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.

OP didn't know that bit. I haven't researched these individuals. It's just what's come up on SM / in the news that I've read.

This is going to be about the definition of racist stuff, isn't it? Which is what everybody is telling you.

I would probably want the mayor of Hackney to be sacked right now, but she's been elected!

Hopefully we do our jobs professionally and politely and treat everybody well. But we might have opinions that piss them off. Does that mean we're not allowed to express them on personal social media?

So it's OK to allow someone who is outspokenly racist to work with vulnerable 7 year olds of an ethnicity that she has publicly stated she hates? 7 year old children. Who may have heard some of the gossip about her opinion. And who she is then in a position of authority over? That is a safeguarding failure.

Exactly. It's not cut and dry. That's why we have freedom of expression except for hate speech, clear racism and incitement to violence, etc. That's why it should be dealt with by the police if illegal. If not illegal, it's just an opinion you don't like.

You usually get less time if you plead guilty.

That HAS to be khtuzpah. The one and only person responsible for dragging legitimate differences of opinion about the roke of sex into a discussion about racism is you yourself. Now you're throwing a strop because posters see through this rather obvious smear tactic? You're not even being original - "trying to keep communal changing rooms free of dick is outrageous segregation and just like Jim Crow" must be the oldest TRA gotcha in existence.

The only values that schools or GP surgeries should have are to teach facts not feelings and to heal not harm for ideological dogma.

If a teacher or Dr doesn't believe in gender ideology they shouldn't have to find a new career just because the NHS and education system have been captured by idealogs.

Unless you work in a religious setting or in political position nobody should be talking about their religion/ideology or politics at work and employers shouldn't be pushing their employees to follow/support their religion/ideology or political beliefs. Any employer who does so is illegally discriminating against their staff and breaching their human rights

Already covered this in my second paragraph.

Well certain parts of the left are well known for targeting people the disagree with usually over womens rights, they and their followers then spam their chosen victims employers with complaints which have resulted in women being illegally fired and winning employment tribunals because of it.
This has been going on for years whilst the left denied that there's cancel culture let alone a problem with it.
So no its not a cheap dig at the left its a fact that this something that the left do more than any other group and we cant deal with it unless we can accurately talk about it and whos doing it

Thats not true there's an ongoing employment tribunal where a civil servant posted online under a synonym that wasn't linked to his job or his role and another employee found out and doxed him to his colleagues and employer trying to get him and another female colleague sacked because they set up a gc network with.
Now the civil service for once stood up for their gc staff (under threat of legal action) the trans member of staff is sueing DEFRA for allowing a civil service wide gc network to exist even though there's atleast 3 trans/lgbtq+ networks because to certain sections of the left even stating the law that men shouldn't be using the female single sex spaces is harassment.

Honestly I don't think that you understand quite how damaging the "bring your whole self to work" has been or that its only a chosen set of beliefs that are allowed to be brought into work. Nor how far down the purity spiral we have gone as a country.

Just because some people on the left have done these things, that's no excuse to use 'the left' interchangeably with TRA and their sympathisers.
If you mean TRA have done these things than say so, because I agree it's important to know who we're talking about.
And when you say 'the left' you include me, many other left wing feminists, the ex miners in their 80s at our local welfare club, and the British communist party. None of whom believe some men are women.
TRA are left wing is not the same as left wing people are TRA. No more than racists are right wing is the same as all right wing people are racists.
Language matters.

Then hopefully the employee will win at tribunal as the employer is on extremely shakey ground.
And please stop making assumptions about me. I could write a book on the damage GI has done in my own profession. I'm GC so you're barking up the wrong tree.

When I was a social worker, we had to abide by social work values and ethics and racist, anti immigrant, homophobic, sexist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic etc views expressed in a public forum such as social media was grounds for dismissal.

I believe it is still the case. Such views do not belong in caring professions. As a manager it was my job to police this sort of thing.

People were able to hold views, but expressing them in certain ways (e.g. glad of people drowning in the channel, saying muslims should go home, homosexuals should go to prison etc) was not tolerated. Neither was behaviour which demonstrated different treatment of people in those groups.

I would be surprised if school workers have to abode by similar rules.

I just find it hard to believe somebody with such poor judgement has a university job.

I only know because she came up on my Facebook feed (I assume due to the popularity of the post) and when I saw the thousands of comments I had a little scroll down. There's no "case" to link to as someone asked for as far as I know, unless there has been an article somewhere but as the GP surgery didn't use social media as a reason to get rid then I guess there wouldn't be.

I think she may just be a bit thick.

You'd be surprised - I've known huge numbers of people who should have known better. I even know several who took it to tribunal. I don't know anyone who won either.

I find it quite frightening that she would have been responsible for triage and patient confidentiality.

Less time compared to if convicted after trial yes. But, if innocent, would you plead guilty to a hate crime to get a shorter sentence? I wouldn’t.

Its not just TRAs and their sympathisers who are doing this though its large swathes of the left.
If you say anything pro Israel or in defence of the Jewish people you will be targeted for cancellation by the pro Palestinian mob, state Christian beliefs and the whole gambit of anti uk, anti white and christaphobic mob come for you.
All of these groups behave in a similar fashion and they along with the TRAs that you singled out are on the left and they are the problem not just the TRAs and their sympathisers so yes its a left-wing problem that the moderate left need to deal with.
There's a saying where I live "fly with the crows get shot with the crows". If you object to the left being characterised by the behaviour of large swathes of the left then maybe you should speak to those on the left who are giving you all a bad name

If your GC why do you want DEFA to lose as it would mean that all GC employee networks would have to close

This is just a lot of waffle.

What is meant when someone is described as a racist is really rather straightforward: that person believes that one racial or ethnic group is superior to another and thinks it is OK to treat people badly or differently because of their race, skin colour, or background.

There is no 'grey area' or need to overcomplicate matters.

Posting on social media is not 'private behaviour' either. Public posts are there for everyone to see.

There is usually in an employment contract a reference to not bringing the company into disrepute. It is naive to think that you can post whatever you want on your own social media accounts and that your employer will not see this as a risk to their reputation if the content is dodgy...

I think pp is thinking it’s the GC man who brought the case, not Tempest. Crossed wires.

And you can clearly and confidently identify all situations that are racist to an extent that you would advise an employer they have grounds to dismiss a member of staff?

It’s much more complex than you think as employers have already found.

As a related example I have reported national newspapers to the regulator due to some of their comments about immigrants, in one case they had focused on DH’s country of origin in part of the article so I could show direct impact to our family and even though I considered what they had written was racist they were not sanctioned.

If there is a plausible explanation/ justification for the comment that may not be racist then it’s difficult for employers to prove.

To expand a bit more on the prayers in the park example. In the London Assembly there was one group that used to question on this point about the bylaws and that was UKIP. You and I may draw conclusions about their motives but proving them would be far more challenging. On the face of it it is a legitimate question to ask but I don’t believe they really cared about the bylaws but you couldn’t prove otherwise.

I don't. I didn't read it sufficiently carefully and thought the doxed employee had been dismissed.

How did it go when you had a chat with Tommy Robinson and other right wing lunatics and misogynists who are giving sex realist people a bad name?
Oh, hang on...I know this one. Isn't it that women can't be held responsible for the behaviour of others? That it's perfectly possible to agree on somehing without agreeing on everything? That linking sex realist people with the far right is a slur to discredit us..? Or have I misunderstood?