A Toxic Topic in the Workplace

As the Presidential election draws closer, the conversation around the water cooler or in workplace blogs tends to stray into the generally verboten political arena. Colleague-to-colleague political chat is generally considered fair game in the workplace, but if senior executives or managers air their views too vocally, it can be perceived by employees as pressure from above. And that could lead to serious problems.

For example, Richard Pimentel charges that he was fired from his position as a financial management consultant at Huron Consulting Group Inc. partly as a result of retaliation for refusing to contribute to Mitt Romney's Republican presidential bid. Pimentel says that the firm's CEO, Gary E. Holdren, repeatedly pressured him to donate to the Romney campaign and that he was terminated after informing his boss about the incidents. Pimentel's charges are part of an age-bias complaint against the firm that he filed in July with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Huron issued a statement saying that emails Holdren sent to employees relating to this matter represented a "personal request" for voluntary contributions and that no executives benefited from or were punished for their responses.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s political pressure controversy is on a much larger scale. The company is being investigated by The Federal Election Commission (FEC) over possible violation of election law. Wal-Mart told workers that electing Democrats would lead to passage of the union-friendly Employee Free Choice Act.

Most supporters of the Act, which was introduced in 2005 by Rep. George Miller (D-CA), are democrats, including Senator Obama, who co-sponsored the bill.

Several labor groups filed a complaint with the FEC shortly after The Wall Street Journal reported that thousands of Wal-Mart store managers had been summoned to compulsory meetings, where faulty information about the ramifications of the Act's passage (that workers' wages may be reduced to minimum wage for up to three months before a union contract is negotiated, that union authorization cards violate workers' right to privacy because they include Social Security numbers and that if a small unit within a store votes to unionize, the entire store will be unionized) was disseminated. Wal-Mart management denies that this misinformation was included in the meetings.

The good news for Wal-Mart is that even if the FEC rules against it, attorneys following the case agree that the potential fines would be a drop in the bucket for the mega-retailer; the cap for election law violation fines is relatively low -- only a few thousand dollars per violation, according to The New York Times.