AIBU to think public racist / anti immigrant / anti trans posts can justify dismissal?

[Slightyamusedandsilly]

Read a couple of accounts this week of racist, public supporters of the far-right being sacked for spouting race / immigrant / trans hate on their personal social media accounts.

One was a doctors receptionist.
The other a school learning support assistant.

Both roles where they are likely to work with people in the groups they're publicly trashing online. One was recorded at a far-right rally, speaking about the amount of immigrants she was forced to support in her line of work.

What is your opinion on this?

YABU - People should be able to express their opinion without fear of losing their job. Freedom of speech.

YANBU - Anyone with any kind of public facing role/a role where their employer is likely disapprove of this should not publicly post this way and needs to understand that being sacked is their own fault.

"Being racist is not ' having an opinion'..."

Depends, doesn't it? Depends how you define it and what exactly was said. If it's really racist it will be illegal and be dealt with by the law. No reason for the employer to become involved in the person's personal life.

I think organisations do tend to have a set of views that is their public face, even if that's one of being apolitical so as not to alienate any potential customer/client base. And I think its quite usual to expect their staff to uphold that public face when linked to them.
These cases are never about Sandra who works in Tesco saying she wants to stop the boats or Pete who works for Amazon and thinks the communist party have some good ideas.
They are invariably about people in roles where the employer has a strong public stance, for example on inclusivity, and the employee takes a strong opposing one, using an account where they make it clear where they work.
This is entirely avoidable on the employees part. Either by working somewhere they can support the value system, or not saying where they work if they feel compelled to post their strong opposing views.

Best not to take it any further then.

Not sure if the vast majority who express hatred to Jews understand the difference, tbh. In Ireland there is quite good separation and understanding of hating the historic actions of the British State and ruling establishment and having no issue with a British person as an individual who isn't actively supporting or justifying the historic crimes of our Country. Not sure that mature thought process has developed with regards to current thinking around the State of Israel and Zionism.

👏 👏

In the case of the receptionist, she posted herself at work (as in, a full on photo at her desk saying the phones were quiet) in amongst the rest of her posts about "brown Muslims" and "leftards". Her post about being let go got pushed into hundreds of thousands of Facebook feeds, at which point thousands of those people posted to suggest to her that the bile on her FB page was perhaps a likely reason.

She wasn't even sacked; they just chose not to renew her fixed-term contract.

I remember this case well. This has happened to so many social workers - its terrifying tbh. Even though I run a business so Im independent, Im still beholden to SWE and they are right on it if anyone screams transphobia. I remember another case where a lesbian SW laughed because a bloke complained that she misgendered his non-binary dog. Said she was transphobic. She got sacked as he said he felt 'unsafe'. I shit you not.

As I said, common sense has gone out the window. Frightening.

And yet you brought “trans hate” into it in your very first post, the very beginning of the thread.

Why do that if you’re so desperate to avoid the topic altogether?

You can’t be surprised if people then think you’re being inconsistent.

Nope. Part of the course was checking if you held, 'social work values'. They really rammed it down your throat. I thought it was quite controlling and lacking in critical thinking. Basically you had to be completely liberal (although what does that even mean these days?). I also think its a bit batshit and conflicting because working with DV victims you really want to protect women and we are trained to see the extra need for protection of women and girls - but we aren't to also highlight that trans 'rights' might conflict with that. Its hard to know what exactly those 'social work values' are - what the right ones are yanno? Dont get me started on how you must be anti-racist but also be hyper aware of issues that are race-related (such as FGM/breast ironing or treatment of mental illnesses as demonic or increased risk of physical violence in certain cultures).

I am using that case as a springboard for the thought experiment rather than a comment on that specific individual.
(DH is a Muslim immigrant who doesn’t like public praying so again what if he had posted objecting. )

It is legitimate to object to organised Muslim prayers in that park on the basis that it is a breach of the bylaws.

It would not be legitimate to use it as a springboard for inciting direct action against people praying.

Similarly it would not be legitimate to object to Muslims praying but celebrate an organised prayer event for another religion.

The point I am making is that you need to unpick the motives for a post unless the content is so blatant that there is no other explanation. This is where employers have to tread carefully because they risk substituting their own perception of the employee’s motives rather than objectively identifying them. If an employee says they objected because that is what the bylaws say, an employer would be on shaky ground trying to justify a dismissal on the grounds of racism.

It’s not illegal to be racist. It’s true though that it’s easy to say that racism or ‘hate speech’ shouldn’t be allowed but ‘hate speech’ is not clearly defined.

Most people would agree that there is basic straightforward racism that is beyond the pale, usually along the lines of all people from a particular group have a particular negative characteristic or deserve negative treatment of some kind (although I agree with pps that these sorts of comments about Israelis and ‘Zionists’ seem to get a free pass) but there’s all sorts of other stuff that is highly contested, like being anti-immigration. It’s not like we have a nice simple list of things everyone agrees are hate speech.

It very much depends on what has been said. Saying transwomen are men is not hate and should not be a sackable offence but so many gender nutters seem to believe it is. Who gets to decide?

"Hate" can be really subjective. I've seen things labelled "trans hate" that is just stating biological reality. It's kind of insane that people should be fired for their thoughts, and the internet is a strange place where it sort of straddles the line between public and private.

Social worker terf here too. I'm the same and moved over to adult care as it isn't so captured. Some absolutely dodgy characters in childcare with gender ideology informing their practice. Very concerning.

Yes, the employer settled just before (literally a couple of hours) the case was about to start because it was obviously not going to be a win for them.

She was on a fixed term contract and posted a picture of her self doing fuck all at work, in a health care setting, then winged about being let go between emotive posts demonstrating prejudice to a substantial part of her organisation's client base.
I wonder how difficult the management decision was not to renew that contract.
Now just one item on the Agenda today, renewal of contract for receptionist. That's unanimous then. Where are we going for lunch.

It's not off topic at all. You specified racist, anti-immigrant and anti trans hate in your OP but any such rulings would need to equally apply to hateful speech about women, old people, disabled people and all the other triggers that push some people into hatred. You can't pick and choose. The volume of hateful and violent threats that have been published against women who have the temerity to prioritise women's needs over men's is sickening and the hatred examples against feminists catalogued on terfisaslur.com/ are in exactly the same category as the racism/anti immigrant examples you gave. If you want hatred against feminists to stand as fair comment/legitimate grievance then the same standards applies to racists too, you can't hive off a couple of categories of potential hatred and treat them differently than the others.

It's not a binary issue - every situation will be different. Every employer has a different tolerance. One not in the public eye might not care - no reputation risk. A big public listed co probably cares a lot more. Public sector, more still. And one that lists these sorts of things in their values, more again.

And then it depends what was said, where and how. And whether it can even be linked back to the employer.

Then it will also depend on the employer's policies and contract clauses.

Did you slip it into your OP and think we wouldn't notice?

She pleaded guilty to the offence, based on the advice she received.

It depends on the role and the words used.
As a headteacher, I would not express a view on these topics on social. If the learning support assistant felt there were too many immigrants in the country but expressed this in a measured fashion without using derogatory terms I think that’s a valid opinion and ok.

Okay
I wouldn't know that though because OP didn't tell me / so thank you for clarifying

Blimey. I didn't realise this! Honestly, where is the common sense?

I get having opinions, but what was she thinking? Or rather, why wasn't she using her common sense?

But if you publicly post racist stuff, and then you work with people who are of the ethnicity that you write/publicise, how can you work effectively with them? They would be scared, alienated, untrusting. How can you do your job?