381–390 of 582 posts
Just to clarify-- this article is about a modern religious cult. Modern religious cults are groups that use a whole host of well-known manipulative techniques to trap victims in insular groups which are then difficult to escape after the fact. Leaders of those groups directly abuse those victims physically and/or emotionally (and often drain their bank accounts as well). This isn't, "My parents are worried about my w…
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Seriously? Sex trafficking & abuse especially of underage people isn't a "live and let live" thing. Neither are co-workers assigning hundreds of thousands of dollars in vendor contracts to themselves or their organization. If you think the author was too far removed from sex trafficking allegations to make an issue of it then this one is still very much appropriate to raise a red flag over.
And, to your point, it's especially appropriate to raise a red flag over a possible retaliatory firing based on him raising concerns.
So, if the author was fired for the reasons they believe, that's pretty bad behavior. But if he had not been fired, what was management supposed to have done about the cult members working for this department? Yes, the cult's leader sounds like a pretty awful person, but he wasn't working there. What were the cult members doing in their work in the department that was clearly wrong? It's suggested that there was favo…
reminds me of when rand paul asked about an oil spill, “when did they ever say they weren’t going to pay for it?”
what did OJ do in his work at the NFL that was wrong? he didn’t murder anyone while he was at work, so i don’t see the problem.
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The problem in this case would be they seem to be hiring almost exclusively from a rather obscure religious group. That means they're illegally discriminating against members other religions.
Cults are not “obscure religious groups.” It varies widely by state (and in federal jurisprudence), but most states have a “free association”-style test: if members aren’t free to come and go, it’s a cult and not a religion. Google would not be exposed to any significant liability here. Particularly not when the cult has a well-documented history of sexual abuse.
So this is a video production department, which is kind of amazing when you think about it. The aesthetic of the modern corporate/tech video is cultish in character and it would make sense that these people know how to do this. And then it’s also interesting because one could assume that these people could do so because the actual engineers in Alphabet probably aren’t all that focused or interacting with this video t…
> they didn’t cover their tracks very well anyways ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I mean they actually told him where they were from (geographically, if not organizationally), so clearly they didn't consider it something that needed to be secret. Which is interesting, because it gives us insight into their way of thinking [1]. They clearly don't consider themselves to be in any way toxic like the author thinks they are. Cults are interes…
so if a guy says “I’m going to rape you” it means he doesn’t think his behavior is toxic? because he’s open about it? brilliant logic
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No, at a minimum they should have fired all these people for funding a pedophile with their salaries. Absolutely disgusting. > I found support groups where ex-members talk about their time in the group, including discussions of sexual abuse and grooming. > Members have described him grooming and sexually assaulting male followers, including minors
I don't think Google could do that when there hasn't been a criminal case. I don't particularly like this situation but I also think it would be problematic to fire employees that were not part of the specific rumored incidents. I'll grant that destructive cults are different than established religions, but firing these workers specifically over the sexual allegations wouldn't be much different than firing an employe…
Fined billions of dollars? Worth it.
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It's not a real union and he wasn't an employee.
Real enough that it’s illegal to fire someone for joining
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The power of a Union is entirely in it's ability to negotiate with the company. Your typical union you hear on the news has the power it has because of the contract their members entered into with the Company. In the case of AWU they have not negotiated a contract with Google and as a result have no legal recourse. They only power they have is PR activity.
> The power of a Union is entirely in it's ability to negotiate with the company. I often hear this misunderstanding in the US. Of course it's a within the power of a union to hire lawyers who can help defend its members against the cooperation within the rules of the law. In fact, to highly paid employees like tech workers, this kind of legal support is much more valuable than wage negotiation. Having somebody you c…