Four years ago, Laurence Malin held no grudges against McLean Hospital. All he wanted to do was to write down a few of his co-workers' suggestions for improving working conditions at the Children's Center. In return for his initiative, the hospital suspended him. Since then, Malin has been fighting a complicated legal battle against McLean to assert his rights to speech inside the workplace.

Laurence Malin never expected to spend years of his life fighting a complicated legal battle with McLean Hospital. Malin settled in the Boston area eight years ago--after living and traveling in 40 countries throughout Europe, African and the Middle East--intending to continue his studies into various topics of interest to him.

A self-taught man, Malin is well-read and at one time expected to study at Oxford. His apartment reveals his nature: over 2000 neatly arranged books line the walls, while organized files contain his many manuscripts.

In 1974, Malin started work at McLean, an affiliate of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), one of the largest employers in Massachusetts. For two years, his night shift at the Children's Center allowed him to read several hundred books a year while caring for the nine children in the center's blue unit.

Malin soon learned that many of his co-workers on the day and night shifts were dissatisfied with working conditions at the Children's Center of the mental hospital. Employees were leaving in droves each year--amounting to a complete turnover of the direct care staff about every eight months.

Problems at McLean generating employee discontent formed a long laundry list--

* Inadequate in-service education on handling emotionally disturbed children, which the nurses and child care worker felt was needed;

* No activities program for the children, who consequently found less desirable ways of releasing their pent-up energies, such as attacking the staff with chairs; and,

* No air conditioning in the building, which was originally designed with the expectation that air conditioning would be installed.

So in 1976, Malin suggested that the workers write their ideas down, and he began to prepare a report to the hospital delineating employee grievances and providing constructive suggestions for improving working conditions at the Children's Center.

On one of his days off--a few days after distributing a questionnaire to his co-workers to elicit their responses--the hospital informed Malin that he was indefinitely suspended without pay for initiating the report. Certain that the hospital had no right to take such action, he filed his first charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) protesting his suspension. Four years, 11 NLRB cases and nine feet of documents and miscellaneous papers later, Malin is still battling McLean.

Malin's 11 NLRB cases epitomize a growing number of instances in which workers use provisions of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to attempt to guarantee employee rights.

David Ewing, executive editor of the Harvard Business Review, wrote one of the few texts on workers' rights, called Freedom Inside the Organization. Ewing observes that in a society which proclaims substantial freedom for its citizens, the denial of important rights by corporations and even governmental agencies is an anomalous and gaping "black hole."

Ewing documents how such fundamental rights as freedom of speech, the ability to object to immoral, unethical or illegal orders from superiors, security and privacy, choice of outside activities and associations and due process are constantly abridged in the work-place. Malin's long legal battle with McLean is a model example of this broadening concept of workers' rights and reveals the limitations of the current system in guaranteeing these rights.

After Malin filed his first charges with the NLRB, the hospital felt moved to reinstate him. He withdrew the charges against McLean in return for regaining employment and receiving back pay for the five weeks he was suspended. Evidently fearing Malin's ability to rally support among the workers in his unit, the hospital reassigned him to the adult section, which is separate from the Children's Center. By now, Malin had immersed himself in an independent study of labor law; he knew he had the legal right to seek reinstatement in his original job. More charges were filed with the NLRB.