Speechless in the Workplace

I am late writing this entry. If I had written this last night like I intended, I would have been encouraging you to attend the Nashville's Southern Festival of Books this weekend and catch Bruce Barry's session on his new book, Speechless: The Erosion of Free Speech in the American Workplace.

But since I missed that opportunity, I'll instead encourage you to buy his book. Barry is both a management and sociology professor at Vanderbilt University, and also president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, and brings a unique voice to management literature.

In the book, he reminds that there is no freedom of speech at work in private employment settings, and only sometimes protected in government workplaces. Most employment is of the at-will variety, and employers can let you go for a good reason, bad reason, or no reason, including the fact that they don't like your speech. This has become increasingly problemmatic he says, as the line between a worker's working and personal life becomes more blurred, and workers become more fearful of job loss.

Barry makes mention of a worker who gets fired for having a John Kerry sticker on her car. I wonder what my conservative relative boss will think or do when I put a Hillary Clinton sticker on my car????