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Moulton woman says she lost job for sporting Kerry sticker on car

By Clyde L. Stancil
DAILY Staff Writer
cstancil@decaturdaily.com · 340-2443

MOULTON — Lynne Gobbell never imagined the cost of a John Kerry-John Edwards bumper sticker could run so high.

Gobbell of Moulton didn't pay a cent for the sticker that she proudly displays on the rear windshield of her Chevrolet Lumina, but said it cost her job at a local factory after it angered her boss, Phil Gaddis.

Gaddis, a Decatur bankruptcy attorney, owns Enviromate, a cellulose insulation company in Moulton.

Gaddis did not return phone calls from THE DAILY about the alleged Thursday firing.

Gobbell said she consulted a lawyer, but then changed her mind about going to see him. She said she has cried about the incident and must do without income for three weeks while the state unemployment commission decides if she is eligible for compensation.

Gobbell said she was averaging 50 to 60 hours a week on the plant's bagging machine.

"The lady there (at the unemployment commission) said that she has never heard of a firing like this before," Gobbell said.

Gobbell gave this account:

"We were going back to work from break, and my manager told me that Phil said to remove the sticker off my car or I was fired," she said. "I told him that Phil couldn't tell me who to vote for. He said, 'Go tell him.' "

She went to Gaddis' office, knocked on the door and entered on his orders.

"Phil and another man who works there were there," she said. "I asked him if he said to remove the sticker and he said, 'Yes, I did.' I told him he couldn't tell me who to vote for. When I told him that, he told me, 'I own this place.' I told him he still couldn't tell me who to vote for."

Gobbell said Gaddis told her to "get out of here."

"I asked him if I was fired and he told me he was thinking about it," she said. "I said, 'Well, am I fired?' He hollered and said, 'Get out of here and shut the door.' "

She said her manager was standing in another room and she asked him if that meant for her to go back to work or go home. The manager told her to go back to work, but he came back a few minutes later and said, " 'I reckon you're fired. You could either work for him or John Kerry,' " Gobbell said.

"I took off my gloves and threw them in the garbage and left," Gobbell said.

Though she is unemployed and uncertain if she will get her job back, Gobbell said, she doesn't regret her decision to keep the sticker on her windshield.

"I would like to find another job, but I would take that job back because I need to work," she said. "It upset me and made me mad that he could put a letter in my check expressing his (political) opinion, but I can't put something on my car expressing mine."

She was referring to a flier that she said Gaddis placed in employee envelopes to remind them of the positive impact that President Bush's policies have had on them. An employee at the plant who would not identify himself confirmed the contents of the letter.

Gobbell provided a copy of the flier. It says:

"Just so you will know, because of the Bush tax (cut):

I was able to buy the new Hammer Mill
I was able to finance our receivables
I was able to get the new CAT skid steer
I was able to get the wire cutter
I was able to give you a job"
It further says:

"You got the benefit of the Bush tax cut. Everyone did."

Stuff like this has been happening all over the country since 9/11, and it's getting worse as the stakes fot the oval office is so high.

JUst a continuing example of how conservatives are bullying people into silence.

I proudly sport a Kerry/Edwards sticker on my car, and I will not lose my job over it.

This is all part of the "you either with us or with the terrorists" hysteria that the Bush Administration has put out there since 9-11.

Actually, a letter to the editor of the Toronto Star from an American in Michigan, showed the opposite of this story. Apparently, some women (whose fiance is fighting in Iraq) was driving back to Detroit through Canada with a "Support Our Troops" sticker on her car (which had Michigan plates). Now, here in Canada, there is rabid anti-Bushism (I hesitate to call it anti-Americanism) over the War In Iraq. This woman was apparently almost run off the road with several people in different cars screaming profanities at her and giving her the finger, etc. She arrived home in tears and pledged never to come to Canada again.

It's not just the US that is very polarized right now. Most of the the world is hoping that Americans vote for change on November 2. If it doesn't happen, you can expect harsh treatment for American tourists for another four years at least (this was supposedly happening at some of the Olympic venues in Athens as well to Americans cheering on their athletes).

A question: not speaking for yourselves, but in general, are Americans aware or evn care about the ill-will felt about them right now throughout the world, or are they generally oblivious (as they tend to be with most issues outside of their borders) and caught up in all the terror alerts, etc?

