Trying To Get Workers Fired Is the Wrong Way To Fight Racism
Bosses use the possibility of workers losing their ability to pay for the basic necessities of life like food, shelter, and health care to force workers to do what they want. We can’t use such threats against workers as a way to fight racism — we need to organize instead.
The act of pressuring bosses to drop their staff for social media posts without the involvement of a mediator like a union cuts against some of the basic principles leftists have fought for in the workplace since the dawn of the labor movement.
On June 16, Konikoff Dentistry in Virginia Beach posted vaguely that four of its employees had “posted offensive and inappropriate social media comments or otherwise engaged in offensive social media posts from others.” Less than a day after their boss was made aware of the conduct, every worker had been fired. The move ended up making the local news, with attorney Gary Byler explaining that former staff across Hampton Roads had few options for recourse. “You are free to post racist comments on Facebook. Employers are free to not hire racists.”
Byler goes on to say that racist social media posts are hard to defend in court, especially in Virginia, which has few restrictions on an employer’s ability to fire staff. “Unless you have a written contract [. . .] you’re not fired for an inappropriate comment; you’re simply not rehired.” As a result, workers like those at Konikoff Dentistry have little recourse, with Byler sharing darkly that “the one case that concerns me most is that a professional woman who has been with the Mayo Insurance group for years and years was fired for what her husband posted on Facebook.”
Recent months have seen a growing trend among some social justice circles of trying to get people fired from their jobs who express racist or otherwise reactionary sentiments on social media or in person. Lately, notable celebrities like Hartley Sawyer of The Flash, Taylor Selfridge of Teen Mom, and writer/creator Craig Gore of Law and Order: Organized Crime have all been fired over behavior online. But workers have been targeted as well, with firings all over the country: a caregiver in South Carolina, a Party City staffer in West New York, an orchestra musician in Austin, and beyond.
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