Of soccer games, HR departments and PC lynch mobs

When I was small, my parents told me stories about what it was like in the Soviet Union. One feature was that every workplace, every classroom had snitches. You could sometimes tell who they were and sometimes you couldn’t. As a standard practice, there were at least two snitches in each setting, each of whom didn’t know who the other was. That way, the authorities would know if somebody was withholding incriminating information on their classmates or co-workers. The purpose of this massive surveillance apparatus was, of course, to control speech.

Growing up in the seventies, the attitude with regard to speech couldn’t have been more opposite. Traditional prudery was dying while liberals were still running around quoting Voltaire’s famous dictum, “I may disagree with what you say but I defend with my life your right to say it.” At the time, I thought that speech codes this side of the Iron Curtain were forever impossible. Anybody who tried would be labelled a prude and run out of town on a rail.

That was then. In the ensuing decades I have watched with increasing horror as former Voltaire-quoting liberals transmogrified into the Thought Police. A revealing skirmish in the Culture War occurred just this Sunday in Toronto at a Toronto FC soccer game.

While a TV reporter was interviewing fans, she was heckled by other fans (likely drunk) who harassed her with crude, sexual comments. Instead of ignoring these taunts, the reporter confronted the goons directly with her camera and mike. Instead of backing down and apologizing, they doubled down and said even worse things. The video went viral and soon the instigators were forced to cancel their Facebook and Twitter accounts. So far, so good.

Now the troubling part: one of the foul-mouthed punks was found to work for Hydro One (a local power utility) and was fired from his (lucrative) job. Driving home from work, I heard a labour lawyer gleefully announce on the radio that just because you are not on the job, your employer has a right to hold you accountable for actions you take and words you utter in your spare time, even if it has nothing to do with your work. Huh? When did this happen? When did it become permissible for your employer to discipline you for things you said or did on your own time? It certainly wasn’t that way in the 70’s. Any Junior Gestapo type in the HR department who tried to censor your off-work speech would have been tarred and feathered. Hydro One has subsequently stated that the employee in question was fired because he had violated their ‘code of conduct’. So now employers have the right to enact ‘codes of conduct’ that cover what you do or say on your own time? Swell.

Keep in mind that the man in question was not a public representative of Hydro One (like a PR flack) nor was he doing anything related to his job or career, nor did he identify whom he worked for. While he knowingly made crude comments on TV, he never identified himself. This incident had no bearing whatsoever on his job, except for the fact that his employer made his personal business their business. All of this is corroborated by the fact that the Social Justice Warriors had to actively hunt down who he was and where he worked.

In the Toronto Sun twitter feed, there were many people who said things like “fire him, yeaaah!”, and “serves ‘im right”. I am sure that there were conservatives were among them. I have this to say to conservatives (and anybody else) who think this guy should be fired for violating old-fashioned notions of chivalry: you are a dupe. The social justice warriors have you bamboozled. This is because the reasons given by the witch hunters for firing this guy have nothing to do with gentlemanly codes of conduct towards the fairer sex. They justify their actions with concepts like ‘harassment in the workplace’ and ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘war on women’ and ‘safe spaces’. In short, they are employing the same ideas that they use to suppress free speech on university campuses.

Now clearly, the guy’s actions were wrong. So what should have been done? The cops say they are looking into the incident. I can see that he might violate some petty larceny-type misdemeanor offence like disturbing the peace or public drunkenness or indecent behaviour. Great. Then charge him and convict him and give him his $500 fine or 2 weeks in the local jail. And of course, his employer shouldn’t be any required to accommodate any incarceration time he may be awarded. But terminating somebody after his fair trial is over is different from destroying his career just because the mob is screaming mad over something he said.

The justification given to the empowerment of the HR thought police is that we want to create a ‘harassment free workplace’. This goal sounds good in theory, but in practice it means employees living in constant fear for their jobs lest they make some off-colour joke or say something that somebody subjectively determines to be harassing for obscure personal reasons. This destination looks a lot more like the Soviet Union and a lot less like the Voltairean 70’s. Who wants to work in a place like that?

Any liberty loving person should find these social and legal trends repulsive and should refuse to go along with the burn-the-witch mentality that is all too prevalent these days.

