I work for an insurance agents company, it has approximately 40 offices, recently the company decided to franchise all the offices and they started a quick process to sale all the 40 offices, this created immediately rumors and comments among the employees whom fear to be fired in any moment, in fact some rumors talk about some positions that will be closed and people fired. As a logical human defense mechanism people have started to speak negative about franchising process creating a rarefied atmosphere.
The company management team trying to be one step ahead called to their department manager to a meeting, they speak several topics but one of them was a dramatic sentence: if they detect a person saying negative things about the process they’ll fire that person in the moment.
Is legal restricting what you can speak at your work? Is it legal in this case?
I appreciate any help

