restating the law?

"Entering the country illegally is illegal" is restating the law. Such a statement would likely take on more meaning given the context in which it was said.

"Nobody has the right to ..." is your opinion.

Well, "nobody has the legal right to..." is restating. And to me, the "legal" is rather obviously implied.

INAL but it is your right to illegally cross the border of a Geneva convention signatory country and seek an asylum. So no, not the same.

I don't agree the implication is obvious at all. Interpreting it that way make it a total truism - nonsensical unless interpreted within a greater context.

And it looks to me that's just what the GP poster was trying to do - challenge others to argue with a truism while pretending that the context in which it was stated isn't relevant.

That would be appropriate (in this analogy) if the website was advising employees on how to jump over border walls.

What about a website for lawyers who defend illegally-entered immigrants?

ICI consultants isn't a criminal organization as far as I know, and without really knowing anything about them, I would assume the consulting services they provide don't tell companies to perform illegal acts.

Substituting your equivalence:

> She used an internal security tool to push the law

Even for messages I agreed with, I would still find this a questionable activity and disruptive as an employee.

You find it questionable and disruptive that someone would encourage people to know and enforce the law? How very peculiar.

Seems like if that's the status quo, it should be disrupted.

So someone with technical access (if actively bypassing review) should be allowed to replace the www.google.com homepage with a copy of the US constitution and that's just fine and dandy?

"Oh, I'm just informing people of their constitutional rights? What's the problem? I thought this was 'merica"

If she had used a company printer to print pro-union fliers and then shared them I'm 90% she could be fired for misuse of company resources. At to my intuition this feels like using the company printer without permission.

> If she had used a company printer to print pro-union fliers and then shared them I'm 90% she could be fired for misuse of company resources. At to my intuition this feels like using the company printer without permission.

Until Trump's NLRB overturned the precedent late last year, workers had stronger protections than getting fired for a minor slip-up in the course of organizing. But today, your intuition would be correct.

So I am not going to update my opinion, this was legal but morally dubious on Google's part. On her part it sucks but she easily could have avoided the situation.

No, changes cannot be retroactive (in general) meaning the prior law applied at that time.

I think the point here is "...used internal security tools...", Not the particulars of the message she was pushing.

That is the stated reason but we all know that is not the real reason. If they added an ascii art of a dinosaur or a message on another topic to that internal security tool, they wouldn't have been fired, probably not even a slap on the wrist, at most an annoyed "take that off" request.

> we all know that is not the real reason

No, that is not true. Some of us take security seriously.

Can you contextualize who you are, so that I can better understand “us”? You mention seriousness as an absolute virtue, but if it fires people for a harmless, easily correctable mistake in an internal tool, it is just misguided and an excuse especially if it “happens” to serve some ulterior motive.

It's not harmless. Google is very concerned about internal security, and putting irrelevant messages in security notifications makes them more likely to be ignored in the future. Your ASCII dinosaur hypothetical is a good way to think about it, and I wouldn't be surprised or outraged if that also resulted in the offender being fired.

If that was the point, then why was the other bit included in such obvious service to the "point"?

Security is a broad topic and can include avoiding legal liabilities.

Yep, and case law dictates what is acceptable participation. Generally, using company time and infrastructure to perform concerted activities is prohibited. That's why union voting and meetings are done off the clock and off-site. Once protected by union membership, the protections tend to increase since you're not acting alone.

If you want to play that game, you could spam people with the text of all sorts of interesting laws. It's still an abuse of authority.

But I wonder if anyone would be have been fired if it were an April fools prank?

Where's the evidence of "spamming?" Is Google "spamming" its employees on a regular basis with their "approved" messages?

When a Googler visits particular domains, she gets a message from the internal security tool like "Do not upload user data to third-party services. Use secure alternatives instead." This is to prevent employees from inadvertently causing a PII incident or violating contractual obligations to external customers.

And?

Laws are political.

Faulty analogy because it references a specific set of religions (those with churches) in the context of a workplace. If in some insane reality, Google was trying to prevent their employees from joining religions (as they were, in this case, with unions), than the first half would be fine and fully protected by law.

By your logic, an employee should be protected if they decided to add a political statement to the homepage of google.com? No?