This is not really chilling at all: Public servants are required to remain neutral to political views, this has been the case for decades. They can have the views, they just can't publicly express them.
Imagine going into a polling booth to vote and all the people paid by the electoral commission are wearing party shirts? Official neutrality is central to democracy.
Nonsense articles like this would not be unexpected from the ABC and their government funded pseudo-journalism.
Can you run a newspaper and be in the public service?
We are so used to twitter we forget it's a publishing platform.
You want to tweet and hold a job you must do it in private.
But equally the rules must apply to all, if your employer allows some views published and not other then it can be an infringement of rights.
If the abc.nat.au (Australia's public media) actually cared about free speech they'd talk about section 18C. This is a 'chilling blow' because it goes against ABC's slant, you won't see them defending the other Australian who got fired for tweeting.
""The implication is that for any employee-employer relationship, if the employee is critical of the employer's position on some politically relevant social issue, they can be sacked.""
Being in America where you can get fired for anything or laid off with zero notice, this doesn't seem too unusual.
Australia has a lot more protections in place around the employee<->employer relationship. A lot more.
For instance, you can't legally be sacked without notice[0], or pay[1]. (Unless you're not an employee. Contractors can have other stipulations in place.)
However, all casuals, employees and contractors alike are protected by the National Employment Standards. [2] Which includes, in the Fair Work Information Statement, a right to freedom from association from your employer. That part of the statement is what this ruling attacks.
Being a state level issue, it does tend to be all over the place. I think in California though political opinion is a protected class in the context of employment.
> The court heard Ms Banerji tweeted approximately 9,000 times in 2012, from a private device and mostly outside of work hours.
It's the "mostly outside" part that sets off alarm bells for me. Admittedly I'm not in AUS, but it seems like that would be reason enough for termination.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 43.3 ms ] threadImagine going into a polling booth to vote and all the people paid by the electoral commission are wearing party shirts? Official neutrality is central to democracy.
Nonsense articles like this would not be unexpected from the ABC and their government funded pseudo-journalism.
Can you run a newspaper and be in the public service?
We are so used to twitter we forget it's a publishing platform.
You want to tweet and hold a job you must do it in private.
But equally the rules must apply to all, if your employer allows some views published and not other then it can be an infringement of rights.
If the abc.nat.au (Australia's public media) actually cared about free speech they'd talk about section 18C. This is a 'chilling blow' because it goes against ABC's slant, you won't see them defending the other Australian who got fired for tweeting.
Being in America where you can get fired for anything or laid off with zero notice, this doesn't seem too unusual.
Maybe I'm missing something.
For instance, you can't legally be sacked without notice[0], or pay[1]. (Unless you're not an employee. Contractors can have other stipulations in place.)
However, all casuals, employees and contractors alike are protected by the National Employment Standards. [2] Which includes, in the Fair Work Information Statement, a right to freedom from association from your employer. That part of the statement is what this ruling attacks.
[0] https://www.fairwork.gov.au/ending-employment/notice-and-fin...
[1] https://www.fairwork.gov.au/ending-employment/notice-and-fin...
[2] https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employee-entitlements/national-e...
This is false. There are many circumstances when firing is illegal.
It's the "mostly outside" part that sets off alarm bells for me. Admittedly I'm not in AUS, but it seems like that would be reason enough for termination.