Yeah a lot of people have a very authoritarian bent without realizing it. For many people it is hard to find any example of protest or dissent from the less powerful about the more powerful, ever being acceptable unless it is the type of protest that is easily ignored.

"This should have been kept internal, where we could have fired you without publicity"

I wouldn’t assume that - this was well publicized. That publicity had only one purpose — to put pressure on management to act. But I doubt the authors anticipated this particular action.