Don Siegel's Testimony Before the Joint Standing Committee on Labor and Workforce Development

Testimony of Donald J. Siegel
in Support of the H. 1848 – the Worker Privacy Protection Act of 2007
Committee on Labor & Workforce Development
State House, Rm. B-2, November 6, 2007

My name is Donald Siegel and I am General Counsel to the Massachusetts AFL-CIO.  I offer the strong support of AFL-CIO for House Bill 1848.  This bill, by prohibiting mandatory meetings on topics unrelated to workplace issues, provides a necessary improvement to Massachusetts law and fills a dangerous gap in current labor protective statutes.
The current state of the law in Massachusetts exposes employees to retaliation by and from their employer if they are unwilling to be indoctrinated into the employer’s religious, political or labor representation ideals.  In the leading case on this issue, Kolodziej v. Smith,  a woman was demoted for refusing to sit in on meetings which had no relevance or pertinence to her job duties or the general business practice.  The Supreme Judicial Court, examining her rights under the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act,  the Massachusetts equal employment statute,  and under a general claim of public policy violation, found that on all counts, the employer’s discipline was permissible.  The time is ripe to correct this misled decision of the SJC, and passage of H. 1848 will make that correction.
Uner the existing state of the law, if a Massachusetts employer were to mandate attendance at a meeting to promote his/her opposition to abortion, the employees would be vulnerable to retaliation if they declined to attend.  The same would be true if the employer called the meeting to promote abstinence or to ensure that all employees were aware of the availability of abortion.  In none of these instances does the employer’s opinion on the topic have any direct relevance to the employer-employee relationship or to the business.  Public policies in Massachusetts clearly favor freedom of speech, religion, and political beliefs.  It is precisely those public policies that necessitate an articulated prohibition of discrimination against workers for choosing not to participate in a meeting intended to indoctrinate them in the employer’s personal opinions.
Individuals come to work with individual beliefs and perspectives.  The right to maintain those individual beliefs is precious and must be protected.  The question at hand is whether an employer has the right to subject employees to non-work related propaganda, even if it is highly disagreeable to their personal perspectives.  Employment requires that employees act according to an employer’s instructions, but only to the extent the demands are job-related.  An employer’s control over an employee was never intended to extend to the employee’s personal beliefs, especially those beliefs that have no relationship to the workplace.
The General Court’s commitment to protecting the privacy rights of employees requires passage of H. 1848.  This bill is a necessary part of the equation for protecting individuals, as employees, from facing a choice between either indoctrination at the hands of their employers or state-approved retaliation for refusal to be subjected to non-work related propaganda.
Thank you very much for your time and attention.