No idea if that's happened here, but as a manager I know what I'd do if an employee -- any employee -- told me to to meet their demands or they would quit.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/muppets-studio-says-k...

Isn't the word "mutiny"?

And yet, decades ago, when labour had real power and unions were a force in the economy, we had no problems with labour driving change within organizations.

I think what we're seeing now is what happens when individuals are disenfranchised from the political process and labour has no way to organize to drive broader change: individuals, frustrated with their lack of power, speak out and there is retaliation. And where there is a lack of organization, this anger has no focus and what you see is a chaotic lashing out.

I think the same is true of populism in general: when you render individuals powerless you prime them to be welcoming to the populist who promises to fight for them.

Is that an excuse for either Gebru or Google's behaviour, here, specifically? I have no idea. None of us have enough of the details to really understand what happened.

But the idea that labour shouldn't challenge leadership, or that the public in general shouldn't challenge the establishment, is a product of decades of union busting and concentration of power in the political class that we shouldn't accept just because it's become the status quo.

I'm not applying this to Gebru vs Google, as in this specific case, we don't have enough evidence to know what exactly happened.

While I don't like the Twitter mob per se, the idea that a person within an institution cannot publicly criticize the institution is ridiculous. Rank-and-file members should be able to challenge the leaders. The employers can already fire employees for almost any arbitrary reason. Don't like the way a subordinate talks about you? Fire the person.

Colleges promote (or should promote) independent thinking. Independent thinking makes it necessary that employees might disagree with the employer. Is that good for the efficiency of the company? Hard to say. But to say the society must cultivate a culture of obeisance such that people can work for companies better is upside-down. Companies should be built to favor independent thinkers.

It seems like more and more that emboldened employees don't think there is any limit to what they should be able to say/do in a company context, which is a huge problem. If you want individualism to that degree, you need to be in business for yourself. If you take a job at a company, you're implicitly conceding some of that individualism.