Can an employee be fired for their political opinions?

With election season in full swing, employers are urged to monitor political disagreements in the workplace. With an issue so emotive as politics, and given the current climate, HR leaders need to be vigilant when it comes to monitoring employee activity. HRD spoke with Mike MacLellan, partner at CCPartners in Brampton, Ontario, who advised how employers should confront conflict at work – and revealed whether or not an employee can be fired for their political opinions.

“Any just cause termination for misconduct has to be really serious,” he HRD. “It has to be something that the employment relationship can't tolerate. For example, if an employee just wants to wear a button that says they support a particular political party, they couldn’t really be fired for that. It’s effectively impossible to be a just cause to termination. Unless, however, the context is you're an employee of a particular politician or a political party. In that regard, they might have knowingly entered into an intolerable conflict of interest.”

The issue doesn’t seem to be voicing political opinions, but rather how they’re voiced. It’s fair to have an opinion, everyone does, but if an employee is being knowingly aggressive or disruptive in how they voice that opinion, then HR should take action.

“The inappropriateness lies in their manner,” added MacLellan. “Employees can’t go around yelling at colleagues because they have differing political views – nor can they harass or assault teammates. In some workplaces it could be considered a little taboo, a bit risqué, to voice political opinions - but certainly not something that you would expect somebody to be fired for.”

Political views have a way of seeping out – be it in the workplace or outside of it. Just recently, Trump supports who stormed the Capitol faced consequences in the professional lives, with some employees actually losing their jobs over the scene. In Canada, actions outside of the workplace can come back to bite employees – but only if the actions are extreme.

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“This falls under off duty conduct,” explained MacLellan. “The legal principle that gets thrown around is that an employer is not the custodian of an employee's good conduct. What that means, in practice, is that an employer typically cannot discipline an employee for their off-duty conduct, unless the off duty conduct somehow brings the business into disrepute.

A prime example of this was seen a couple of years ago, when a news reporter was interviewing a soccer who made a vulgar remark. It was live and people were offended. It was super quick and easy to track down the person and their employer – which just so happened to be a big public sector employer.

 “He was a high earner within the organization and the incident had a serious impact on the employer. As such, the company was able to impose discipline. Essentially, if the misconduct impacts the employer’s brand or reputation in some way then they can take action – but it would have to be pretty extreme.”

“It really depends on a case-by-case basis. I don’t think the fact that the disagreement is political should change how HR addresses a workplace disagreement. Whatever HR would do in similar circumstances of co-worker conflict should still apply. It depends on the circumstances of the dispute. You might want to remind employees to keep your discourse civil and respectful in the workplace. That’s the main issue.”

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