Romney: OK for employers to influence employees' votes

I am ASTOUNDED by some of the rationalizations in this thread.

 

Morey just said he expects fans to vote for Romney because he can't rebuild from scratch in this economy with low fan attendance. Said if Obama is re-elected he'd be forced to keep this team pushing hard for a playoff spot.

 

Right!

I have my karma to think of

 

Wouldn't the employer fire the least valuable employee, regardless of who they voted for?

Employer advocacy is not voter intimidation, it's a free exercise of political speech.

Voter intimidation is Black Panthers standing outside of polling places with billy clubs.

 

It's not just about the employer finding out what you did in the voting booth. Of course, they can never really know that. It's about suppressing many other forms of political activity and expression. Your employer can easily find out who you have donated money to, if you cross a certain (fairly low) threshold. You would be discouraged from publicly revealing your political positions through bumper stickers, yard signs, discussions, etc.

This is bull**** and I can't believe people are defending it.

 

Going a little far afield, aren't you?

 

....in a predominantly black neighborhood in west philly, calling Obama an uncle tom and a tool for whitey.

It's like reverse psychology voter intimidation. Another masterful Obama plot.

 

We live in a free society. People can do things you may not agree with.

If you don't like the behavior of your employer, quit.

 

When you have more than 250 million dollars socked away in offshore accounts and are running for political office, you can probably afford to give away a little just to look good.

Let's not attach "philanthropic" to a guy who made these piles of money by preying on limping-gazelle companies, putting up a fraction of his own money to buy them, convincing banks to put up the rest by mortgaging every asset the company has, then saddling the company with enormous debt and fees and walking away with tens of millions of dollars----usually for doing nothing.

 

going far afield is characterizing free speech as "voter intimidation"

 

That is bs. I work in an office and I go vote in polling places. Black Panthers wouldn't scare me at all because I know the cops would come bust their heads if they tried to do anything to me. But, I do see the office politics and talk about politics definitely leverages employer power and creates pressure on workers to conform. Intimidation in the work place and at church are probably the two most effective ways to put pressure on people to vote your way.

At my last employer -- who also wouldn't openly advocate for a particular candidate, but that was before Citizens United, so who knows what they're doing now -- they opened up this PAC to help lobby for company interests, mostly at the state level. They encouraged employees to donate to the PAC and to volunteer to handle administrative duties for the PAC. And, it was pretty clear that to participate, especially to volunteer, would be a feather in your cap career-wise; you could show senior leadership you were one of the good guys, you put the company first, and so on. So people would participate and contribute hoping to reap a promotion later. And maybe that PAC will do things to keep those employees employed; but it might also be doing stuff to pollute their water, or inflate the price of energy, or disenfranchise their local school, or who knows what. In the end, it represents the company, not the worker.

You can call that whatever you want, but I don't like it at all. Maybe people aren't intimidated so much as bribed. It's still corrupt. That stuff has no place at work. And that's just the PAC bs, before they could flat-out tell employees how they ought to vote!

 

Romney says to business owners basically "do what unions do. What's good for the goose is good for the gander".

Democrats cry fowl. Say "it's not fair to have us operate on a level playing field".

 

And go to another employer who will do the exact same thing? No thanks. How about instead we recognize that what they're doing is wrong and disallow them from doing it?

 

As has been stated, a union can't fire you over your vote.

 

Have we already forgotten about the Ohio coal miners who were told it was mandatory for them to show up at a Romney event that shut down their mine for a day and lost them a day's worth of pay?

 

1st Amendment

 

I'd be pretty damned uncomfortable in either situation. I'd rather we have neither.

It is one thing for an owner to say he likes a certain candidate. It is a whole different ballgame when the start threatening jobs or doing anything that makes you feel pressured by your decision.

 

Yes, it's different. A union can't fire someone.

 

Not to mention union members PAY the Union.

 

Are you kidding me????? They can sure levy heavy fines/sanctions against you...........