The Chinese province of Nebraska?

Posted on by

Xi JinRicketts?

The equivalent of an economic drone strike took place a few blocks northeast of our Omaha office.

Roy Jones was an hourly customer engagement employee at the Marriott Reservation Center in Omaha. As reported in The Wall Street Journal and Quartz,  he liked a tweet by a Tibetan group congratulating Marriott for listing Tibet as a country.  

As a result of liking a the tweet, the Chinese government ordered Marriott to suspend bookings at 300 hotels in China for a week. Mr. Jones was also terminated. Matt Hanson in the Omaha World-Herald reported, Jones was under traiend and over stressed when he liked the offending tweet. Jones had little idea that liking the tweet would be offensive to the Chinese.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping made news recently becoming the Chinese leader since Mao Zedong to rule for life.  Back in 2016, I wrote a post pointing out Jinping’s increasingly authoritarian tendencies and his crackdown on employee-rights lawyers in China.  I never thought the authoritarian Jinping regime would extend its reach into what writer Matt Stoller  sarcastically described on Twitter as the “Chinese province of Nebraska.”

Nebraska’s junior senator, Ben Sasse, has made a pet issues out of the emerging threat of cyber-attacks from foreign powers. I would wonder what he thinks about a foreign power, China, having the power to fire one of his constituents?

Hanson concluded his article by concluding that Jones’ termination wasn’t right. I agree, but employment at-will allows employers broad legal protections when it comes to firing employees. In essence, employers have Jinping-like powers in the workplace. But when a foreign dictatorship has the power to fire an American worker, legislators and judges should re-think employment at-will or think about creating exceptions to that legal doctrine.

The offices of Rehm, Bennett, Moore & Rehm, which also sponsors the Trucker Lawyers website, are located in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska. Five attorneys represent plaintiffs in workers’ compensation, personal injury, employment and Social Security disability claims. The firm’s lawyers have combined experience of more than 95 years of practice representing injured workers and truck drivers in Nebraska, Iowa and other states with Nebraska and Iowa jurisdiction. The lawyers regularly represent hurt truck drivers and often sue Crete Carrier Corporation, K&B Trucking, Werner Enterprises, UPS, and FedEx. Lawyers in the firm hold licenses in Nebraska and Iowa and are active in groups such as the College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers, Workers' Injury Law & Advocacy Group (WILG), American Association for Justice (AAJ), the Nebraska Association of Trial Attorneys (NATA), and the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA). We have the knowledge, experience and toughness to win rightful compensation for people who have been injured or mistreated.

This entry was posted in employment law and tagged , .