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**DECEMBER 4, 2023**

On the Prospect website

Massachusetts Blues

It's not just far-right Republicans who undermine democracy. A
majority of voters in the Bay State favor progressive policies, but
don't get them. Why not? BY ROBERT KUTTNER

The Big Barrier to the UAW's Non-Union Auto Plant Drive

It's U.S. labor law, which allows companies to union-bust and
endlessly delay consequences. Case in point: a Tesla worker illegally
fired six years ago and still not back on the job. BY DAVID DAYEN

Sen. Chris Murphy: 'This Party Has Not Made a Firm Break From
Neoliberalism'

Connecticut's junior senator launches a new interview series focused
on monopoly power, part of his quest to understand American unhappiness.
BY LUKE GOLDSTEIN

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North Carolina Fuels a Microtransit Revolution

Public, on-demand ridesharing networks revitalize travel in exurban
communities. BY MICAH MORTON-JAMES

Kuttner on TAP

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**** Free Speech at Work

The boss has far too much power to silence the political expression of
employees.

The Israel-Palestine conflict and its painful reverberations on American
campuses has provoked debate about free speech versus student safety.
What has gotten less publicity is free speech at work, where the boss
under American law has the absolute right to fire an employee for any
reason or no reason at all. With some narrow exceptions, only unionized
workers and those in the civil service have some protection of their
constitutional rights of speech.

In October, NYU Langone Health, a major New York hospital, summarily
fired a medical resident, Dr. Zaki Masoud, at NYU Langone's affiliate
Winthrop Hospital in Mineola, Long Island, after Masoud posted a message
on Instagram defending the Hamas attack of October 7. An online petition
calling on the hospital to reverse course and reinstate Dr. Masoud

has collected over 90,000 signatures, to no avail.

Then, to be even handed, Langone Health in late November fired a
distinguished senior cancer researcher
,
Dr. Benjamin Neel, who had posted pro-Israel items on social media,
including anti-Hamas political cartoons. Dr Neel was removed from his
post as director of the Perlmutter Cancer Center, which accounts for
about two-thirds of his salary. He continues to be a tenured professor
at NYU Langone and to oversee a research lab.

According to a lawsuit filed by Dr. Neel, his dismissal was an
"ill-considered plan to feign the appearance of even-handedness"
after Langone faced criticism for firing Dr. Masoud. The longtime CEO of
NYU Langone, Robert Grossman, is far from shy about expressing his
views. In a letter to Dr. Neel in October, N.Y.U. students who protested
against Israel should face punishment. "They should take away their
scholarships,"  Grossman wrote in a message to Dr. Neel in October.

[link removed]

Dr. Grossman is so potent at NYU that the university's medical school is
named after him
.
And he is all too characteristic of CEOs who like to throw their weight
around. New York State law is ambiguous

on whether actions such as those of Doctors Masoud and Neel are
protected.

This research piece

by our friends at the Economic Policy Institute explains just when
employee free speech is protected and when it is not. As EPI explains,
workers have suffered retaliation for failing to support the boss's
preferred political candidate, for refusing to attend mandatory Bible
study, and for speaking out during COVID against unsafe working
conditions.

Ironically, the right wing, which has never been solicitous of worker
rights of free expression, has backed into greater support of individual
liberties via its claims, partly upheld by the Supreme Court in the
Masterpiece Bakeshop case
,
that an individual may refuse service to a gay couple based on religious
beliefs. That logic is dubious because it could override all of the
protections of the great civil rights of the 1960s, by allowing explicit
discrimination of Blacks, Jews, gays, and anyone else.

Surely the more basic civil right of expressing views without fearing
for your job is more fundamental.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

[link removed]

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