Gunman Kills 5 Co-Workers, Self [he'd been to "threat assessment counseling"]

LA Times ^ | 7/9/03 | Scott Gold and Lianne Hart

[Poohbah]

Anger management, indeed. Is Lockheed Martin unionized or something?

Extremely so.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

I dunno. I've seen outrageous comments on threads about workplace rules regarding behavior on race, and I am simply preemptively commenting on the issue, given what happened in Meridien.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Yeah, thats a benefit that could only happen in a CBA.

So in addition to nailing Lockheed to the wall, the survivors are going to drill the union, too.

[wimpycat]

Figures. Like they said in Cool Hand Luke, "Some men, you just can't reach." There's a line between job security and the personal safety of your other employees. I hope Lockheed changes its touchy-feely "progressive discipline" policy toute suite.

[robowombat]

This event will get endless media play as the perpetrator perfectly fits the media template for such events. An angry white male racist the perfect poster boy for endless prating on why horrible things like guns should be taken away from civilians and also how in general awful white males with un-PC attitudes are. Yep all males who favor such things as limited government, adherence to the Constitution as it is written and not as some judge wants it to be written, advocates of 2nd Amendment rights, all of you are going to be tarred with the brush of being just like this racist nut job. The media will love it. Now the case in Bakersfield where an assistant elementary school principal murdered five people including an infant, well that will just be reported in a minimal way and will not produce liberal whiners wringing their hands on TV over 'violence' 'white racism' and the need for 'common sense gun control'.

[El Laton Caliente]

What I’m wondering is where is the law suite against Lockheed Martin for NOT allowing concealed carry in their plant. By not allowing carry (and I’m assuming this because every large company I’ve worked at lately has rules against firearms) they have assumed responsibility for their employees’ safety AND PROTECTION.

If one or two employees in the first group had been carrying there would not have been the carnage.

[DoughtyOne]

Yes it does.

[Catspaw]

wimpycat, your company has a good policy.

I would've canned his butt the minute he showed up in the workplace with a KKK hood.

[from occupied ga]

Answer the question.

You first.

[from occupied ga]

Are you going to speak to the subject matter at hand,

What subject matter would that be? The loony at lockheed or the statist here on fr who doesn't like free speech?

[tomball]

If you own a business today, you can't just fire someone without fear of being dragged into court, regardless of how big or small your business is, or how right you are in firing someone for not doing their job and posing a threat to your company's existance.

If you fire someone like that without first offering him counseling, medical exams, etc., you could be subject to a law suit from the employee you fired for interrupting his livelyhood. If this guy belonged to a union, it is pretty much guaranteed that his boss could not fire him without "due process" under union rules.

Thanks to Clinton's reallocation of wealth via the courts, the business climate for anyone today is very hostile. Employers are having a tough enough time finding qualified people who want to work. This is regardless of how big or small your business is. The work pool has been contaminated by the breakup of the family unit, breakdown of moral values, and an uneducated generation saturated with a misbegotton sense of unearned self empowerment.

Based on personal experience, if you have ten employees, five of them will blame their employer and their coworkers for their personal woes, and have the potential to act upon it. The two out of ten employees will lie about their qualifications, not know how to do their job, but will expect you to pay them for doing it, and force their coworkers to cover for them. One employee out of ten will have out and out resentment for having to work for a paycheck. Two out ten employees may be loyal, good workers with uncommon sense, and intelligence. With odds like these, no wonder the big companies pool their resources and outsource their work to foreign countries where wages are half what they are in the U.S.

[wimpycat]

The loony at Lockheed AND the propensity of some people at FR who think it's OK to talk the way the loony did at work.

Free speech my ass. I suppose if some Ay-rab (or black or Indonesian) co-worker talked to you about how great it was to run those planes into those buildings and talked about how he'd like to kill the crusading infidel, you'd think he was merely exercising his free speech and shouldn't be penalized for it.

[Tijeras_Slim]

I think sending this guy to anger management training, diversity counseling, or any thing else of the like would have just pushed him closer to the edge.

[DCPatriot]

I'm shouting, "DOUBLE STANDARD"!

When that African-American kook started targeting white folk up in Pennsylvania, the press was silent on the fact that all the victims were Caucasian extraction.

...just an observation, that's all.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Y'know, if this was a thread about black empowerment, this sucker would be up to 250 posts by now.

[wimpycat]

If you own a business today, you can't just fire someone without fear of being dragged into court, regardless of how big or small your business is, or how right you are in firing someone for not doing their job and posing a threat to your company's existance.

We can, and we do. And we have had a couple of attempts to sue us, but they were unsuccessful. We've been challenged at the Employment Security Commission, and sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Sometimes it's worth it to pay unemployment to some poor employee with a volatile temper.

[kjam22]

And if Lockheed had fired the guy a few months ago for what he had been saying.... a thread here about that would have a few hundred posts from people arguing for his right to free speech. And arguing how Lockheed was violating the constitution and all sort of crazy notions.

It's not fair to blame Lockheed in this situation. It's a darned if you do and darned if you don't deal. (disclaimer: I own stock in Lockheed) :)

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Probably. Which is why you need to fire employees the first time they express negativity towards people of other races, sexes or religion in the workplace.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Hell, if that had been the case, there would be three simultaneous threads going at over 150 posts each on it by now.

This is pretty instructive.

[kjam22]

Probably. Which is why you need to fire employees the first time they express negativity towards people of other races, sexes or religion in the workplace.

So how do you define this negativity? If you say... "Gee Sally is really lousy at customer golf because she's a woman and can't play with the men".... does that get you fired? LOL