Google violated labor laws

[Will E Worm]

Google is more afraid of liberal outrage than federal law


They basically run the Internet. Their parent company dwarfs every other corporation on Earth. But they are more terrified of offending the Left than breaking the law.


On Monday, Google decided to trample free expression and possibly flout federal labor regulations. Afraid of viral outrage from the Left, the international corporation fired a software engineer named James Damore for writing and disseminating an unpopular opinion.

In a ten-page internal memo, Damore dared to question the company line on diversity. He asked instead whether biological differences explain why so many more men than women work in Silicon Valley. He argued that by "shaming into silence" different opinions, Google "has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed. And Google proved he was right by firing him.

Google purports to value "honest discussion." And reasonable people should be able to disagree about these things. Google just didn't want the bad publicity of having someone with such ideas on their payroll. But never mind the incongruity or hypocrisy. The more important problem is that litigation is around the corner.

"I have a legal right to express my concerns about the terms and conditions of my working environment and to bring up potentially illegal behavior, which is what my document does," Damore told the New York Times.

According to Dan Eaton, an attorney and ethics professor at San Diego University, the engineer certainly has grounds for a case on two fronts. "First, federal labor law bars even non-union employers like Google from punishing an employee for communicating with fellow employees about improving working conditions," Eaton writes.

And second, because the memo was a statement of political views, Eaton says Google may have violated California law which "prohibits employers from threatening to fire employees to get them to adopt or refrain from adopting a particular political course of action."

An international corporation with armies of both lawyers, Google knew all this. They decided to take their chances with state and federal law anyway rather than stick up for one of their employees and risk public backlash. That's an incredibly telling decision from a company that has mastered everything from artificial intelligence to self-driving cars.

In short, the tech titan is scared. Not of losing talent. Not of legal fees from the pending litigation. And not of a potential settlement. No, Google just doesn't want to stir up outrage from the left and so they squashed speech.

Since their founding they prided themselves on their corporate motto: "Don't Be Evil." Maybe this would be a better motto: "Don't Be Craven."

Google violates labor lawshttp://www.washingtonexaminer.com/g...eral-outrage-than-federal-law/article/2630905

They basically run the Internet

Google's monopoly needs to be broken up.

On Monday, Google decided to trample free expression and possibly flout federal labor regulations.

They did violate the law.

 

[knowone]

Good editorial on issue from today's Mercury News:
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/09/was-google-right-to-fire-author-of-explosive-memo/
Herhold: Should Google have fired author of explosive memo?

Google’s response was not a question of right or wrong. It was a question of business and politics.
Two fundamental questions are posed by the case of James Damore, the ex-Google engineer who was fired for an explosive memo suggesting that biological differences account for the disparities between men and women in tech jobs and leadership.
The first question is whether Damore’s opinion can be defended. The second is whether Google should have fired him. Neither answer is quite as easy as the debate would pretend. How we respond betrays our bias.
On the first, Damore was wrong, deeply wrong, but not for the reasons ascribed to him. His memo actually has nuance about the expectations foisted on men and women. His primary error is that he lacks hope for a more just world. I’m not sure he wants one.
On the second, you have to conclude that Google’s response was not a question of right or wrong. It was a question of business and politics. A quasi-monopoly like Google fears harboring someone with views seen as so offensive by so many.
I do not weep for Damore, 28. He’ll get another job, probably at a company with more sympathy for his conservative viewpoint. But his case leaves perplexing questions for those of us who value diversity of people and thought in Silicon Valley.
Let’s take those two questions in detail. At some level, all of us understand there are differences between the sexes. But Damore’s error was in arguing that chromosomes are broadly predictive. People do not accept biological judgments as fate. They think of their own aspirations.
“Women, on average, have more openness directed toward feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things,’’ he writes, going on to explain why women end up in social or artistic areas, while men become coders. (see *******/GxSMGr).
The first response from almost any ambitious woman I know would be “Which average women are we talking about here? Sheryl Sandberg? Hillary Clinton?’’ If you’ve ever been discounted because of your sex, you know how toxic this sounds.
I’m not one of these people who looks at the numbers and automatically assumes there is a precise correlating injustice. (Google’s workforce is 31 percent female, but only 20 percent of tech positions are occupied by women).
More important is the hope that we transmit to every 7th grade girl — or boy — struggling with math. Whatever the reason for gender gaps, diversity remains a worthwhile societal goal. It creates the hope for the future.
Damore gives this idea a bow, but I’m not sure he believes in it deeply. “Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts,’’ he wrote.
That takes me to the second question: Should Google have fired Damore? There’s little question the company has the right to do it. Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, told the New York Times that the engineer was fired because he had perpetuated “harmful gender stereotypes’’ in the workplace.
Unfortunately, the judgment in social media, which took the memo viral, paid scant attention to Damore’s larger point, which is that a place like Google has a kind of ideological echo chamber that shames dissenters into silence.
You don’t have to agree with that — there’s evidence on the other side. But it is a worthwhile issue to debate. By firing Damore, Google assures that the debate won’t arise inside its hallowed halls. In a strange irony, the company validated his point.