Cliff

A question: not speaking for yourselves, but in general, are Americans aware or evn care about the ill-will felt about them right now throughout the world, or are they generally oblivious (as they tend to be with most issues outside of their borders) and caught up in all the terror alerts, etc?

I'd say most who are aware of it consider it to be evidence that we're better than the rest of the world and that the rest of the world is just jealous.

Seriously.

Whenever the question of how other countries see us comes up, the response is usually dismissive. Hence the Republican "We won't seek a permission slip to defend ourselves" talking point. The opinion of other countries is just a hindrance to our greatness.

Ryan

Bumper Sticker Insubordination
A Kerry fan gets fired, and then hired, for her politics.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2004, at 3:30 PM PT

One of this column's various mandates is to keep track of people who get fired from their jobs solely for holding certain political beliefs. Firing a person because you don't like his or her politics runs contrary to just about everything this country stands for, but it is not against the law. My interest in this topic was stimulated a couple of years ago when I learned that my childhood friend Michael Italie, who sewed U.S. Navy jackets for Goodwill Industries in Miami, got fired for appearing on television as the mayoral candidate for the Socialist Workers Party, in which capacity he made some predictably provocative statements. Subsequently, I wrote about Bryan Keefer, who lost his job as a research assistant with the Service Employees International Union for writing an online column critical of the coinage, "Enron conservatives." In both of these examples, the extracurricular activities that caused offense were entirely unrelated to the fired person's job and were not performed, or even discussed, in the workplace.

The same is true of Lynne Gobbell of Moulton, Ala., who on Sept. 9 was fired from her job at Enviromate, a company that makes housing insulation, for driving to work with a Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker in the rear windshield of her Chevy Lumina. The person who did the firing was Phil Geddes, who owns the company and is an enthusiastic Bush supporter. (Although Gobbell hasn't done any proselytizing for Kerry at Enviromate, Geddes distributed a flyer to all Enviromate employees explaining why they should vote for Bush.) Here is how Gobbell related her story to Clyde Stancil of the Decatur Daily News:

"We were going back to work from break, and my manager told me that Phil said to remove the sticker off my car or I was fired," she said. "I told him that Phil couldn't tell me who to vote for. He said, 'Go tell him.' "

She went to [Geddes'] office, knocked on the door and entered on his orders.

"Phil and another man who works there were there," she said. "I asked him if he said to remove the sticker and he said, 'Yes, I did.' I told him he couldn't tell me who to vote for. When I told him that, he told me, 'I own this place.' I told him he still couldn't tell me who to vote for."

Gobbell said [Geddes] told her to "get out of here."

"I asked him if I was fired and he told me he was thinking about it," she said. "I said, 'Well, am I fired?' He hollered and said, 'Get out of here and shut the door.' "

She said her manager was standing in another room and she asked him if that meant for her to go back to work or go home. The manager told her to go back to work, but he came back a few minutes later and said, "I reckon you're fired. You could either work for him or John Kerry," Gobbell said.

"I took off my gloves and threw them in the garbage and left," Gobbell said.

The story was picked up by Daily Kos, a political Web log, and spread quickly around the Web. By this morning, Geddes, who has declined to comment publicly on the matter, had apparently had enough of the bad publicity. Through an intermediary, he offered Gobbell an apology and said she could have her old job back. But Gobbell said she wouldn't return without some written guarantee that Geddes wouldn't turn around and fire her once he was out of the spotlight. Then, late this afternoon, Kerry himself phoned Gobbell. "He was telling me how proud he was that I stood up," Gobbell told me. "He'd read the part where Phil said I could either work for him or work for John Kerry. He said, 'you let him know you're working for me as of today.' I was just so shocked."

Gobbell accepted Kerry's job offer, "so I reckon I'll be working for John Kerry." Kerry left it that someone from his campaign would call Gobbell to work out the details. Let's hope there's quick follow-through (I'll be checking!), because Gobbell told me she couldn't wait to tell Geddes that she had a better offer.

Although there's an excellent chance the Kerry campaign will flog (or perhaps already has flogged) this story in the press, I should emphasize that it did not tip me to Gobbell's story. By sheer coincidence, I happened to call Gobbell while she was on the line with Kerry, and got a busy signal. When I called back a few minutes later, Gobbell explained who she'd just been speaking with. In a political campaign, I should note, it's entirely appropriate to hire somebody based on that person's politics.