Employee Activism

I found this article and laughed a little. It is sad that the discrimination has had to come down to this at all, but apparently it has. Employees that have been fired or could not find jobs because of their freedom of expression have taken the discriminators to court. Employers are a little more willing in some places because the cost of rejecting someone that meets qualifications is just too much.

“There is a lot of employee activism,” said Laurel A. Van Buskirk, a New Hampshire lawyer who has written extensively about body modification and the law. “And because the cost of defending these cases is quite big, it makes employers a little uncomfortable when they start delving into that sphere.”

"One result of “employee pushback,” Ms. Van Buskirk said, is that the shape of that sphere has begun to shift. Defining what the courts in the Cloutier case called a “neat, clean and professional” workplace image becomes more challenging when you consider that in 2006, a Pew Research Center survey found that 36 percent of people age 18 to 25, and 40 percent of those age 26 to 40, have at least one tattoo."


This model has the word "float" on her neck. While it is a very special and symbolic tattoo for her, it is not sitting to well with a few potential employers. Is it really that bad? Didn't think so.