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Jordan Williams
Free Speech Union
Last week the militant lycra lobby took issue with comments posted on a person’s private page. They elected to track down his place of employment and complain, alleging that the private posts breached Mitre 10s ‘sustainability policy’.
For context, he had posted on his private Facebook page sharing a link to the ‘liberate the lane’ Auckland harbour bridge protest that took place the previous week, “I’ll be polishing my bull bars for this!” he captioned the post. “Does mitre 10 sell tacks?” Someone asked. “We do and I get a discount” replied the employee.
Mitre 10 decided the best course of action was to publicly bash their employee in a Facebook post:
Thankfully, the public pushback was swift. One comment which gained 1,400 likes lamented
“Unless they were wearing your uniform so people could see where he works his personal opinion is none of your business. I’m sick of interference in our personal lives….”
Another comment read
“What someone expresses on their private page is their right, Mitre 10 is not in the public sector, it is a private enterprise. You really should not have gotten involved. If you wanted to distance yourself from the backlash – you’ve done the opposite by posting this”.
This development is encouraging. It shows there is broad support for protecting free speech from employer interference where the speech does not relate to someone’s work. This case is a bit murky as he did implicate Mitre 10 with the comment ‘we do, and I get a discount’. Some would say not the sharpest tool in the shed!
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