There has been much discussion regarding the right to free speech in and out of the workplace, recently. I think many of us tend to believe we have certain rights in the workplace, when it comes to our personal conversations with another employee at work or at home. I think we believe we have free speech protections in our discussions of our employer or our workplace online in, chat rooms, blogs and emails, when we are not at work. According to Bruce Barry in his book, Speechless: The Erosion of Free Expression in the Workplace, our First Amendment rights have been seriously eroded in all of these cyberspace places. I find this rather " chilling " to use a term succinctly used by Dr. Barry. This leaves me wondering what free speech rights I still have, if any, and what the broader implications are.
In another article called, Fear vs Free Speech at Work, Dr. Barry tells the reader he is most concerned when someone gets fired for what they say in a blog, what is said on their bumper sticker or the content of their email, when it has little to do with the workplace or the person's employment. He states, this sends a message to the employee, other employees and the outside world that your employer is "...paying attention to your speech "...and may be censoring it even when it has nothing to do with your employment. Dr. Barry goes on to say when you are employed " at will, " you are in danger of having your First Amendment right to the freedom of speech seriously compromised. He adds, you have been employed " at will " and your employer needs no reason to fire you. In fact, from this we can conclude, future employers may not hire you in the first place, after plugging your name into a search engine.
Being a proponent of our U.S. Constitutional Rights and Supreme Court decisions (whether I agree with those decisions or not), the First Amendment right to free speech is the most important. I believe we must have this right to monitor our government, which is what our fore fathers told us must be done, because "we the people" must be ever watchful to keep our country free. Democracy and freedom are at risk when we do not or cannot participate in our government. Our valuable Free Speech needs to be upheld by the Supreme Court in its rulings; and reinforced in state legislation. As it stands, however, we have lost many of our rights in the workplace and free speech seems to be one of them. Or this seems to be what many of us are experiencing in our lives or reading in the latest articles on free speech in the workplace.
Having experienced free speech abuses first hand in the workplace, I know the dangers of lawful free speech and its consequences, when your employer doesn't agree with you or feels threatened by what you have said. I think it is time to protect " at will " employees with legislation, because employers are misusing their power in the workplace and there are many articles recently published that attest to this, including Dr. Barry's book, as I stated earlier. Having said that, I do not believe employer abuses of free of speech is overwhelmingly wide spread. I would need some rather intense academic statistical research and/or studies to confirm that fact. Dr. Barry's book is only the beginning, I hope. Nevertheless I do not like what I have experienced so far and what I have been reading on the subject, within the past five years.
In a previous blog, a relative wrote something on my Facebook page that was within his right to post. Regardless of whether he was shocking in his comments, I respect his right to express his political beliefs. In fact regardless of whether political comments are made on my Facebook or the world wide web, I uphold the rights of those in my country and in other countries to express their opinions and beliefs. Even when I know the dangers. I may not like what extremists or terrorists say in their blogs or on their websites, but I think democracy on the world wide web calls for freedom of expression whether we agree or not. What we cannot say in a public forum may easily be said behind closed doors until it festers and gives rise to violent behaviors and/or revolution and war.
Of course all this depends on whether you believe in a concept of cyberspace democracy. In an article, called, Free Speech v Terrorism on the Internet, an argument was being made regarding the right of terrorists to exercise their free speech freedoms ( if they have any) on the Internet and whether they should be regulated. The argument was fundamentally debating whether terrorist organizations should be able to post their agendas online. The question waiting for an answer is, who shall we censor and why. Herein lies the real danger. Once censorship begins, where does it end? Who gets to decide, regardless where that speech is taking place and whose speech it is, what can be said or not? For what reason or reasons will this censoring be done?
In an interesting article on the subject of both national and international freedoms of speech on the web, posted by the Center for Democracy, Sophia Cope wrote in, Next President Must Preserve Free Speech on the Internet, that digital media deserves constitutional protections. I would add to her observations and comments, that employees working " at will " need the same protections while using these technologies. Neither of us are stating we think all words and/or thoughts should be protected. However, we might want to consider the consequences of limiting speech in whatever media it occurs. It may be time to ask ourselves, who will make the decisions regarding free speech limitations in cyberspace? When we are using available technologies on the web, what entities are responsible for these censoring decisions? What institution or person gets to limit speech when cyberspace speech crosses national boundaries and becomes transnational?
In his article, Speechless at Work, Onnlesha Roychoudhuri states the U.S. Supreme Court seems to decide cases on free speech in favor of employers. He goes on to cite cases that have been precedent setting prohibitions on employee speech in the workplace. Clearly this does not bode well for the many employees in the United States who have witnessed their rights eroding and have been fired or sanctioned by their employer for using freedom of speech rights. This is especially true when this speech has been within the legal boundaries of the law or so they thought at the time. Maybe this is an issue all employees and web digital media users need to watch closely and consider. Why? Because there seems to be a growing issue of transnationalism when workplaces and technologies become global.
Incidentally, one of the most highly published and discussed cases involving Daniel Ellsberg was recently aired on television. Maybe it is time to consider Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers and the consequences of whistleblowing and free speech in the workplace in the past and in the future. His case is an example of how suppressing free speech can endanger an entire country and world population. Dr. Ellsberg has spoken at the universities I have attended. At the time, I wasn't certain whether I considered him a "dangerous man " or a truly brave one. Since revisiting the issue and the issues discussed in this blog, I am satisfied that if no other protections exist, we are still protected if we take up the cause of whistleblowing. Naturally, we must be aware that to do so means we may no longer be working for that company or any other corporation, even though we have legal recourse and protections under the law.
I believe it was Hitler who wrote, "...those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it." With those words in mind, since printed U.S. newspapers are giving way to Internet postings and blogs, U.S. corporate and governmental attempts to stop the truth (protected by national security agreements) from being leaked to the world's public has become a whole new issue because of advanced technology. Closely tied to this problem is the issue of individual freedoms and who has them and who does not. Will free speech in the workplace and in cyberspace change our world? More importantly, will each of us change in ways we do not want and cannot foresee, simply because we have access to new technologies and cannot accurately predict legalistic future trends and outcomes?
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