“They acted here as an illegal employer advocate to stop free speech and to stop unionization,” says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. “Facebook holds itself out as this champion of free speech. Yet here it is developing a platform that allows employers to totally deny their employee’s free speech. We demand an apology and they should abandon further work on these types of platforms.”

Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO, blasts Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg for building a platform feature that allows employers to ban certain words related to unionization in employee communications:

We Demand An Apology From Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook holds itself out as this champion of free speech. Yet here it is developing a platform that allows employers to totally deny their employee’s free speech. It also allows employers to blacklist (certain speech) which is illegal and to sort of truncate or eliminate their ability to talk about unionization which is also illegal.

Mark Zuckerberg is doing two things here which are terrible. One he’s doing illegal stuff like blacklisting and making eavesdropping on the employee’s talk of unionization, which is illegal. The second thing is he’s undermining the notion of free speech. It’s only his free speech that he’s been a champion of, not workers free speech. We should have an apology. We demand an apology and they should abandon further work on these types of platforms.

Facebook Acted As An Illegal Employer Advocate

We think there needs to be a change to (Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act which was put in place to protect platforms from lawsuits resulting from the content posted by their users). Things like this shouldn’t be allowed to happen. They acted here as more than a platform. They acted here as an illegal employer advocate to stop free speech and to stop unionization. They shouldn’t be shielded from that type of conduct or other conduct similar to that.