It's not just being seen with someone. He went to a public, televised hearing to sit behind him. It's a show of support coming from a public face of FB.
Maybe I'm being too nuanced and applying too much of the human element by looking at it like so but it's that very gap between supporting Kabanaugh the nominee who lost his temper in a SJC hearing and supporting Kavanaugh his friend accused of sexual assault and the focus of a Senate confirmation and FBI investigation that makes me take the position I have here.
If anything stricter standards should be applied to upper management than to the rank-and-file, because part of the job is absolutely to be publically representing facebook, so it's really unsurprising that people are perceiving it as such. Keeping your nose clean is part of why they pay you the big bucks.
Kaplan is free to go to this as a private citizen, people are free to be shocked by it, and Facebook is free to do something about it if the negative attention becomes a liability. That's how things work.
Unlike the McJob worker, if they do want to get rid of him, he'll have a nice golden parachute, I'm sure.
Especially when that person has the job title of "VP of Global Public Policy", at-will or right-to-work laws be damned.
Edit: And no. This isn't me saying that's what should happen or even trying to publicly litigate whether or not such a person would win or should win. Just that that behavior sounds like something that would immediately get an employee sued and I'd really be interested to hear the legal arguments from both sides and the opinion of the court.
Being honest here, there is no direct connection to Facebook's interests. This is not a court case in which Facebook has some stake, at best they would just be there to "show the colors".
Either way you take it, someone is supporting Kav here. It's either Kaplan personally, or Facebook professionally.
(and again, I am also not commenting here about whether he should be confirmed or not, but let's not pretend that everybody just showed up for a free 8oz bottle of water. Whether Kaplan's interest is personal or official, there is an interest.)
This isn't a remarkably difficult exercise of mental plurality. Nor is it one of partisan critique.
If someone attends a government function as a private citizen and is fired for it, I think that would make for an interesting set of legal questions with regards to employment law.
If someone were fired for doing the same even in an official capacity, that-to me-would be even more interesting. Since you brought up strict standards for certain levels of employees, I responded to that. You can't very logically say my response to this is trying to have it both ways if all I've done is respond to your talking points.
That's all there is to that, imo. Don't read between the lines here because there's really nothing there to read; I am positing that one really doesn't need to connect many dots for Kaplan's attendance at these hearings, but I can entertain the idea you presented: that being fired for attending a government function would make for interesting legal theater as an impartial and dispassionate onlooker.
I don't think that is the problem at all. Its not that people want to be shielded from dissenting viewpoints, its that the vast majority of people on the right and the left are basically entirely politically disenfranchised, while people like Zuckerberg or Kaplan hold a vastly inordinate amount of power through their connections and their money. What we are seeing here isn't "lefty people crushing dissent", it is "people organizing around and exercising one of the only viable channels of political influence that they have (challenging the means of production of their billionaire boss) in order to exert a tiny amount of political power".
Yes this happens, but should it be the case? Is this something you morally support? Should people be fired for smoking weed in their personal time? Posting on social media? Making a joke to a friend? Donating a political campaign?
People have been fired for these things but I don't think it should be lauded. I don't think its healthy for companies to monitor their employee's personal life, so they can punish them at work.
Why not just advocate for the the corporate world to be more accepting of personal life choices? Firing Kaplan doesn't get you any closer to that.
I agree that when all else is equal, we shouldn't do bad things to one person just because they happened to someone else. All else is not equal here. Given the power Facebook has over their employees lives and in politics in general, they are like a feudal lord. When they stop enforcing the rules on just them and their friends, that's a breakdown of the rule of law which leads to a breakdown of social harmony and leads to people starting to rebel against leadership like you see here with Facebook's employees
In California, you cannot he fired for political activity. Not saying that his act was political activity, but if he is fired for it, it would be because it’s being viewed as a political activity.
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/03/brendan-eich-steps-...
1. I resigned without negotiating a constructive separation.
2. I resigned but with a constructive separation leveraged by legal and other (e.g., public relations) risks inherent in (1) and (3), but about which I cannot talk.
3. I was fired under color of resignation, but I for some reason did not pursue legal action under CA Labor Law (1101,1102).
Hope this helps! Probably not, but it should put a stake through any false dilemma (binary exclusive/exhaustive choice).
To respond to the content of your post, while your list does cover the legal aspect, it doesn't address the broader topic of whether or not someone can be effectively fired for political activity (though I do appreciate that you in particular might not be legally permitted to address that topic given the current context). Unfortunately, when it comes to contentious topics the appearance at least is that people can often be forced out in one way or another regardless of what the law might say.
Regarding your item 3, and in relation to the broader topic of this thread, in the general case (not you specifically) it would not surprise me at all if someone failed to pursue legal action after being fired (or effectively fired) for political activity. Reasons that immediately come to mind include:
1. Legal action is generally quite expensive in this country.
2. Cases involving intent (hiring, firing, racism, sexism, etc) are notoriously difficult.
3. If the political view is even remotely unpopular, the risk of being run through the media may be unacceptable. Consider not just the general aversion most people have to public exposure, but also the impact on future job searches and other similar things.
As a practical example of your average person not wanting to deal with public exposure and controversy, consider the proportion of people who post to this very website under pseudonyms (myself included). Even if you only tally those who keep their posts professional 100% of the time, it's still most of them.
1. Contingency fee basis is common.
2. CA 1101&1102 protect employees from political firing and coercion. Many are unaware of state law variation here. Check them out: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio... https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
Good point on pseudonyms. The Federalist Papers are a famous example of practical pseudonymity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers#Author...
That being said, my point 2 was that regardless of the strength of protections provided you still have to demonstrate intent (or for CA 1101 "tendency" I suppose) in court. No idea how high that bar is in CA, but regardless, depending on circumstances that really could be very challenging.
I do have to wonder how employers are going to reconcile this with our increasingly connected, reactionary, and polarized culture going forward. Use of social media alone presumably qualifies as "engaging or participating in politics" at this point, so what happens if, for example, a CA employee starts publicly shitposting about a political topic, someone figures out where they work, and things escalate? Your case and Mr. Kaplan's would seem to be only the tip of the iceberg...
Contingency fee plus colorable claim often means settlement way before hearing or trial, with non-disclosure clause to keep secrets after. Hard to know how often this happens. Businesses generally strive to de-escalate whenever possible.
To make this claim valid, that this is a public show of support a multiple of stars would have to align here:
Joel Kaplan must have thought that he's famous enough that people will recognize him in public, better yet the third row of that testimony AND know that he's not a bystander or supporter of the alleged victims, but of the accused. And that he wanted to antagonize half of FB's staff about it.