RIGHT TO WORK -- RIGHT TO FIRE -- DEPENDS

I have the right to fire

I had an interesting experience today and it fell into line with some of the ideas I exchanged with another blogger during the early part of the week.  With the blogger I was going back and forth about the way the Catholic Church treats its employees.  We were talking about the encyclical letter of Leo XIII about labor, unions, employer morality, etc.  I won't go into it because it is technical Catholic Church stuff and the bottom line is not too pretty.  It is more fun talking about the ACLU operative who was working the people leaving the check-out area of the IKEA warehouse where we had just bought a few simple items.  It is fun because I got to spar with him for a minute or two about a simple topic, hiring and firing.  Now, where have you read about that same topic lately?
The scene is interesting.  I was inside the check-out area while Belle was snooping around the food store that features Swedish prepared foods.  Stuff like herring roe, pickled herring, smoked salmon, salted eel and various other delicacies that make the Swedes move to the United States in order to escape them.  I was seriously engaged in watching this person approach people and try to engage them, but to very, very little avail.  I could see  that he was wearing a rather large badge, but I could not make out what it said.  It was then that I decided that when Belle and I went out, that I would find out what he was about.  So, I did, and now you will know too.
I immediately saw that the badge said ACLU.  I said, "You have certainly got your share of rejection today."  He responded by saying that this was not an exceptionally bad day and that things were, in fact, quite smooth.  He jumped into his spiel by asking, "Do you know that 39 states have 'right to fire' laws?  Do you know that many of them use these laws to terminate the employment of homosexuals?"  Hey, all that red meat in only two short sentences.  I simply made the point that all states have "right to fire" laws.  I told him that I favored them and that they were normally called, "at will employment" laws.  I said that there is nothing wrong with the law itself, but that the immoral disregard for fair and equal treatment of employees is certainly reprehensible.  I said that I had more than 30 years' experience in human resources and that I had fired any number of people based on the "at will employment" laws and never had to answer to a judge or jury in all those years.  Belle slipped him a dollar and we went on our way.
Moral of the story?  There are two sides [at least] of every reality.   People mold their vocabulary to the facet of reality that they want to highlight.  The unwitting, or unaware listener [listener or hearer?] will fall into the stream and be carried away with the current and never really know what happened.  It happens all the time.  Keep your ears and minds alert and you'll see all the fun you can have slicing and dicing what you hear and what you see.  Nice part about it is, you don't even need a knife.  All you need is a sharp tongue.  You ought to try it sometime.  It can be fun.