Comments

[Dean]

This response to poor behavior outside the workplace reminds me of the guy in Vancouver who was caught on camera kicking a dog. While I do not condone mistreatment of animals, the man was forced to resign from his job, plead guilty to one count of animal cruelty resulting in a $5K fine and a ban on owning an animal for 3 years.

The similarities in these cases is that both guys were caught on video.

The fact that ones career could be destroyed for stupidity outside the workplace is quite alarming when you consider that if both these guys were in Unions, you can bet they would be protected from losing their jobs. Just consider all the teachers under reprimand for things that would see them investigated by police, let alone fired.

I would dare to suggest the same folks that want to see dog kickers and drunken losers fired for being idiots outside the workplace, would wish to protect or white wash questionable behaviors inside the unionized workplace.

Take these 2 incidents and combine with the hysterical claims of islamaphobia, homophobia, fillintheblank-phobia, racism etc, that is occurring all over North America these days in order to quell free speech, you can definitely see that dark times are coming.

Does this type of idiotic behavior deserve to be punished. Sure. But the loss of the ability to earn a living and to support your family is overkill. Community service, outreach, a few speeches at some schools, etc, would go much further to changing a persons attitude while also showing others that such behavior is unacceptable.

[Cincinnatus]

The dog-kicking example is a good one. There is no excuse for cruelty to animals. Charging him with cruelty to animals and fining him upon conviction is a good outcome. Firing him is insane. Unless he worked in an animal clinic or a zoo, it had nothing to do with his job.

You know there are programs set up by the John Howard Society and others to provide employment to ex-cons. The idea is that if ex-cons are given a chance at getting a meaningful job, they are less likely to reoffend.

But I guess it is just a matter of proportion. Making sure a convicted murderer or rapist has a meaningful job in society is one thing, but an obnoxious soccer fan, come on!

[JohnT]

When I heard about the guy getting fired, my first thought was that "a good lawyer should be able to get the guy's job back." And I 'm still thinking that will (and should) happen. Not because I agree with what he did at all, (he was obviously a drunken boor on that occasion at least), but simply because, as you say, an employer should not have that kind of control over activity totally unrelated to his employment.
The left is defending Elizabeth May and saying there's no need for her to resign. Her comments were more offensive than this guy's. And she made them in a quasi-public forum and in her official capacity as an MP and leader of the Green Party. Always, always double standards for the left.

[WiseGuy]

Not sure I agree with this one.
There are a lot of differences between this event and the communism example. For one, there is no government system going on here. Indeed no government involvement at all. This is, for the purposes of this argument, a private company. While the arguments used by the media for this idiot's firing are incorrect, I think the company fired him for the right reasons. Very few employers want to have somebody like this as an employee, and if I happen upon one of my employees behaving in such a way, no matter who's time it is on, I will want him out.

I like to compare things to what would have happened in the 50s. In the 50s there would not have been a printed "code of conduct" that employees would have to sign. It wasn't nessessary. There was an unwritten code of conduct that everybody followed. If this guy would have been discovered by his boss behaving in such a way, he would have been out on his ass even faster. The other difference being that there was no social media to spread such behaviour around on a video, but they did have the rumour mill, which was probably almost as effective, at least in the local area where this guy lives.

The real problem here, I think, is the current lack of a universal code of conduct that our parents had. Even I remember being rescued from my drunken self, by my friends, who told me to calm down and be quiet when I was getting out of hand. This guy's friends did nothing to discourage his behaviour, in fact he actually came to the defense of his friend who he should have been dragging away from the camera.

[Cincinnatus]

Freedom of speech and the related concept, tolerance, are not just about what the government can and cannot do. When private companies get big, they begin to take on the powers of a government. Let alone, Hydro One, which is provincially owned monopoly.

[WiseGuy]

I still don't see how this situation would have unfolded differently in the 50s, public company or not. I just can't imagine Ward Cleaver keeping whatever job he had, after his boss saw him behave this way. I can't even imagine Eddie Haskel behaving so badly. Clearly the unwritten code of behaviour was far superior to whatever we have now.

[Cincinnatus]

I wasn't talking about the 50's, but rather the 70's.