Day Without A Gay

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by PhiGam

I would fire anyone who tried to pull this stunt.

Assuming the person is actually gay (and not a 'friend'), firing would be a very poor idea - I'm sure you're smart enough to figure out why.

[CrackerBarrel]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

Assuming the person is actually gay (and not a 'friend'), firing would be a very poor idea - I'm sure you're smart enough to figure out why.

I'm not sure, you can't fire them for being gay, but unless they have vacation days left you can fire them for skipping work.

If someone called me and said "I'm not coming to work today, I'm gay." my response would be "Come to work right now or you will be gay and unemployed."

You can't fire them for being gay, and clearly you aren't since they aren't turning gay or coming out on Wednesday. Presumably anyone who would do this everyone in their office already knew they were gay. You set the work schedule though, and being gay isn't a legitimate reason to skip work, even if some movement says you should do it.

This could be a problem in states like California which have passed laws banning firings in retaliation for participating in political demonstrations, but there are very few of these states.

Here's a memo from an employment law firm about the legal issues surrounding disciplining workers who missed work for the immigration walkouts: http://www.littler.com/PressPublicat...ents/13950.pdf

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by CrackerBarrel

I'm not sure, you can't fire them for being gay, but unless they have vacation days left you can fire them for skipping work.

If someone called me and said "I'm not coming to work today, I'm gay." my response would be "Come to work right now or you will be gay and unemployed."

Ignoring the limited scope here (you're also ignoring "PTO" situations, personal time, unpaid time off, etc.), I'm not only referring to the strict legal sense of the employee suing for firing based on a protected class, but also the comparative utility of "taking a stand" against one employee-day lost versus the annoyance of dealing with potential media or interest-group backlash, which would likely cost much more than the man-hours lost.

There's a time and a place to make a stand, but it doesn't seem like a good decision from a business standpoint.

[PhiGam]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

Assuming the person is actually gay (and not a 'friend'), firing would be a very poor idea - I'm sure you're smart enough to figure out why.

Last time I checked you're allowed to fire people for not showing up to work.