[ale] [OT] Working for Bill

[aaron]

On Thursday 20 April 2006 14:56, Warren Myers wrote:
> On 4/20/06, aaron <aaron at pd.org> wrote:
> > {re: big of MicroSoft not to fire bloggers]
> > [snip]
> > Free speech is a right guaranteed to all citizens living under the U.S.
> > constitution, not some special privilege dispensed by the mercenary
> > lawyers  of corporape America.  There is nothing "magnanimous"
> > about _not_ attacking or violating our freedoms and civil liberties.
> 
> Free speech is not guaranteed to individuals working for others, however, in
> the context of their employment agreement.

Honoring above board, specifically stated and mutually agreed upon contractual 
obligations of confidentiality regarding explicit items of information was 
not the point in question. The broad corporate legal assaults on citizens' 
rights to publically express personal opinions, discuss political views or 
expose illegal activities and corruption without threats to their livelihood 
or coercion from their employers was.

> Just like some businesses disallow individuals from carrying weapons
> onto their premises, a private organization can disallow publication of
> information by their employees.

...but only to the limits that those contracts and agreements are not a 
violation of law, and coercion in expectation or demand that a citizen 
forfeit their constitutional rights is clearly prohibited by the founding 
tenets of our justice system. An employment contract could just as easily 
grant permission for the corporation to poison an employee's children, but 
those provisions would be equally illegal and unenforceable, even if the 
indentured family were living in company housing on the corporate farm.

The self interested goal for the corporation is to pervert the terms of 
employment into a concession to slavery, as exemplified by the exploitive 
practices of outsourcing and hiring of illegal immigrants. The current tragic 
trends within the fascist friendly, anti-constitutional courts has been to 
not only suggest that private corporate interests might usurp a citizen's 
civil rights, but that these illegal provisions would be an undeclared 
assumption of every employment contract. At some point in the rabid fad of 
glorifying and globalizing the avarice of the corporate elite, a lot of 
people seem to have forgotten that it is the citizens and the commonwealth 
that grant corporations their legal privilege and charter to operate, not the 
other way round.

peace
aaron