Gorsuch: liberal hero

[Whateverman]

It's not unexpected. Past precedent said discrimination in employment is usually unconstitutional. This doesn't apply that much to the Title IX suits upcoming though.

Which suits? I don't keep up with the SCOTUS enough to know specific details like that...

[Cow Poke]

Of course.

To be blunt, this is one of the reasons unions exist: employers can easily find ways of getting rid of employees they don't want - for whatever reason.

Unfortunately, unions don't simply exist to protect "good" employees, but the rotten apples, as well. I believe there was a time unions were necessary.

Still, being fired because your employee says you're under-performing is a far cry from being fired because you're Christian (or atheist, Muslim, homosexual, black, etc). If the termination breaks the law, it's the employee's responsibility to demonstrate this.

I never indicated otherwise.

Just because a Christian gets fired doesn't mean they were fired for being a member of their specific religion. Most of the time when I've asked for evidence of religious persecution against Christians in the west, the evidence mysteriously gets hard to find, or the example of it happening is barely on the fringe (and thus doesn't represent anything more than an incident - rather than a societal trend).

It appears you have decided to argue against a position(s) I do not hold?

I don't want to blow the thread topic away, but it's obvious that a certain sector of Christianity wants to believe it's under persecution. If a Christian tells their employer "I'm a Christian", and then gets fired immediately afterwards, I would expect that employer to suffer legal penalties, because that's a clear case of discrimination. Nevertheless, most of the examples of persecution Christians point to are in non-western countries (where liberties/rights are harder to come by), or otherwise make assumptions that there's no attempt to justify.

Uh.... thanks.

[Whateverman]

I never indicated otherwise.



It appears you have decided to argue against a position(s) I do not hold?

Yes, I apologize. I mixed two posts together in my response to you. The Christian persecution stuff was meant for someone else...

[Cow Poke]

Yes, I apologize. I mixed two posts together in my response to you. The Christian persecution stuff was meant for someone else...

[Bill the Cat]

Which suits? I don't keep up with the SCOTUS enough to know specific details like that...

The transgender athlete cases.

[seer]

The transgender athlete cases.

I'm not sure it will fly since in the end you would be discriminating against girls and title 9 protections.

[Cow Poke]

I'm not sure it will fly since in the end you would be discriminating against girls and title 9 protections.

What a mess the libs have created for themselves.

[seer]

What a mess the libs have created for themselves.

Same as it ever was... Irrationality begets irrationality...

[Leonhard]

I'm completely okay with people not having the right to arbitrarily fire people because of their sexuality or gender identity.

[Cow Poke]

I'm completely okay with people not having the right to arbitrarily fire people because of their sexuality or gender identity.

About the only time I could justify that, Leon, is if they used their sexuality or gender identity to disrupt the workplace, as did one particular woman I dealt with years ago.

[Leonhard]

About the only time I could justify that, Leon, is if they used their sexuality or gender identity to disrupt the workplace, as did one particular woman I dealt with years ago.

It's a very little risk for me, but I have friends that aren't as lucky, who live in areas where they don't even dare to have PDA just in case.

Defense of that decision is just defense of the right of people to do that. Who, except some nutjob not-worthy-of-leadership wants to fire someone for their sexuality or their gender identity? The closest I can possibly imagine is a sunday school teacher called in to teach a class about biblical marriage, and even there I'd accept them if they were doing the job well and didn't dilute the teachings. I've yet to meet anyone in that position that didn't do that, but I've had far more problems with straight people diluting Christian teachings than I've ever had of a gay person doing the same. And in any event the sunday school could fire that person for veering off the script.

But simply firing someone for being gay? I don't know what backwater place in the free western world still wants to do that, or feels that is right to do, and I'm glad the courts have made it clear that there is no legal standing in doing that.

So yeah this was a liberal decision, but it's the right one.

[Cow Poke]

It's a very little risk for me, but I have friends that aren't as lucky, who live in areas where they don't even dare to have PDA just in case.

Defense of that decision is just defense of the right of people to do that. Who, except some nutjob not-worthy-of-leadership wants to fire someone for their sexuality or their gender identity? The closest I can possibly imagine is a sunday school teacher called in to teach a class about biblical marriage, and even there I'd accept them if they were doing the job well and didn't dilute the teachings. I've yet to meet anyone in that position that didn't do that, but I've had far more problems with straight people diluting Christian teachings than I've ever had of a gay person doing the same. And in any event the sunday school could fire that person for veering off the script.

But simply firing someone for being gay? I don't know what backwater place in the free western world still wants to do that, or feels that is right to do, and I'm glad the courts have made it clear that there is no legal standing in doing that.

So yeah this was a liberal decision, but it's the right one.

Well, in my case, I went low. I tricked her into becoming my best friend.

[Leonhard]

Well, in my case, I went low. I tricked her into becoming my best friend.

The world needs more people like you Cow Poke

[Cow Poke]

The world needs more people like you Cow Poke

I'm just a scoundrel that way, Leon.

[Starlight]

To be blunt, this is one of the reasons unions exist: employers can easily find ways of getting rid of employees they don't want - for whatever reason.

My country has taken the approach of dis-empowering unions over the years and moving functions like this to the government. So there's a little government-run employee complaints tribunal that fired/disgruntled employees can go to which almost always rules in their favor and fines employers who have mistreated them. This saves on the need for unions, and means there's more consistency with regard the standards required to lay off staff over all industries.

There are basically 4 ways to lay off permanent staff that are regarded as legitimate (and which the complaints tribunal won't fine the employer for doing):

1. Give them a written warning, followed by a firing for a repeat offence, for doing something really seriously wrong (something worse than being below-average at their jobs).

2. If, over a period of time (e.g. 2 years), they have been given clear warnings in repeated (oral and written) performance reviews that their general work isn't up to scratch, and the employer has set clear objectives for them to meet that they are deemed to have failed to meet, and the employer has made a 'good-faith effort' to work with the employee to empower and help them to grow to meet the objectives.

3. A 'restructuring' of the business where the titles and function of a number of positions are being changed, and some employee's positions no longer exist. Such restructuring has to have a planning period that offers opportunity for employee input, and can only happen at most once in a two year period. I think this means those employees are 'made redundant' and will trigger any redundancy clauses and pay-outs in their contracts. (And yes, many employers choose to use this option as a workaround rather than use #2, to create changes to their management structure that just so happen to get rid of their bad employees, even if it makes the resulting management structure absurd for a few years)

4. A downsizing of the business. Where, due to falling revenues, a significant number of employees need to be made redundant to maintain business profitability. This will trigger any redundancy clauses in their contract and associated pay-outs.

Basically any full-time job position in my country implicitly comes with protections from firing apart from those 4 causes, because it's government law. So that applies to university lecturers (who thus always automatically have what Americans would call 'tenure'), as much as it does to computer programmers, scientists, accountants, or anyone.

Obviously a consequence of this is that arbitrary firings, e.g. "I don't like you cos you're gay", are absolutely not allowed, even without the fact that doing so would separately violating the non-discrimination laws (as a result, those laws tend to be more relevant when employing people than when firing them, as they require the person considering who to employ not exclude people for being gay or religious etc).

The downside of this system is that it results in unions being less necessary, which results in fewer and less powerful unions, which results in employees across the board receiving lower pay as there is far less pressure on employers to increase wages due to unions not applying pressure in this regard. This results in increasing income and wealth inequality, which is becoming a serious problem for my country. The OECD seems to increasingly now point to the important role unions play in keeping inequality low and thus creating social cohesion. So there are pros and cons to this system.