Last month I wrote an article entitled “Workers of the World Unite ...” that contained a fabrication for dramatization. I refer to the portion concerning the manner in which I discovered the “Right to Work” petition. I personally do not throw 045 or any mail for that matter, and was made aware of the petition by a friend who was asked to sign it. I attempted to show the irony of the labor force (APWU) handling mail such as this, it was a mistake. It is illegal to disclose the contents of mail even if the mail is meant for further distribution.
immaterial whether [Gordon] ... actually read the mail on the job, as he stated in the article, or whether he only made it up for dramatic impact, as he now contends, as long as he made public expressions that he did read the mail while on the job. Insofar as the Postal Service is concerned, the effect under either circumstance is the same. That effect is to seriously erode the confidence which the public should have in the Postal Service.
[T]he statement in context ... discloses that it plainly dealt with a matter of public concern. The statement was made in the course of a conversation addressing the policies of the President's administration. It came on the heels of a news bulletin regarding what is certainly a matter of heightened public attention: an attempt on the life of the President.
[O]ne of the letters was not sealed and the contents fell out as I was sorting the mail. I could not help but seeing just what was inside....
The Government's interest, and hence the public's interest, is the maintenance of employee efficiency and discipline.... To this end, the Government as an employer, must have wide discretion and control over the management of its personnel and internal affairs. This includes the prerogative to remove employees whose conduct hinders efficient operation and to do so with dispatch.
a case in which [a public employee] has made erroneous public statements upon issues then currently the subject of public attention, which are critical of his ultimate employer but which are neither shown nor can be presumed to have in any way either impeded the [employee's] proper performance of his daily duties ... or to have interfered with the regular operation of the [government agency] generally.
[T]he State has interests as an employer in regulating the speech of its employees that differ significantly from those it possesses in connection with regulation of the speech of the citizenry in general. The problem in any case is to arrive at a balance between the interests of the teacher, as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.
Pickering, its antecedents, and its progeny lead us to conclude that if Myers' questionnaire cannot be fairly characterized as constituting speech on a matter of public concern, it is unnecessary for us to scrutinize the reasons for her discharge. When employee expression *319 **171 cannot be fairly considered as relating to any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community, government officials should enjoy wide latitude in managing their offices, without intrusive oversight by the judiciary in the name of the First Amendment.
Perhaps the government employer's dismissal of the worker may not be fair, but ordinary dismissals from government service which violate no fixed tenure or applicable statute or regulation are not subject to judicial review even if the reasons for the dismissal are alleged to be mistaken or unreasonable.
It is simply impossible to believe that a reader who reached the word “blackmail” in either article would not have understood exactly what was meant: it was Bresler's public and wholly legal negotiating proposals that were being criticized. No reader could have thought that either the speakers at the meetings or the newspaper articles reporting their words were charging Bresler with the commission of a criminal offense. On the contrary, even the most careless reader must have perceived that the word was no more than rhetorical hyperbole, a vigorous epithet used by those who considered Bresler's negotiating position extremely unreasonable.
It is similarly impossible to believe that any reader of the Carrier's Corner would have understood the newsletter to be charging the appellees with committing the criminal offense of treason. As in Bresler, Jack London's “definition of a scab” is merely rhetorical hyperbole, a lusty and imaginative expression of the contempt felt by union members towards those who refuse to join.
[t]he use of the known lie as a tool is at once at odds with the premises of democratic government and with the orderly manner in which economic, social or political change is to be affected.
[W]e do not see the necessity for a public employer to allow events to unfold to the extent that disruption of the office and *329 **181 the destruction of working relationships is manifest before taking action.
*330 **182 I do not read the Court's opinion as extending the Connick/Pickering test, or otherwise making it more difficult for employers to discipline workers whose speech interferes with [the employer's] goals.
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