Dive Brief:
- Pinboard, a bookmarking site, tweeted its 38,000 followers urging them to reveal their employment contracts, says Recode. The tweet’s purpose was to mobilize tech workers into taking action against Pres. Donald Trump’s policies.
- Maciej Ceglowski, Pinboard developer and anti-Trump activist, confirmed in an email to Recode that he was asking for the employment contracts, but didn’t give any other details. However, the tweet said lawyers sympathetic to Pinboard’s anti-Trump agenda could use the contracts to “strategize future action.”
- Employment contracts usually address salaries and other forms of compensation, confidentiality, union negotiations and non-compete agreements.
Dive Insight:
Politically mobilizing workers through social media isn’t a new concept. But urging followers to reveal their employment contracts in order to organize is an unusual step. It’s not clear how the content of an employment contract could be used to rally workers against a political figure, especially since those contracts have been under a microscope in the courts as of late.
Most employees are at-will hires; their organizations can fire them for any or no reason at all. In turn, workers can end their employment at any time.
Many employees – if not most – don’t have employment contracts, which often are reserved for executives. The question then is: How many of Pinboard’s followers have contracts to reveal or the nerve to risk breaching their own confidentiality as employees by responding to the tweet?