CEO Who Threatened Workers if They Voted for Obama Violated Wisconsin Law
October 26th, 2012 | Mark E. Andersen
Mark E. Andersen
“all employees should understand the personal consequences to them of having our tax rates increase dramatically if President Obama is re-elected, forcing taxpayers to fund President Obama’s future deficits and social programs (including Obamacare), which require bigger government.”
Turns out Wisconsin, which has a history of being a pretty progressive state, has a law on the books against that sort of thing.
Statute 12.07 (3)
No employer or agent of an employer may distribute to any employee printed matter containing any threat, notice or information that if a particular ticket of a political party or organization or candidate is elected or any referendum question is adopted or rejected, work in the employer’s place or establishment will cease, in whole or in part, or the place or establishment will be closed, or the salaries or wages of the employees will be reduced, or other threats intended to influence the political opinions or actions of the employees.
(Emphasis mine)
The question now is will the Republican Attorney General, J.B. Van Hollen, do his job and prosecute this CEO for violating the law? I am not holding my breath on it…
3:41 PM PT: From Occams Hatchet in the comments – more of the e-mail that makes the threat very clear:
The other big impact on Rite-Hite employees, if President Obama is re–elected, is the good chance of losing Rite-Hite insurance and being put into Obamacare. Employers have the choice (though competition in the marketplace will dictate), to continue their existing plans or to pay a penalty and have employees go into the Government Plan. Our plan costs much more per family than the penalty and hence the possible competitive need to drop the Rite-Hite Health Plan. Every opportunity to make up for lost profits to taxes will have to be evaluated.
This article was originally published on The Daily Kos on Thursday, October 25, 2012.
About the Author: Mark E. Andersen is a U.S. Army Veteran who served during the cold war, spending two years in Wildflecken, Germany. He returned to school much later in life, received his Bachelor’s in 2006, and is currently working on a MS in Professional and Technical Writing from the University of Wisconsin – Stout.
Mark credits his dad, a Teamster, for putting the fire in his soul for the rights of workers and the downtrodden. Both of Mark’s parents were children of the depression and instilled much of their generation’s values in him. He is the single father of a son. You can find him on Facebook – his page is “Kodiak54 (Mark Andersen).”
October 29th, 2012 at 5:00 am
If there are ever any doubts regarding employee rights in the work place, you should contact a professional solicitor immediately to seek advice to discuss what action needs to be taken. This post is a good example of when to take action.
December 5th, 2012 at 7:45 pm
I wonder if anyone has followed up on this story since Obama has been re-elected. Even in so-called progressive states workplace rights seem to be sorely lacking. I live in neighboring Illinois, and although we are not a RTW state we rank 45th out of the 50 states were workers’ rights are concerned. All US states except Montana are considered at-will, which means an employer doesn’t have to have a good reason to fire you. I believe we need to move closer to a just-cause system, but we will have to take action to get our lawmakers behind such an issue. At the very least we need to make provsions through which those who feel they have been fired from their jobs unfairly can obtain some recourse through independent arbitration. I believe this would go a long way towards moving in the right direction.