[woodruffw]

The learned oblivion in this discussion is very disheartening: every person saying to “leave politics at home” should understand that our basic boundaries around personal and working time came from long and protracted political battles over the powers of our employers. Those battles were fought because people complained, loudly at their workplaces, and won their colleagues over.

Abortion is not the labor movement, but the principle holds.

[_8j50]

It's not the place. Don't shit where you eat. When you have these discussions at work people are forced to listen to your view, not only are they not getting paid for that, their response will have consequences. Are you looking for coworkers to reaffirm your belief or an actual discussion? Because if it is the latter the Janet from accounting might feel strongly about capital punishment for women who abort, now should Janet get fired for her political views then (which are protected)? Would this affect your ability to work with Janet reducing her value to the business? Is it fair to forcibly shove your views on others with the threat of harming their career and livelihood otherwise?

The workplace is not a social club. You can still socialize with willing coworkers after work where everyone is free to leave with no repurcursions.

[woodruffw]

Where’s the force? Nobody is required to have lunch with me; nobody is required to respond to random off-topic messages on chat applications.

We’re taking about the thing that each of us spends 1/3 of our weekdays doing. The majority of our waking hours. It’s one of the largest aspects of all our lives, and is fundamentally derived from the outcomes of very recent political battles over the roles of individual laborers.

I believe that we owe it to ourselves and, as a basic matter of respect, to our coworkers, to have important discussions. If you don’t want that for yourself, then you can stick to sports and weather. That’s fine too!

[_8j50]

Everything has a place. Use personal chat systems and have lunch with people outside of work. I have been asked to participate in things I disagreed with when I joined a new company for example and I couldn't refuse because that might mess up my reputation before I could prove myself. I have also worked jobs where coworkers argued and talked about religion and racial things and I was not senior and I was new and I had no desire to participate in their discussion yet I had no choice but to sit in the same room with them and listen to deeply offending and hurtful things. I do not get paid to hear your opinions about trump or minorities or whatever.

Even after working at a place for years, it is very disheartening when people discuss bs that affects me personally yet if I even say anything it would be things that will offend them deeply.

Off work I could speak my mind and refuse to paricipate in offwork activities but during work that declined chat request might offend you or you might see it as not supporting you or your cause.

If I decline a request to chat about abortion for example, will you see it as a sign of my not supporting you? In that case it might affect how well you work with me? Then what? The person that has the upperhand in the power dynamic speaks and the other people agree?

[aahortwwy]

> If you don’t want that for yourself, then you can stick to sports and weather. That’s fine too!

If I had a private office and didn't have to block out background conversation with noise-cancelling headphones and loud music that would be fine, yeah.

Happy I can mainly work from home nowadays.

[woodruffw]

> If I had a private office and didn't have to block out background conversation with noise-cancelling headphones and loud music that would be fine, yeah.

These sound like the kinds of employee privileges you’d like to negotiate for at work, ideally with multiple other coworkers backing you. The kind of thing that would ideally come from multiple discussions, some of which would ultimately boil down to your and your employer’s obligations. Let’s hope that won’t be too political for your taste, should you decide to stop working from home!

[aahortwwy]

The union I was in most recently had dedicated time for discussing and voting on matters important to members, and scheduled negotiations between our chosen representatives and our employer.

I preferred that to being distracted at work.

[woodruffw]

Me too; I also don’t like to be distracted.

And I mean this genuinely: it’s wonderful that you have a Union that you can use for those purposes. Most workers in the US, particularly tech workers, don’t. The fact that you do is a testament to the effectiveness of politics in the workplace.

[epidemian]

As far i understood, this is about allowing or disallowing employees to discuss the ruling. Nobody is talking about forcing people to take part on the discussion or to pick a side —you always have the option not to participate on these things— so i'm not really getting where your point is coming from, sorry.

[_8j50]

No you do not. Let'e bob goes on a rant about capital punishment against aborters or incarceration for gay people once that is also repealed. How will you feel as a pro choice person or a gay person? Will you not feel hurt in the slightest and will it not affect how you work and interact with bob?

