Google Stamps Out Political Speech Among Staff With New Workplace Guidelines

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Google Stamps Out Political Speech Among Staff With New Workplace Guidelines​

Jennings Brown 23 Aug 2019 Gizmodo

Google is fed up with employees expressing political opinions.

The company has issued new community guidelines on Thursday that address what employees are allowed to say within the company. According to the new rules, “disrupting the workday to have a raging debate over politics or the latest news” doesn’t “build community,” and employees should, therefore, “Avoid conversations that are disruptive to the workplace or otherwise violate Google’s workplace policies”

“Our primary responsibility is to do the work we’ve each been hired to do, not to spend working time on debates about non-work topics,” the guidelines state.

Recode reports that Google sent out an email to employees on Thursday evening in which CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the revised guidelines. . . .

A Google spokesperson told Gizmodo that the community guidelines will apply to company mailing lists as well as all internal conversations.

Asked how Google will determine if a political debate qualifies as “raging” or “disruptive,” the spokesperson told Gizmodo the community management team will have to assess this. . . .

. . . The community management team will usually attempt to educate workers before disciplining them.

The ominous warning seems to address employee activism, in the wake of recent protests against Google’s involvement in a Pentagon AI drone program, the company’s work on a censored search engine for China, and the company’s mishandling of sexual harassment and assault cases. . . .
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We’ll see. We’ll see if they do this, or if this will be used disproportinately against more conservative viewpoints, or if they do what they say they will do.

We’ll see.
 
Shouldn’t be discussing politics at work, anyway.

Should be doing the job you’re paid to do.
 
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
Shouldn’t be discussing politics at work, anyway.
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Mom raised us to never discuss religion, politics, or controversial issues at work or school.

As I understood it Google has realized that the views of it’s employees discussed on the internal systems can be made public and presented as the views of the company with the implication that such views, even if those of a small group of individuals, affect policy. Most recently this was observed from an employee that searched the internal discussion boards for the use of certain words and then handed the selected messages to public outlets with condemning context.
 
It is sad that we have a whole generation of people raised without learning the very basics of decorum. That a business has to make such a sweeping rule, when such ought be common sense 😦
 
TheLittleLady said:
It is sad that we have a whole generation of people raised without learning the very basics of decorum.
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I’m going to have an off topic rant.

That is a conversation in and of itself. There were a lot of pretty basic things I remember being taught as a child and I get the impression that the generation of my children in my area were not taught them. “Look both ways before crossing the street” is one such lesson. As a driver I constantly find myself being hyper-vigilent for the next person walking whike typing on their phone that blindly walks in front of my car. I’m not shy about using my horn though.

This ends my off topic rant.
 
Disclaimer: I work for Google, but this statement is not an official statement by the company. This is just my personal opinion.
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
Shouldn’t be discussing politics at work, anyway.
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TheLittleLady said:
It is sad that we have a whole generation of people raised without learning the very basics of decorum. That a business has to make such a sweeping rule, when such ought be common sense 😦
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Google has generally held to a more open policy where politics is, if anything, encouraged. There are even some internal message boards that are practically dedicated to politics or have a tendency to get sucked into politics. However, this also leads to a few potential problems:
  1. Some people may spend inordinate amounts of time debating politics on these message boards. Effectively, they’re being paid to do email.
  2. Stuff said may leak and be presented as a Google opinion, not a single employee’s opinion, as it is. (Leaks can also expose Googlers to harassment, death threats, etc.)
  3. Discussions can become very one-sided, making employees on the other side feel a bit excluded.
Overall, I think Google is starting to realize it needs to better define what is/isn’t appropriate. I’m not sure they’d forbid all political discussion. I just think the expectations are being better laid out. And having read through the guidelines, I personally think that they’re a step in the right direction.
 
ThinkingSapien said:
Mom raised us to never discuss religion, politics, or controversial issues at work or school.
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  • “Being taught to avoid talking about politics and religion has led to a lack of understanding of politics and religion. What we should have been taught is how to have a civil conversation about a difficult topic.”
Me and my coworkers have civilly exchanged political and religious views. Nobody was raging or disrupting the workplace. Even during the 2016 Election nobody was bent out of shape. These “Taboo” subjects only become a problem when people are too immature to handle them.

Back to the article, the problem at Google appears to be an internal one. They’re attempting to stamp out dissent within their ranks. Unfortunately, the workers don’t have a Union and are basically at the mercy of their employer. My advice, stay for the money and be quite or leave and find something else.
 
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Cruciferi said:
They’re attempting to stamp out dissent within their ranks.
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Despite what some are presenting this as externally, I don’t think this is a fair characterization of the guidelines, which are publicly available here.

The main sticking point seems to be a discouragement from “raging political debate”. However, as you can imagine, internal forums with political debate can be a tempting distraction from work, and as you can imagine from the need to have this guideline, that temptation is too strong for some.
 
ZMystiCat said:
However, as you can imagine, internal forums with political debate can be a tempting distraction from work,
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If my employer had “Internal Forums”, I would refrain from posting if at all possible. As it is, they watch everyone’s social media and are constantly listening for dissent.
 
Cathoholic said:
We’ll see. We’ll see if they do this, or if this will be used disproportinately against more conservative viewpoints, or if they do what they say they will do.

We’ll see.
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Someone has to make a complaint for it to work and since they are 95% liberal, it’s easy to imagine how those complaints will lean.

9 out of 10 will insist the liberal view expressed wasn’t “disruptive” or wasn’t even political, and the 9 now have a hammer to pound down that one conservative nail
 
Theo520 said:
Someone has to make a complaint for it to work and since they are 95% liberal, it’s easy to imagine how those complaints will lean.
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Not related to employment, PragerU presents oral arguments for their second case against YouTube. The first case was dismissed because the Free Speech claims are applicable to government entities, entities acting for the government, and entities taking over government functions (such as in corporate owned towns). In this second attempt they are suing on the grounds of two California laws saying that YouTube is discriminating against a viewpoint.

There is an LGBT+ group that is also suing YouTube making the same claim of discrimination against their viewpoint. But there case isn’t as far along yet.
 
The leftists out in the world, will try to convince you this is all the same (Big Tech attacking right vrs. left political information flow).

Don’t fall for it.
 
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