Workplace resistance

By Moshe Marvit and Leo Gertner for the Washington Post. Though often overlooked in America, the workplace can be as much a focal point of resistance and protest as the streets, the ballot box or the halls of Congress. Our standard workplace regime of at-will employment — where one can be fired for good cause, bad cause or no cause — combined with weak baseline workplace rights leaves many vulnerable at the workplace. But since jobs and trade were the policy centerpieces of his campaign, Trump has brought the fight to the workplace, and workers need to respond in kind. Workplace resistance can take many forms. The most obvious one could come from within the federal government itself. Just after last weekend’s protests, for example, career Foreign Service officers and diplomats began drafting a dissent memo against Trump’s executive order on refugees, in a “major bureaucratic uprising” against the president. Writing for Politico about Trump’s attack on federal employees, Nancy Cook and Andrew Restuccia explained that “disgruntled employees can leak information to Capitol Hill and the press, and prod inspectors general to probe political appointees. They can also use the tools of bureaucracy to slow or sandbag policy proposals — moves that can overtly, or passive aggressively, unravel a White House’s best-laid plans.”