Comment by dragonwriter
7 years ago
> I don't live in the US so maybe this is cultural, but do you really want the legal outcome of crime to be based on local policy and norms?
This isn't about legal outcomes or crimes.
7 years ago
> I don't live in the US so maybe this is cultural, but do you really want the legal outcome of crime to be based on local policy and norms?
This isn't about legal outcomes or crimes.
This is about crime. Threating someone with violence is a offense that society in a democratic process has define as illegal with an legal outcome. Sexual assault is a offense that society in a democratic process has define as illegal with an legal outcome.
There is a very clear line between crime and non-crime.
I'll apologize for my confusion. I was working from the context of u/jlb's comment [0]. and from the context of the posted article, in which none of the Google execs have been accused of a clear-cut crime. But the comment from u/shados that started this thread, and to which you are referring to, was talking about "downright criminal acts" [1].
So when we're talking about a "downright criminal act" -- violent assault, robbery, rape, threats to safety, fraud, etc. -- yes, the police should be brought in, for their powers of investigation and arrest, among other things. But then we're basically arguing a tautology -- "Should the police, whose job is to deal with criminal acts, be called in when a criminal act has occurred?"
What I read in u/shados's question, and subsequent comments, was: if an accusation isn't good enough for police standards, why should a company/HR use it as the basis of firing someone? So my line of argument is mostly irrelevant if you believe that companies have the right to fire people for non-criminal accusations. But I guess the bigger discussion is about the line between what constitutes a criminal act, vs. a civil dispute.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18353824
> If you believe that companies have the right to fire people for non-criminal accusations.
I agree with that. Let the legal system deal with criminal acts, the HR department deal with the policy violations by employees, the unions/department for workers deal with regulative violations by employers, and teacher/medical/ectra boards deal with professional violations. It is when one of those start to overrule the factual findings of each other that we need to discuss if something is broken and need to be fixed.
To connect back to the article and Google execs, here in Sweden we have an additional rule for public positions. A person can be fired from such position if they simply loose enough public trust regardless of factual events. In return for such weak employment protection they usually get payouts if they get fired without evidence of fault. This has the benefit that you don't need to debate if the accusation is true, but rather if the public trust (from media and so on) has been lost. In those cases where the legal system do find someone guilty they simply don't get the payout. I wonder if such system would work nicely to deal with execs in large corporations.