Want to see how the job market looks these days? Don’t bother to check with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau, or any of the normal metrics measuring the American economy. Instead, watch how workplaces have begun to make clear that inmates don’t run the asylums any longer.
The Wall Street Journal reports today that employers have had enough of activist workers, especially those who disrupt the workplace. They are laying down a “new, hard-line playbook” that bears a stunning resemblance to the normal hard-line playbook that existed before government subsidies made replacements scarce:
Microsoft fired two more staffers Thursday for engaging in on-site protests against the company’s work with the Israeli military. The move, following the firing of two employees who occupied an executive’s office this week, is the latest example of business leaders cracking down on political dissent.
Alphabet’s Google last year called in police, then fired dozens of workers who engaged in a similar protest. Tesla ousted an employee after he created an anti-Elon Musk website and plastered his Cybertruck with protest slogans. Some companies are restricting even nonpolitical debate, as JPMorgan Chase did after an influx of employee comments complaining about the bank’s return-to-office mandate this year.
The new, hard-line playbook that companies are adopting to confront employee activism reflects two developments: One is a political climate in which companies risk the ire of the White House—and some consumers—if they appear to cater to “woke” forces, including their own staff. The other is an ever-tougher job market in which white-collar workers—especially in tech—have lost considerable leverage.
Child, please. This has nothing to do with the “political climate,” and their own example set shows it. When Google called the cops to arrest dozens of workers “occupying” the C-suites and then fired them, Joe Biden was president. In fact, Biden was still the unchallenged Democrat nominee for the 2024 election and was two months out from his political implosion in the CNN debate with Trump. The Joe Biden Regency had its hand firmly up Biden’s backside, as well as in firm grasp of the Protection Racket Media narratives, and the “political climate” favored wokery. And Musk made his no-nonsense approach crystal clear in 2022, when SpaceX fired a significant number of employees who had signed an “open letter” calling his behavior a “distraction and embarrassment.” The idiot fired this year at Tesla hadn’t been paying attention.
Do WSJ reporters even do research these days? If so, they appear to lack the skills for logical analysis … and perhaps should refrain from demonstrating it.
The point about worker leverage, however, hits closer to the mark. Employee activism reached its zenith during the pandemic and the Summer of Riots, mainly because the government (a) closed down commerce, and (b) subsidized unemployment to the point that businesses couldn’t get people to apply for open positions. The Left loooooved this, in part for ideological reasons — it made the bourgeoisie kneel to the proletariat! — and for tactical reasons, as it freed up a lot of room for even more struggle sessions and street actions.
Well, those days are over. The subsidies for non-work have disappeared. The grants that filtered back through activist groups via channels such as USAID have closed down, at least for now. Plus, the explosion of outright hostility toward DEI policies and lecturing messaging by brands such as Target, Bud Light, and others has taught corporate leaders just how fringy their activist employees actually are. There are once again plenty of fish in the employment sea, and that means that businesses can once again focus on business rather than running day-care centers for self-absorbed leftists.
Employees who want to engage in activism outside their jobs should be left alone to do so. Those who want to make workplaces their struggle-session launchpads should expect to get scrubbed toute suite. This day could not have come fast enough, but Trump is hardly the cause. Trump is at best just a leading indicator in this trend, a harbinger of a broad-based rejection of radical activism that has now rolled across the country with increasing speed and intensity.
And … that’s exactly how it should be.
Editor’s Note: The Democrat Party has never been less popular as voters reject its globalist agenda.
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