> Does that mean someone who continuously runs for office is de facto impossible to fire?

No, it means you can't fire them for the fact that they are a candidate.

You can choose to fire them for the fact that (say) they don’t show up repeatedly to their scheduled work. You could even deny them time off they want to use to campaign when they have time off on the books, too, so long as you did so because of legitimate business needs where you would have denied a vacation request even if it was not for the political campaign (if the trier of fact in a lawsuit challenging it finds that you did so because of the campaign, that's a problem.)

I don't know why people equate “you can’t fire people for X” with “you can’t fire a person if X”, but only for certain values of X. Like, you can’t fire a person for their gender, but no one thinks that means you can’t fire a person if they have a gender.

No more than someone with a disability. Which isn’t that difficult if there is an obvious issue not related to the disability.

What gets you in trouble is not being consistent in applying rules and standards. If you fired one person for a violation but you let other people get away with it, it becomes arbitrary.

My country has laws similar to this, they mostly side with the employee but judges are not blind to a clear abuse

I wouldn't say so, no. At least, nothing you quoted would suggest that.

Nothing about firing someone would intrinsically prevent them from running for office, unless you fired them for running for office.

It is a conflict of interest, sure. But it shouldn't disqualify her completely from her current job or elected office. She would cut ties if she won the election, which there are only slim chances of.

o_o what's odd is it's usually the other way around. they start in government, do favors for the private sector (ie declare oxy safe and nonaddictive), and then get a sweet no-show/no-work gig with full bennies after you 'retire' from government.

It isn't clear that the law in question makes exceptions like you're making. Did you read somewhere that it does?

Also, people who work in politics are allowed to run for office, and people who run for office are allowed to work in politics, so what specifically do you see as a conflict of interest? Remember, the company claims this wasn't about politics, so your answer can't involve politics.