Keeping: Suppose this employee is doing a really good job and is perfectly competent, and in her off-hours, she, maybe along with an environmental organization, is criticizing some aspect of the oilsands industry. I think we ought to say, “Hey, it’s her off-hours. She’s not calling the essence of the company’s business into question. This is not a place where you want to see management shutting employees down.” I’m not saying there isn’t the legal possibility of doing it. I am talking about ethics and ethical leadership.
In the problem we’re dealing with, I don’t see the justification for terminating the employee. It’s important that we take a more generous view of this. It’s her business. It’s not a direct attack on what we do and she’s got a right to her opinions.
There are very real advantages for an employer to respect the rights of employees to voice their opinions. Think about how well that tolerance would reflect on the employer. It’s about being a good citizen. We need people who express their strong concerns. That contributes to the strength of our democracy. Alberta is a jurisdiction where there are lots of reflective, thinking people who are interested in a wide range of issues, including environmental concerns. You would be saying to that whole constituency and to the whole society, “We are broadminded, we are tolerant, we understand that a person’s work life is not everything, that the job doesn’t dictate every aspect of their lives.”
If you hold yourself out as a leader in management, and you’re ready to acknowledge that all is not well with respect to environmental concerns, you’re not going to have a problem with this employee. You’re going to say “Go for it, girl!”
Chapman: I think that we need a much more mature society, so that these things can actually happen and that we have better dialogues inside companies between companies and their employees and with the outside world. As a society, we need a serious dialogue about this. At the end of the day I don’t think that with people speaking their minds – so long as they’re honest, they’re authentic, they’re fact-based and they’re stating an opinion and not being libellous or slanderous – what legal right have you to say that you can’t have this job? By the same token, if you don’t fit into the culture that you’re working in, you’re in the wrong place. But can you fire people over that? I guess you can. Are you going to pay damages? I think you are. But at the end of the day, is that the way to go?
Douglas: I would have clear lines of demarcation in talks with that person. I would let her know that I respect what she is doing, but these are the values of the company; when you signed on, you agreed to uphold these values.
We have training budgets and I could use that money to send the employee into the oilpatch to see things first hand.
As an environmentalist, I would encourage her to follow her heart if, in good conscience, she can’t work for a company that is even associated with the oil and gas industry. An open-minded approach also reflects well on the values of the company. You’re trying to get the very best solution rather than an easy solution.
THE FINAL WORD
The panel clearly comes down on the side of the rights of individuals to express their views in public on their own time, despite the company’s legal right to terminate their employment. With the vast electronic communications landscape available to everyone, the venues through which you can express an opinion, take up a cause, and sometimes change the way things work is limitless. YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere, and who knows what’s next, are changing the world. The Genie of controlled, mediated communications is out of the bottle everywhere in the world, and won’t go back in.
Ken Chapman notes thatCalgary is not only a hydrocarbon capital; it happens to have the second highest number of Green Party supporters in the country, after Vancouver Island. This is not your grandfather’s world. You’d better get used to it.
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