Politics in the workplace: acceptable, or nah?

In the aftermath of last month’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Meta reportedly told its workers not to openly discuss topics related to abortion on internal company channels.

🚗 Driving the move… The social media giant cited a company policy, initially established in 2020 following George Floyd’s murder, that puts “strong guardrails around social, political and sensitive conversations” in the workplace due to “a heightened risk of creating a hostile work environment.”

• Meta employees were instead encouraged to discuss abortion-related issues in one-to-one conversations, or in small groups of “like-minded colleagues.”

💬 On one side: Other Big Tech companies like Amazon and Apple saw highly-charged discussions on internal Slack channels, with some celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion and others bemoaning it, per Bloomberg.

🚫 On the other side: In recent years, startups Basecamp and Coinbase both announced bans on political discussion in their respective workplaces, while simultaneously offering a buyout to all employees. About 5% of Coinbase’s 1,200 workers accepted and left the company; more than ⅓ of Basecamp’s 57 employees did the same.

+Flash poll: Do you think employees should be allowed to talk about contentious societal and political topics in the workplace?

Yes

No

Unsure/other