People like you must have always been in positions of power and priviledge. I have been at the other end enduring all sorts of horrific remarks and being forced to keep quiet to save my career. Now I look back at those jobs and the first thing I always remeber is how horrible it felt people saying ignorant and hurtful things day in and day out and being forced to listen to that or disagree and not get my contract renewed, and affect other political power dynamics that can literally ruin my life.

So please sir/madam, don't shit where you eat. Not everyone appreciates the smell while they eat.

[epidemian]

> People like you must have always been...

No need for these assumptions. Your argument is clear without them.

Maybe you and i would not respond the same way on the same situation, and that's OK. Personally, when i had coworkers that would say things that i consider totally indefensible, yes, it made me feel terrible and angry, but at the same time, i was at least glad to now know who i was dealing with. I knew that person couldn't be trusted, and how i should (avoid to) interact with them. This is especially true for me in the cases where such person is a superior, or when nobody else in the organization calls on their shit; those are start-to-look-for-another-job situations for me personally.

And, sincerely, i don't think banning such topics from work environments would work for these kind of cases. Those people will keep being the way they are and acting their shitty way when and where they feel they'll get away with it; you'll just may not know who they are, yet.

Disclaimer: i'm not from the USA, or a "first world" country, so it's very possible for our cultures and work environments where we've been to be quite different.

[_8j50]

Sorry for the "people like you.." remark.

You say it would affect you do bad you might even leave a job. So essentially you are excluding people with disagreeable views from the workplace harming their ability to provide for themselves and family. That is categorically unfair and anti democratic. Instead of people changing their views peacefully you are threatening them this way and they will also need to use force in return. You only feel this way in my opinion because you have options and your views are in the majority. Many of your views at a point were unpopular.

I do not go to work to socialize or play politics. I am there to provide labor and services in exchange for money. Quite frankly, on just about any political topic my views would offend people on any end of the political spectrum because I like to think for myself instead join the hivemind and go with party propagnada. You want to take that libery away from me. You want to force me to agree with you or become unemployed, because the other end of the political spectrum will also feel the same way as you. You think what I said before about the hypotetical person bob is bad? Ok, what if Jane is a transexual working at a factory in the deep south, how do you think that person is treated? They won't hear nice things about transexuals I can assure you that and they may not be able to move either (and they shouldn't have to).

The phrase "don't shit where you eat" comes from the fact that disease spreads and wipes out civilizations when they fail to so that. In this case, the specifics of your politics are not relevant but that you are contaminating the workplace with politics and politics with the workplace. Using the power dynamics of the workplace to further your political agenda and allowing politics to decide who works where (which again, that is illegal under labor law of many countries not just US).

In the US as well I see this trend where leftists and rightists alike think it is a good idea to force people into their camp. If a person is on your side because you forced them, obviously their supposed views are fake. You get rid of bob, but his friend jack saw what happened to bob and will quietly try to get rid of people that disagree with hid and bob's views now. You brought political conflict to the workplace now.

[epidemian]

> You want to force me to agree with you or become unemployed

What in the hell? I think i totally failed to communicate what i mean if took that from what i said.

I tried to say that it's a personal decision of mine to try to change my workplace if i learn that people i work with/for are completely immoral. Like, i don't wanna work with people like that. It's a personal decision. But i wouldn't want to force anyone to agree with me or anything of that sort. Sorry if it came out that way, i didn't mean to.

[thr0wawayf00]

I agree. At the same time, I think we're sadly coming to terms with the reality that our voices don't matter in the political arena anymore. If anything, I think social media has created the illusion that being loud and angry online is an effective replacement for actual strikes, protests, etc.

We can tweet angrily all day long, but those in power are going to continue doing what they do because they know we're just going to tweet about it and that just doesn't matter.

[woodruffw]

I absolutely agree, and I think this nicely summarizes why political discussion at work is more important than ever: it amounts to real discussions between human beings with emotional and professional ties, not flame wars between angry Tweeters.

I don’t agree with my coworkers on everything. But when they talk about politics I listen, and try my best to engage in a cogent discussion.

