“I took FSFE to court. This is my story” • Hacker News Board

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#21

Post by detaro » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 1:41 PM UTC

GrumpyNl wrote: post #19

Cenk wrote: post #10

> A female colleague and me had dared to discuss wage transparency and gender pay gap in the office. […] Our boss Matthias was beyond furious. After that office meeting, he told my colleague “there will be consequences”. Under German law you are not only allowed to talk about your salary with your colleagues, it is expressly illegal for your employer to try and stop you from doing this. I’m surprised a German boss wo…

That makes no sense, "Under German law you are not only allowed to talk about your salary with your colleagues" and " it is expressly illegal for your employer to try and stop you from doing this", So its illegal to talk about it, but when you do its illegal for your employer to stop this?

you are misparsing the first quote. it is allowed to talk about it.

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#22

Post by Tomte » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 1:41 PM UTC

Cenk wrote: post #10

> A female colleague and me had dared to discuss wage transparency and gender pay gap in the office. […] Our boss Matthias was beyond furious. After that office meeting, he told my colleague “there will be consequences”. Under German law you are not only allowed to talk about your salary with your colleagues, it is expressly illegal for your employer to try and stop you from doing this. I’m surprised a German boss wo…

> it is expressly illegal for your employer to try and stop you from doing this

Under which statute?

I'm only aware that those clauses in work contracts that forbade talking about your salary were consistently struck down by courts, when they didn't include reasonable limits to the prohibition, because they would restrict you from discussing your salary with your spouse or tax accountant.

Later courts ruled that even with such limitations, those clauses are void, because they run against the basic right of forming coalitions in the workplace (article 9, section 3 of the Basic Law).

But I'm not aware of any statute that bans those clauses expressis verbis. Is there a newish one?

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#23

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 1:41 PM UTC

GrumpyNl wrote: post #19

Cenk wrote: post #10

> A female colleague and me had dared to discuss wage transparency and gender pay gap in the office. […] Our boss Matthias was beyond furious. After that office meeting, he told my colleague “there will be consequences”. Under German law you are not only allowed to talk about your salary with your colleagues, it is expressly illegal for your employer to try and stop you from doing this. I’m surprised a German boss wo…

That makes no sense, "Under German law you are not only allowed to talk about your salary with your colleagues" and " it is expressly illegal for your employer to try and stop you from doing this", So its illegal to talk about it, but when you do its illegal for your employer to stop this?

[deleted]

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#24

Post by docdeek » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 1:41 PM UTC

GrumpyNl wrote: post #19

Cenk wrote: post #10

> A female colleague and me had dared to discuss wage transparency and gender pay gap in the office. […] Our boss Matthias was beyond furious. After that office meeting, he told my colleague “there will be consequences”. Under German law you are not only allowed to talk about your salary with your colleagues, it is expressly illegal for your employer to try and stop you from doing this. I’m surprised a German boss wo…

That makes no sense, "Under German law you are not only allowed to talk about your salary with your colleagues" and " it is expressly illegal for your employer to try and stop you from doing this", So its illegal to talk about it, but when you do its illegal for your employer to stop this?

Not the parent commenter, but it makes sense: you are allowed to talk about your salary, and your boss is not allowed to stop you from doing that.

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#25

Post by bluGill » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 1:42 PM UTC

ognarb wrote: post #4

> we both felt secure that the free software movement is progressive, and cares about being inclusive and equal opportunities oriented. Unfortunately it has been proved very often that this is not true. This is not the first case of racism and sexisme in FOSS and probably won't.

FOSS is made up of humans. A large number (perhaps all - take this as a personal warning) are downright nasty to some other groups of humans.

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#26

Post by wheybags » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 1:42 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #13

londons_explore wrote: post #9

Operations like the FSF have a single goal - to promote Free Software. If they can also promote equality at the same time, then great. But the goal of promoting equality and free software are not equal - free software is the primary goal. If the organisation is acting illegally , then it's a matter for the police. But if the organisation is focussing on it's primary goal rather than a 2ndary goal you think is more im…

That is the lamest excuse I have ever heard. If my organizations goal is feeding the homeless, am I free to only hire white people because racism is not my organization's primary goal ? You can achieve your organisation's primary goal without being horrible human beings. That's allowed. In fact, it's basic human decency.

No, because discrimination in hiring on the basis of race is illegal. It does mean the org should probably not focus its efforts on running a big public pr campaign about hiring ethnic minorities though.

That's all in the general case though, unfortunately it does sound like there was some bad practice in the fsfe specifically this time. There are two sides to every story though. I'd want to hear both before making judgement.

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#27

Post by mabbo » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 1:43 PM UTC

tutfbhuf wrote: post #15

As an individual is there anything we can do to support this case?

You can spread the word of this story, and make sure people know that this is who decides how donations to the fsfe will be used.

Perhaps a strong drop in donations will be the catalyst for change and self reflection.

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#28

Post by dosshell » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 1:45 PM UTC

GrumpyNl wrote: post #19

Cenk wrote: post #10

> A female colleague and me had dared to discuss wage transparency and gender pay gap in the office. […] Our boss Matthias was beyond furious. After that office meeting, he told my colleague “there will be consequences”. Under German law you are not only allowed to talk about your salary with your colleagues, it is expressly illegal for your employer to try and stop you from doing this. I’m surprised a German boss wo…

That makes no sense, "Under German law you are not only allowed to talk about your salary with your colleagues" and " it is expressly illegal for your employer to try and stop you from doing this", So its illegal to talk about it, but when you do its illegal for your employer to stop this?

English is not my native language but in many germanic languages "not only" does not mean "not" but rather the opposite of "not".

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#29

Post by mabbo » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #16

ognarb wrote: post #4

> we both felt secure that the free software movement is progressive, and cares about being inclusive and equal opportunities oriented. Unfortunately it has been proved very often that this is not true. This is not the first case of racism and sexisme in FOSS and probably won't.

> This is not the first case of racism and sexisme in FOSS and probably won't. The fish rots from the head down, and apart from Stallman (which is mentioned in the article) I for myself would personally add Torvalds to that same conversation (even though with a little less overt sexism, but definitely with more bullying). But because Torvalds's project has had an incredible ROI, i.e. it has made lots of people lots o…

Torvalds is interesting because of his recent attempts to be better. He took time off, got therapy, and wants to change.

Even if he's not as successful as we all hope, I can respect that he is trying.

Some folks just like being a jerk, and want to enjoy continuing to do so.

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#30

Post by srtjstjsj » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 1:49 PM UTC

I believe the author has legitimate grievances, but I found that article very hard to read and understand (except that it's clear the author and Matthias had very bad interactions). It reads as a confusing diary entry or a first rough draft, not an article for public consumption.