By Nathaniel Luce
Publication: MSMBC
As presidential race heats up, injecting ideology on the job has risks
Nearly 40 percent of companies have written policies prohibiting workers from handing out literature endorsing political parties or candidates, according to a just-released survey by the American Management Association. But what you discuss around the water cooler or on your personal blog is typically not something businesses spell out in employee handbooks. While state and federal employees, as well as union members, offer some protection when it comes to free speech and work, most employees don’t often have a leg to stand on. Fear of losing one’s job has had a chilling effect on free speech in the workplace, argues Bruce Barry, a professor at the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management and author of “Speechless: The Erosion of Free Expression in the American Workplace.”
“With a very few exceptions employers have a huge amount of power to regulate employee speech,” he explains. “But I think they should calm down.”
If it interferes with job performance or is disrupting the workplace, he adds, employers have a right and obligation to step in “but my concern is that employers are to quick to make judgments.”
Barry believes employees have begun to self-censor themselves because they fear retaliation by their employers.
Indeed, a recent Monster.com poll of more than 26,000 people found that when it came to talking about politics with coworkers, 46 percent took a “listen, but keep your opinions to yourself” approach; 30 percent answered “don’t ask, don’t tell” and only 22 percent say they wanted to “stand up and be heard.”