Maintaining a culture of political discussion at work is critical to both healthy corporate cultures and healthy civic processes, which might provide a hint as to why Meta is opposed to it (outrage is their business model.)

[icelancer]

Meta isn't banning discussion of politics in groups of employees. It's banning discussion in open channels.

If you want to listen to employees talk pro-life / pro-choice, join the groups for that and do so. Keeping Roe v. Wade discussion out of the equivalent of Slack #general or All-Hands email list seems more than reasonable.

[woodruffw]

The article itself concerns online discussion spaces, but what constitutes an “open channel”? Should employees expect to be reprimanded or potentially punished for talking about abortion rights in a company hallway, because an uninvolved coworker might happen to walk by?

The baseline position here (“don’t create political distractions in large channels”) is reasonable on face value. But I have difficultly believing that it’s not pretextual, and that the real goal isn’t to generally chill political discussion between colleagues.

[1123581321]

At most companies, open physical meetings would not include private conversations inadvertently overheard. I can see how companies employee some people who don’t understand things like that, panic and overreact. I think most companies would have trouble admitting they employ such people in higher level planning meetings.

[UkrainianJew]

>We can tweet angrily all day long, but those in power are going to continue doing what they do because they know we're just going to tweet about it and that just doesn't matter.

Oh, those in power are actively manipulating you to be upset about things that do not interfere with their profits. Somehow, nobody is protesting against unviability of single-income households, lack of retirement savings, part-time employment/independent contractor bullshit used to skirt regulations, etc. It's always Worker Alice against Worker Bob and never Workers against the Corporation.

[tyrfing]

Harassment or discrimination over religious beliefs, which can include opinions on abortion, is illegal under federal law. Where is the line between arguing and a hostile work environment?

[woodruffw]

In my book? It becomes a hostile work environment once an aggrieved party seeks retribution or revenge for perceived harms.

It’s obviously not that simple, though: there are lots of opinions that are a priori incompatible with a functioning workplace, such as beliefs that fundamentally dehumanize one’s colleagues. In those instances, I’d argue that the hostile work environment begins the moment those beliefs are aired.

(And, to the best of my knowledge, no court has ever concluded that the particular derived beliefs of an individual are protected as an extension of their religious rights. Religious rights include things like being given reasonable accommodations for worship and lifestyle requirements; it doesn’t require your coworkers to placidly accept whatever positions you’ve extended from the larger religious doctrine.)

[heavyset_go]

Reproductive rights are workers' rights, only workers will need to worry about the consequences of abortion bans. Others can afford the freedom to do what they want with their bodies.

[vegai_]

Perhaps the point is that 2/3 of the people are mostly disconnected from the places where most intensive discussion about these topics is going on. But at the workplace, also these people are forced to be connected. It's probably these people (mostly moderates I would assume) who are the base force steering this.

[collegeburner]

You're right, I should be using my work environment to agitate for repealing all the ridiculous and unjust gun laws we have and the shitty bill congress just passed. It's more important that we win colleagues over to protecting our rights.

Not that I will do this, but when I see people talk about things like this, they usually do not feel the same if I suggest what I might do. I think the abortion laws in my state need a little loosening (though not a lot) but there are other people who want them even tighter. Are you just as okay with them agitating at work? Or will you want them to be censored by HR or fired or passed over for promotion/bonus?

[woodruffw]

You shouldn’t “agitate” for anything political at work, unless you mean that in a humorous way (I sometimes do!)

Instead, you should put your best self forward and treat your political positions as a humanizing element. It’s been my experience that extremely healthy workplace discussions can occur when people start from a place of human respect, not agreement (indeed, it seems like agreeing parties eventually find something to disagree over, no matter how trivial.)

[collegeburner]

I meant more in the political sense but yes, maybe not the best word choice. I agree with your position a lot more. I have had political discussions with my coworkers, just like I have had discussions on sports even though work is not a place for sports. And sometimes I have changed my mind based on what they said.

