Bill Clinton "privatized" my government agency in 1996, and I became an employee of a private investigations firm, doing the same job I had done before. The company was supposedly employee-owned, but the Clinton cartel brought in outside people as our upper managment, and our new managers did not accept any criticism from employees. They came up with a system of mandatory overtime, and worked it out so we were paid half an hour's pay for every hour of overtime we worked (supposedly we were salaried, so the "time" was taken care of and all they had to pay was the "and a half"). I was active in opposing the overtime policy, and critical of our new management in many ways. One day, my supervisor confronted me with a long list of every anti-management remark I had ever made by e-mail. The one that really ticked them off is when I signed something as if it were a sales slogan - "Joe Offer, Sacramento - check our low overtime rates." It really was frightening to find out I had been monitored so closely. My boss, who had been a friend for 25 years, was forced to give me a reprimand.
But we got back pay for time-and-a-half, and now I'm retired...and I think my boss was pleased that I stood up for the rights of employees.
Good luck, Jim.
-Joe Offer-