Should we or should we not respect the person in charge. This is a tough question since when you work beneath someone's direction, respect is implied. Yet if we blindly follow the lead of chiefs and administrators who may or may not make the best choices, we run the potential of supporting negative and even harmful efforts.
As I consider this issue, I think that it's critical that we do respect leaders, but that we also speak up against actions that harm, hurt, or hate others. So if a leader in any way is promoting efforts that are hateful, harmful, or hurtful, we need to be courageous enough to speak up. It's a lot easier to speak up if we belong to a union or organized group of workers that share similar intent as it is always easier to speak up as a group than an individual.
Last night as I watched a painful movie about the Holocaust, I thought about the many who followed leaders who promoted hate, harm, hurt, and unbelievable carnage. These Nazis were not born as hateful children, but signed on to a power base without good regard for that group's beliefs and efforts. And as they continued down the destructive, hateful path of the Nazi regime their work became more and more deadly, evil, and hurtful to others, themselves, and their families and other loved ones. It was a trail of terror, destruction, evil, murder, and inhumanity--one of the world's most deadly and terrorizing episodes. Thanks to the good work of so many Jewish people and sympathizers from all faiths and walks of life, this story has been kept alive to teach us all about what can happen if we don't stand up, speak out, and act against hate, harm, prejudice, and carnage of any kind.
So on one hand if your chief is a respectful, good person then respect is the right action, but if your chief acts in any way against your rights and humanity or the rights and humanity of others, you have to have the courage to speak up and act against such words and actions before another trail of tragedy begins. Onward.