Should We Stop Talking Politics at Work?

Matter of Opinion

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Ross Douthat, News, New York Times, Journalism

4.2 • 7.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The ousting of Donald Trump, the election of Joe Biden, a ransacking of the Capitol, a summer of protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and a pandemic that is still raging in parts of the United States and abroad. It has felt like a very political few years. But should we not be allowed to talk about it at work? Some bosses would strongly prefer that you stayed away from politics at work. A number of companies have proposed policies that would ban or significantly reduce political discussions at the workplace. But who gets to decide what’s political? And does it really benefit the company or its employees to keep these conversations from happening? Liz Wolfe is an editor at Reason and Johnathan Nightingale is an author and a co-founder of Raw Signal Group. They join Jane to debate whether eliminating politics is possible and how it would change the future of the workplace. Mentioned in this episode: “Basecamp Becomes the Latest Tech Company To Ban Talking Politics at Work,” by Liz Wolfe at Reason. “Fundamentally, this is a story about power,” in Johnathan Nightingale’s newsletter. “Breaking Camp,” by Casey Newton at The Verge.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today on the argument, should we ban politics from the office?
0:07.0	I'm Jane Kostin, and as host of the show, I spend a lot of my time at work talking about
0:19.6	politics.
0:20.6	My bosses would be pretty mad if I refused to talk about politics.
0:24.6	But not all bosses are the same.
0:27.0	To the Trump era, a summer of protests over police brutality and a pandemic that's been
0:30.9	politicized at every turn, it's been hard not to bring politics to work.
0:35.2	Particularly when everything from front to leave to marriage benefits can be, well,
0:40.0	political.
0:42.0	And I've noticed that as people spent more time talking about the news in remote times
0:46.0	on Slack, which is arguably the worst place to talk about the news, there's been a backlash
0:51.9	brewing.
0:53.9	Companies are cracking down on political debates at work.
0:56.7	Maybe the most famous recent example is Basecamp, where co-founders Jason Fried and David
1:01.9	Hanemer Hansen, who goes by DHH, took the extreme step of completely barring what they
1:06.6	called societal and political discussions on their company-wide communications platform.
1:11.7	Other companies have done something similar.
1:13.9	Why do they care so much?
1:15.3	What's the downside of debate or discomfort at the office?
1:18.8	My guests today have answers.
1:21.1	Different answers.
1:22.1	Liz Wolf is a staff editor at Reason, and Jonathan Nightingale is an author of the article
	...

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