{"id":18030,"date":"2019-09-25T00:13:47","date_gmt":"2019-09-25T00:13:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=18030"},"modified":"2019-09-26T19:27:06","modified_gmt":"2019-09-26T19:27:06","slug":"what-amazon-walmart-employees-risk-when-they-use-the-workplace-for-activism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/what-amazon-walmart-employees-risk-when-they-use-the-workplace-for-activism\/","title":{"rendered":"What Amazon, Walmart employees risk when they use the workplace for activism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth C. Tippett<\/a>, University of Oregon<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

It has somehow become sort of normal to use the workplace to protest social issues unrelated to the job itself. This was something almost unheard of even five years ago.<\/p>\n

The latest example came on Sept. 20 as more than 1,000 Amazon employees staged a walkout<\/a> over the retailer\u2019s \u201cinaction\u201d on climate change. In recent months, there has also been unrest<\/a> among Walmart employees over gun sales and protests by Google<\/a> and Microsoft<\/a> workers over military use of their software. And of course, there\u2019s Colin Kaepernick<\/a> and other professional athletes who used the field \u2013 a football player\u2019s office \u2013 to protest racialized police violence.<\/p>\n

The workplace used to be the very last place you would want to bring attention to social issues, however important. That\u2019s because the office or factory isn\u2019t a democracy where activism is protected. To a workplace scholar<\/a> like me, what\u2019s really interesting is how employees are increasingly willing to undertake this risky form of protest \u2013 and how employers are adapting.<\/p>\n

The risks of workplace activism<\/h2>\n

As a legal matter, there is a big difference between marching in the street \u2013 for example, as part of a climate protest \u2013 and walking off the job as part of that same protest.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say you have the day off, and you decide to join a march through the streets. The government can\u2019t just arrest you or banish you to another country. Your activism is protected<\/a> under the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

Those rights fall away the minute you cross the threshold into your job. Unless the government\u2019s your boss, you stop being a citizen and become a worker subject to your employer\u2019s rule. There, you live in something of a \u201cdictatorship, in which bosses govern in ways that are largely unaccountable to those who are governed,\u201d as philosopher Elizabeth Anderson puts it<\/a>.<\/p>\n