Centerfield

So what'd they do--issue the policy in secret, then walk around the company parking lot, looking for guns in cars, and firing all the people who had them? What jerks!

Pretty much. The company is Weyerhauser, the plant is in Valliant, Oklahoma. Company policy had always banned bringing guns into the paper mill itself. They extended the policy to the public parking lot without notifying employees (the company disputes this, saying the policy was changed several months earlier and that everyone was notified--the employees of the plant unanimously say they were not notified). After a drug incident at the mill, management brought in gun and drug sniffing dogs to go through the parking lot. No drugs were found, but a dozen cars had guns in them. All of those employees were fired.

In response an outraged Oklahoma legislature then passed a law allowing indisputable "legal locked carry" in vehicles, but it was too late for the Weyerhauser (ex-)employees. Oklahoma is an "employment at will" state, and people can be fired for any reason at all. The Weyerhauser policy came down from the national corporate level in response to anti-gun activist pressure on the company's board of directors. Several other large corporations have passed similar policies, under pressure from activists, and some are suing to get the Oklahoma law overturned.

I think it's interesting because it has so many different "hot button" issues in it. On the surface it looks like just a "gun" story, but there's individual rights versus corporate rights, employee vs. employer, state's rights to set their own laws versus out-of-state activism meddling with local law, warrantless searches of locked vehicles in "open" lots, etc. The firearms were in locked vehicles, Oklahoma has concealed-carry, and the state constitution explicitly guarantees the right of citizens to "keep and bear arms in defence of his home, person, or property." And so on.

Interesting. Guess I'd have to go move my car...lol.

If my coworkers had guns in their cars, it'd certainly make me think twice about not faxing them something quick enough...

My guess is that this has very little to do with gun politics. If the whole truth ever comes out, I bet it has everything to do with one or several members of upper management seizing upon this as an opportunity to get rid of a few employees they didn't like, for whatever reason.

Maybe true at the local plant as far as the implementation there went, but the policy itself came down from the international corporate board to the local plant, and other companies have come under the same pressures from the same people to do the same thing. And those people are the Brady Bunch, HCI and their friends. They got stymied legally and politically when Gore lost, so they've headed down the "shareholder oversight" route that other interest groups have been using rather than running head-on into political walls with an unfriendly admin and Congress.

As I said, it covers a whole lot of issues in one. It's actually an excellent labor wedge issue for the GOP. Ask an autoworker. The move in Florida is pre-emptive.

It's also a nice stereotype killer. Republicans fighting Big Business with Government to prevent the corporate oppression of the working folk? You don't have to be Lakoff to see this one coming.

I guess I'm more troubled by the no-notice imposition of the policy than I am with the policy itself. Maybe it's not the greatest policy, and i understand why the workers are upset on both counts (policy and method of imposition). But generally its the GOP that's prone to defending the right of private entities to set workplace rules as they see fit, and the parking lot and grounds see to me to be reasonable to include as part of the workplace. Both sides risk being hoist by their own inconsistent petards should they try to make too big a stink over this. Which perhaps explains the quiet so far.