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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

I feel like we should make civil rights for individuals as expansive as possible, but it would be perfectly okay to put much tighter limits on what kind of free speech protection a corporation gets.

I also do not see this as a first amendment issue anyway. Amazon can say anything they want, but when they force employees to listen to it, that is very different.

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There are certainly legitimate concerns about the influence of Amazon and other large corporations, but the solution is not so simple as what you suggest. Corporations are associations of people, so you are advocating for civil rights for individuals up until they associate with others and act or speak collectively. That would be radically detrimental to the meaning of civil rights.

This concept muddies the waters, and as a society we should be keen to identify concepts that do just that.

It’s simple enough to draw the line at registered organizations. These entities after all are afforded distinct legal privileges.

Registered organizations like the New York Times Company?

Organizations such as the ACLU and the American Red Cross are registered organizations and I doubt you'd advocate for restricting or redefining their civil rights. Perhaps you'd draw the line at for-profit organizations, but that doesn't make it better. Should Ben & Jerry's or Patagonia or other corporations with notable positions on social issues not enjoy the protection of civil rights from those who oppose them?

The bottom line is that any restriction or redefinition of civil rights is fraught with negative unintended consequences. It should be an option chosen with extreme care.

Corporations do not exist to facilitate collective advocacy. There is zero reason to believe that the views of the C-suite or board of directors for a corporation represent the views of a majority, significant minority, or even any of its employees.

Pretending like they are a vehicle for collective speech merely amplifies the speech of the owners at the (potential) expense of the employees. Perpetuating the facade is sadly both another symptom and a furtherance of the corrupting influence of money in our politics.

Unless of course the only corporations allowed to exercise free speech rights were collectives of workers :)

What about civil rights for individuals up until they form a legal structure oriented around amassing profits and protecting the individuals from liability?

An argument could be made to have different rules for benefit corporations and non-profit corporations as opposed to traditional for-profit corporations.

Corporations have personhood in and of themselves, and not in representation of a collective of people. This is what builds the corporate veil and legally shields investors and operators as individuals, to some degree, from corporate actions.

How is it different? The first amendment right, im guessing, extends to the employees making the union-busting speech. Can you mandate that an employee listen to safety training, where non-compliance means having your contractural employment terminated?

To the other absurd arguments about "give me your wallet" as comparable free speech, come on. These are people demanding pay from an employer but wanting to play by different rules not mandated by the US Govt, not somebody out there tilling their own field seeking racketeering protection from an ogre.

Defining it legally would require careful consideration, but there is an obvious intuitive difference between telling employees unions are bad and mandating that they watch safety training.

The latter at least has legitimate business value as well as value for the employee themselves. The former benefits only the corporation, at the expense of the employees. Safety training is collectively good, union busting is adversarial.

It should not be impossible to make this a legal distinction.

It is very interesting to watch this play out, because of course the DSPs are effectively extensions of Amazon.

The complaint advocates that Unions cannot even be discussed by Amazon with its employees? But the unions, conversely, do have the right to discuss with Amazon employees?

This section is wild. NLRB complaint mandates a false testimony of laid-off workers. Whether or not that constitutes some form of fraud, it is extremely unethical.

>>The NLRB complaint also seeks an order requiring that Amazon publicly post the NLRB explanation of employee rights for one year; provide laid-off workers with a “neutral letter of reference” that says their performance was “satisfactory” and does not mention “the circumstances surrounding their termination of employment”;

I feel like all of this would be solved if we just made some super simple laws for mandatory time off, mandatory living wages, universal healthcare, mandatory parental leave, and limits on overtime. Other countries do this just fine to great results. At that point my company say whatever dumb shit it wants to, they're still gonna be forced to pay me a livable wage and let me take time off and let me take care of my health and family.

I don’t know why we legally and socially accept the existence of legal rights for euphemisms at all.

If I have no obligation to ramble Christian catechisms; political speech of the past, why 1900s economic catechisms? Jeff Bezos and the like are just people. They aren’t concepts.

Superhero addicted minds looking up in the sky …it’s dick shaped rocket man! Goooo that guy!

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