According to reports in the United States, since the election of Donald Trump, companies in Silicon Valley have given employees paid holidays to go out and demonstrate on political issues.
The Christian Science Monitor reported that Facebook gave employees a day off on May 1 to protest against the Trump government's immigration policy. It joined companies such as Comcast and Patagonia, the clothing and equipment manufacturer, who have given their employees free time for political activity for years.
The San Francisco Chronicle interviewed Adam Kleinberg, chairman of a small marketing company in San Francisco that gives its employees two days off each year for political activity: "Democracy is a participatory institution," he explained. "It's not just something that happens every four years when You have a candidate in the race."
Does Kleinberg expect the political activity he sponsors to work against Donald Trump? His answer was not unequivocal. "Of course I was motivated because I think Trump is a person with dangerous ideas and a low moral character," Kleinberg explained, "but I also did not want to be a hypocrite and prevent people from expressing any opinion they might hold. Through an organized demonstration, citizens have the opportunity to apply pressure when government laws or bodies do not really express the people's will in the laws they promote."
However, according to the website Milo, the Traction company offers its employees a choice from a list of proposed activities and requires employees to state in advance what activity they are planning.
The company suffered negative publicity and criticism due to this policy. Many citizens have long believed that leftist-owned companies are encouraging the many demonstrations that have been taking place in the United States since Trump's election, which include organized riots at Republican political events, some of which are violent, and in which demonstrators claim that Trump is not a legitimate president ("Not my president").