How should I respond to my boss who fired me via email and let him know that I’m very disappointed that he did not have the courtesy to do this face-to-face (we work from different states, but always communicate through video calls)?
Let’s see. I run something between one and three software companies (at one, I’m the chairman but not the CEO; at another, I’m the only employee). From time to time, I have to fire people.I hate it. Firing people is far and away the worst part of my job. The people I have to let go are generally nice and hard working. They just don’t have the skills I hired them for.But sometimes, not so much. We had an employee once who talked a great game and did nothing. When I would have a conversation about the fact that he had (yet again) failed to deliver what he had promised to deliver, I would get an hour-long lecture about how while he hadn’t delivered what he had promised, he had (a) tried and (b) done something that was better than what he had promised anyway. This happened over, and over and over again.I eventually ran out of hours, and made myself inaccessible to the guy by phone (he was a remote employee). I gave him yet another deliverable, and told him if he didn’t deliver it, he’d lose his job.He didn’t deliver, and I fired him by email. And then I was so stressed out by the whole thing that I took a month off.This happened about a decade ago, and I’m different now, but I don’t know if I’d behave differently if the situation arose again. But I think you should at least admit the possibility that bosses really hate firing people, and if they do it by email, it just might be because they’re finding the failed relationship as troubling and frustrating as you are.
Can I refuse to hire someone based on political views? I work in the UK. When I interview, is it legal to ask about a candidate’s political views?
I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.Political beliefs count as philosophical beliefs, and so you can be protected from being dismissed from your job solely on those grounds. Judgements both at Employment Tribunal and European level supports the Equality Act 2010 being interpreted in this way.Does this transfer to job interviews? I don't know. Certainly, job adverts can be make reference to political beliefs, eg. To work for the Labour Party you need a “commitment to the aims and values of the Labour Party” and this is explicitly stated in the job adverts.Additionally, I have talked about politics in interviews before. At this stage, it was basically assured that I would get the job and I was just talking with the CEO after more formal conversation had taken place. He knew I was passionate about politics from my degree, and asked me what I thought about various things. We disagreed amicably (he, whilst very wealthy had what might be called a working class conservative viewpoint, whereas I was a bog standard progressive liberal). I got the job.To refuse to hire someone just because of their political beliefs would be the height of foolishness and quite possibly illegal (contravenes Equality Act). To have a defence, you would have to be able to plausibly claim that their political beliefs made them unable to do the job. But it's the inability to do the job that is doing all the heavy lifting there, not the political belief per se.Equality Act 2010Of course, in practise you would never say that you haven't hired someone because they were right wing. You would just appeal to a more nebulous concept like cultural fit. Or just say that they weren't the candidate you were looking for. That would be bad business practise, but not evidence of illegality.
Would Bernie Sanders have defeated Donald Trump? Would Bernie have been a more or less formidable candidate than Hillary?
No, he couldn’t have.Why?He didn’t have the minority votes - African Americans and Latinos simply had little reason to vote for Sanders. For some reason Sander supporters seem to be unable to grasp that very obvious fact and they assume that their support for Sanders translated to other members of the Democratic party. It didn’t.He didn’t have the female vote - Hillary Clinton had the Democratic female vote (except, of course, the “millennials”) and Sanders did not. A first female President was a powerful lure that an elderly White male was not.He didn’t have the support of the party leadership - Again, Sanders supporters keep “forgetting” that he never raised money for the party, he never stumped for other Democrats and he was a DINO (Democrat In Name Only). The leadership of the party had no reason to believe that he would have won and they would have withheld their support.Sander’s social views didn’t align with those of the voters who gave the slight edge to Trump that allowed him to win - As the past week has demonstrated, most Trump supporters simply did not (and DO NOT) care about the racists, misogynists anti-Semites and White nationalists with whom he has surrounded himself. Apparently his views mirror their own and Sander’s social views did not.Sanders is Jewish - Sectarian bigotry is still a major issue in the United States as Trump’s appeals to anti-Muslim elements makes very clear, If someone who has made extremist and prejudiced statements about Muslims could get elected, then there’s no way that a Jew (observant or not) could have been elected during this cycle.Sanders didn’t win the primaries that he needed to and he thus didn’t even get the chance to be nominated. Even if he had won the nomination, he would have failed to garner the necessary votes or support to have won the general election.