The chief executive of a Michigan bank has lost her job after facing backlash for a social media photo of her family in sweatshirts that read “Lake America,” referencing Donald Trump’s relabeling of Lake Ontario.
Jane Smith from Family First Credit Union recently went viral after sharing the photo of her and three relatives wearing navy blue crewnecks with the words “Lake America” scrawled in white. The picture was snapped as her family left on September 11 for a 10-day trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia, but Smith says the sweatshirts were edited onto their bodies using AI.
“We weren’t trying to make a political statement,” Smith told Michigan outlet WJRT. “However, we were kind of poking fun at the fact that one of the Great Lakes’ names were getting changed.”
Family First Credit Union announced Wednesday that Smith was no longer with the company and that Jason Acosta, the chief operations officer, would serve as interim CEO.
When your employees tell you who they are, listen.
Stupid enough to offend 70% of your customers.
And good for the credit union, they did.
Now she’s unemployed.
I always have had mixed feelings on stuff like this. On one hand fuck her. On the other I don’t want my job to have any say in what I do in my off hours. If it’s not a crime they should have no say and not be able to take any employment actions against me.
This case it works out, but it’s not a precedent, or perhaps fact, of working life that I enjoy
The problem with your logic is youre still looking this as “just a joke”.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a joke or not. The punchline is “I support what trump is doing”.
Like, if someone puts on a Nazi uniform, would you feel the same?
What if the sweatshirt said “trans people aren’t people”?
Where do you draw the line?
And do you legitimately not understand how much horrible shit is legal to say?
If that’s the line, we’re fucked.
No I’m not. I think they are an absolute garbage of a person. I just don’t think anyone’s livelihood should be impacted by what they do in their free time.
If our employers can police our character even during off hours then we are never off the clock and are owned by the company.
We really are already owned since we need need to work or starve, but I’d rather get to at least live the few waking hours I have where I’m not working as I choose.
There shouldn’t be any line as far as my employer is concerned.
Like I said:
I thought you just didn’t realize what you were saying…
But you clarified and are apparently just 100% ok with fucking hat speech
can’t tell if this is a redhat pun
I’m 100% okay with not being company property.
It’s funny how you think company “morality” only works in the direction that favors you. Wasn’t all that long ago that being found out gay meant a company would fire you, but sure let the shareholders to decide what you get to do at home. After all the company only has your best interest at heart
Alright little buddy, it’s been fun but regardless of if you know what you’re saying or not, the first rule of the internet remains the same.
I truly hope your life gets better and you develop some empathy tho just not going to keep seeing your comments because I know how I likely either is
It’s really funny how you think companies truly care about what’s right and have only your personal best interests at heart.
If tomorrow it became more profitable to support Trump they absolutely would. Look at what every company in Nazi Germany did. They shifted to support those in power regardless of any morality to continue making money.
Companies should never police morality. They don’t care about right or wrong. They care about money. Sure this time they’re hurting the right people, but you’re naive to think that will always be the case.
You want to ban hate speech? Get your government to do it so you have a set standard that’s equally applicable.
Like others have said, CEO is different. Tax/legal wise there is a set of positions with the company that are defined, and registered with the government. They are empowered to act for the company in ways regular employees are not. I think the line to draw is between them and the rest. If a person is a federally registered representative of the company, then all behaviour outside the office matters. I also think they should bear legal responsibility for the crimes of the company as well. But we know that won’t happen.
Except this isn’t a CEO only occurance. Remember all the people that got fired for celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death? Same principal
Very much so. And so far I think every one of them that sued won. At least I haven’t heard of any of them losing. I am just saying we can be more specific about the line which currently exists and is very fuzzy.
Only the ones fired from public positions in government like teachers won their lawsuits and that’s because the government is restrained by the first amendment. Employees of private companies do not have the same protections.
Today the pendulum of corporate morality swung in a way you like. Tomorrow it might not, and regardless this bank will foreclose on a widowed single mother without a second thought.
Companies shouldn’t be out friends or owners
Interesting. I had not noticed that. I wonder if it is because of the lame at will employment laws. Basically they don’t have to say why they fired you at all. I think those are crap. But I agree that the rank and file employees should have the protection to have a private life. I just think there is a reasonable line between them and the official corporate positions at least.
Even if they stated the reason as the social media posts about Kirk it’s still legal for a corporation. Speech for employees is not protected.
Honestly I could agree with your conclusion. My view now is since no one has protections is to establish that first then I’ll discuss if some employees can not be included.
The issue with CEO is its such a variable meaning. The woman in the post being a CEO for a local credit union is a completely different world than the CEO of Apple. Both in terms of pay and actual work.
Quit trying to “both sides” fascism. She deserved exactly what she got because that’s what she wants for others.
No, I very much agree with the debate. If joe the mechanic at the nearby car dealership posted something and got fired for it, I would back his right to have done so without retaliation, even if what he posted disagrees with my opinion. As should we all. Same as we should protect the rights of ICE detainees to decent treatment and due process. Because it is the right thing to do. Even mass murders deserve decent treatment and due process.
Said the corpo-fascist
No, I don’t really remember anyone being fired for that. Especially not any CEOs.
Quite an extensive list
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj06jgl9qzlo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reprisals_against_commentators_on_the_Charlie_Kirk_assassination
You are right though no CEOs would celebrate such good news
Then you should be fighting against at-will employment. That’s really where this comes from, the ability to fire people for any reason or no reason at all.
If we had even rudimentary worker protections, that wouldn’t really be much if a concern. You might still get let go, if your conduct is bad enough, but you’d have time to not just suddenly be unemployed and scrambling. But it’s a lot less likely to get to that position when employer over-reach is less of a thing to begin with.
Meanwhile our companies and oligarchs think they own us, cradle to grave, and they aren’t that far off, so no wonder they act like that’s the truth.
Absolutely, I’ve been for this my entire adult life. Unfortunately I’ve only seen workers rights slide backwards
See, to me, there’s two philosophies that battle here, with me. I can treat employers as companies, as logic machines, that calculate what revenues they can make and every other business decision. With that framework, I agree, whatever I do in my off hours is my business, they shouldn’t (but do) have the right to meddle with me in that way. Deny the corporate machine access to that info.
But the other framework, where your employee is a person managing a business, I don’t agree. If I am a human business owner, trying to run a good company with standards and practices as guidelines, get told by a potential customer I’ve lost the sale because of the actions of someone I employ, if I see that as a recurring pattern, I gotta weigh if they’re worth keeping.
Now, for me, these two frameworks aren’t exclusive, neither is right or wrong, they just show up in different places. Corporate McDonalds firing a minimum wage employee, that gets the company-as-a-machine model. Small business with like 5 employees? Company-as-a-person. Firing a C-Suite of a large company? Company-as-a-person.
This is company-as-a-person to me because they’re a face of the company. C-suite people get hired because of who they are, whereas minimum wage in a company get hired because of the skills they have.