Workers Fired for Wearing Orange Shirts By Nutter Boss in Neo-Fascist Republican Florida

Oh, these are the popular Russian cartoon characters Gena the Alligator and Cheburashka… this’ll be the reality throughout the country if you vote for Republican Neo-Fascists this fall…

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Six of the workers fired from a law firm in Deerfield Beach FL on 16 March for wearing orange have retained a lawyer, and may pursue legal action against their former employer, who allegedly wouldn’t allow workers to speak to each other over their cubicle walls. Attorney Donna Ballman now represents six of the 14 support staff who said they were accused of staging a protest against workplace conditions and then fired abruptly, as first reported by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Ballman said she’s been trying to get in contact with the Elizabeth R Wellborn law firm, where the 14 workers had been employed, but there hasn’t been a response, saying, “If they won’t discuss this, we’re going to pursue our legal remedies”. She declined to say if the fired workers would seek damages or try to get their jobs back. The Elizabeth R Wellborn law firm, which may have as many as 275 employees, didn’t return a request for comment.

Ballman said Elizabeth Wellborn’s husband gathered most, though not all, of the employees who were wearing orange that day and Ballman said that they were “told that management thought they were wearing orange shirts to protest working conditions, and they should pack their things and leave”. Ballman said some workers might have been wearing orange to mimic the uniform colour often used by the Florida Department of Corrections. Those workers may have been protesting new work rules imposed by a new manager earlier this month. She said, for example, that they could not speak to co-workers over the walls of their cubicles, even to discuss work-related matters. She said, “They couldn’t go to the break room and get coffee while on the clock. There were suddenly lots of new restrictions on them. Some of them were upset about those new rules. Different people were wearing orange for different reasons that day, but the fact is it doesn’t matter”. She said there have been cases where firing employees because management didn’t like their shirts were found to be unlawful, including when AT&T workers wore shirts that said “Inmate #” on the front and on the back said “Prisoner of AT$T”, which was activity protected under the National Labor Relations Act. Ballman said, “Firing because people engaged in activities or are suspected of engaging in activities for objecting to working conditions is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act”. The National Labor Relations Act protects certain activities with or without a union, and gives employees the right to discuss, comment, and complain about working conditions.

Kerri Stone, a law professor at Florida International University In Florida, said that employment is presumed to be at will, which means that unless stated otherwise by something like an employment contract or a piece of legislation, an employee can be fired for any reason or no reason at all. Janice Doble, 50, is one of Ballman’s new clients. She worked in the copy room at the Wellman firm. She said she was wearing orange because she was going to a happy hour with co-workers and was not protesting working conditions. Doble told the Sun-Sentinel, “Orange happens to be my favourite colour. My patio’s orange. My lipstick was orange today”. Ballman said that since the 14 workers were fired, three have reportedly been re-hired by the firm, possibly after explaining they were not a part of a protest. She said the six workers she represents have each worked for the company for about six months to a year. Ballman’s releasing a book this fall entitled, Stand Up For Yourself Without Getting Fired: Handle Your Workplace Crisis Before You Quit, Get Canned, Or Sue the Bastards with Career Press. She said, “Everybody who can be fired for no reason is an ‘orange American’. Everybody that can be fired for wearing an orange shirt to work should be outraged by this”.

27 March 2012

Susanna Kim

ABC News

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/fired-orange-workers-coffee-working-speak-cubicle-walls/story?id=16004370#.T3j2WmEgfih

Editor’s Note:

Let’s keep it simple. All the Republican candidates define “freedom” as, “The bosses can do to you as they please, you have NO rights, you ungrateful bastard, and you’d best kiss our arse in public or we’ll fire you ‘to encourage the others’”. If you earn a salary, if you’re not part of the One Percent or their Five Percenter Affluent Effluent lickspittles, if you vote Republican, you’re dumber than dirt, and I say that openly.

The Republicans want to spread the godless brutal “employment-at-will” system that the Republican barbarians forced on Florida and Texas throughout the nation. It’s interesting to note that many of those willing to stamp their boot full-force into the faces of their employees describe themselves as “born-again ‘Christians’”… it’s more proof that Jayzuss has NO relation to the Lord Christ that REAL Christians worship. Remember what St John in the Apocalypse said about the Anti-Christ… chilling, isn’t it?

No “orange American” should vote Republican. If you do, you vote for the boot of the oligarchs on your neck…

BMD

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