Sean Penn, Free Speech, and Labor Law
An interesting incident, which led to a National Labor Relations Board decision (CORE & Rojas) Sept. 20. First, an excerpt of the facts involving Community Organized Relief Effort, a charity co-founded by noted actor Sean Penn (known in part for his past anger management problems):
On January 29, 2021, the New York Times (NYT) published an article about [a COVID] Vaccination Day event [organized at Dodger Stadium by the L.A. Mayor, and staffed by, among others, some CORE employees]. The article detailed what occurred during the event and included interviews with various individuals, participating organizations, and others that attended and/or worked the event.
After that, two anonymous commenters, who either were CORE employees or at least were so perceived by Penn, posted:
[1.] I work at the Dodger Stadium site and this article is inaccurate. The line about no honking cars is true. However, I had patient after patient yelling and complaining about the four hour wait and lack of restrooms. Sure, no one honked their horn, but a driver threatened to run over one of our staff members unless he let them on site. What the article does not mention is that we have staff working 18-hour days, 6 days a week, without the backup coverage to be able to take time off. This is an OSHA violation and it exists because the mayor ordered that we transition from a test site to a vaccination site in less than a week. If we had more time to transition, we wouldn’t have staff working these hours without the opportunity to take breaks—they are schedulers and are essential to the function of the site. Without them, we wouldn’t be vaccinating. The mayor more or less ordered an OSHA violation. There is a shipping container on site that is a designated space for overworked staff to go cry in. If you’re not let into this shipping container, it’s because staff are crying inside. Garcetti created these conditions and looks like a hero for it. Additionally, Garcetti got to skip the line for vaccine doses. Our staff wait in a queue to receive drawn vaccines. Garcetti went to the front of the line every time and the patients in his line received expedited service. Additionally, the line about his phone number is a violation of our policies—no one gets special treatment.
[2.] I am working on the ground at Dodger. We do NOT get krispy kreme for breakfast. In fact, we usually DON’T get breakfast, just coffee. And the lunch is NOT subway. It’s the same old lettuce wraps every clay. It’s free lunch for staff/volunteers so I’m not complaining but still…not subway. Also, it’s NOT wifi issues with the iPacls. It’s server issues/bugs with the Carbon. Health server that we are using to log people in. Other websites will load and the iPads work perfectly fine, but the Carbon Health app/site is still in beta and is EXTREMELY buggy and slow. Someone told me once they checked in 3 patients in 55 minutes because of how slow the Carbon website was. Lastly, the day the line was over 4 hours long was because the mayor decided to let over 1,000 police officers cut the line and get vaccinated without an appointment, throwing the entire system off. On a typical day the line will not be that long.
The administrative law judge concluded that this may have constituted “complaining about their terms and conditions of employment,” which is protected b
Article from Reason.com
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