The concerning part is more that some workplaces have people or cultures that push politics very hard. Where you either agree with prevailing sentiment or are penalized in your career. In O&G you can not easily be a Democrat (or you had better be a Manchin Democrat). In tech you can not easily be a Republican (or you had better be a Romney Republican). I have seen people's careers fucked up by somebody who hated their politics. In other words it sounds like you are approaching this in good faith. But not everybody does. Or sometimes people do but they get mad and stop thinking so much. And that is hard to manage, and can make workplaces bad and hostile.

And of course there is always the problem that it is harder to maintain civility at scale like Facebook.

[woodruffw]

You’re right, it’s incredibly hard. It’s also easy for me, the outsider, to have a just-so story for a massive corporation :-)

In reality, who knows? But I’ll continue to be optimistic, at least until that’s banned at work too.

[escape_goat]

The Supreme Court decision will affect people's work lives at Meta, and that is something that needs to be discussed. There are apparently states now where women lose rights just by visiting a doctor, where they can be criminally prosecuted for an abortion outside of the state if there is evidence that they had been pregnant at any point. Should Meta employees be required to continue living and working in those states?

[55555]

Honestly I get that rights are important and worth fighting over, but from a practical perspective, if you want to have an abortion, what’s wrong with just ordering abortion pills online and taking them? That pretty much solves the problem, right? Just curious.

[MandieD]

Ok, “just curious,” there’s something called an ectopic pregnancy. You cannot be sure that’s why you’re bleeding and in pain, so in a normal place like Germany (where I had mine) or pretty much anywhere in the US before this Friday, you would go to your gyno or the emergency room to see what’s going on. If it really is a fetus that implanted itself in your Fallopian tubes or somewhere else where it will slowly bleed you to death, it must be removed medically (my and most early cases) or surgically. Depending on location, it either could never or is highly unlikely to result in an infant that could survive outside your body in any form.

If it’s in your uterus, either you’ll have the option of intervening to try keeping the pregnancy going (if the doctor thinks that’s even possible), or, more likely, be sent home with painkillers and encouraging words about “trying again”.

In Texas, my home state, I would be very hesitant to make that visit, for fear it wasn’t ectopic and that I was exposing myself to, at the very least, a rather physically and psychologically invasive and expensive investigation into whether I induced the miscarriage.

[55555]

Thanks for the info. Some of the people online claiming to just be curious actually are just curious. For other readers, the prevalence of ectopic pregnancy is 1 in 50 pregnancies which is surprisingly high.

I see how once the pregnancy is officially confirmed, intentionally causing a miscarriage would be scary/risky.

[MandieD]

Honest curiosity is refreshing. Additional info: once a woman has had an ectopic pregnancy, any subsequent pregnancy has about a 10% risk of also being ectopic.

So when I had a big early 40th birthday surprise, I went straight to my gyno for her to make sure it wasn’t going to be a repeat - especially since we already had plans to visit my family back in Texas a few weeks after that. Then, the concern was merely financial/logistical. Now…

The (mostly) happy ending: a boringly normal pregnancy that left me with lingering back pain and numbness in some toes, and the most wonderful little boy that I’d given up on having years before.

[fatherzine]

Worth noting that the abortion rate is 1 in 5 pregnancies. Roughly 10x the rate of ectopic pregnancies.

Note: Thanks both of you for engaging in a respectful conversation.

[escape_goat]

If anyone — say, the doctor who told you you were pregnant — has evidence that you were pregnant, you could be investigated and charged with a crime for suddenly not being pregnant. This has ALREADY happened to at least one woman who was simply suffering a natural miscarriage.

[bavell]

> states

Are there other states doing this or is it only Texas?

[escape_goat]

IIRC there was similar language in 'trigger' laws in some other states but I don't have a link to a good overview site and so am just pluralizing on the strength of that recollection.

[thrown_22]

You sound like you have no friends and are replacing that lack with co-workers.

[woodruffw]

It’s a testament to the relative lack of problems in my life that my single biggest current problem is scheduling time with my friends.

I think having serious conversations with my coworkers is a very good thing for all parties involved, especially when I don’t want them to eventually become friends. Opinions and beliefs are plainer that way.

[thrown_22]

I can't see a reason why anyone would avoid scheduling time with you.

[encryptluks2]

Leave politics at home is the same as saying capitalism above all else.