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Emergency Dispatcher Fired For Facebook Drug Joke
kaptink writes "Dana Kuchler, a 21-year veteran of the West Allis Dispatch Department, was fired from her job for making jokes on her Facebook page about taking drugs. She appealed to an arbitrator, claiming the Facebook post was a joke, pointing out she had written 'ha' in it, and noting that urine and hair samples tested negative for drugs. The arbitrator said she should be entitled to go back to work after a 30-day suspension, but the City of West Allis complained that was not appropriate. Is posting bad jokes on Facebook a justifiable reason to give someone the boot?"
Probably not, but by the time it's sorted she'll be bankrupt
Of course it's justifiable -- we live in the age of corporate fear. There's no longer a need for anything to actually happen -- all that's required is for a corp to assert "fear of [whatever]" (litigation, disparagement of business, loss of competitive advantage) for them to justify any extension of control over their employees.
Just look at the way the bastards try to intrude into your home by telling you you'll be fired if your housemate doesn't stop smoking within 90 days. Why??? -- "fear of increased insurance costs".
Craven sons of bitches.
True enough. Just because you're free to say anything you want, doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea to spout off without discretion.
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
If you take the question as: "Is posting snarky content on Facebook about evading drugs testing sufficient grounds to disqualify you from your job, and hence set you up for justifiable dismissal?", the answer is obviously: "No.".
If you take the question as: "Is posting snarky content on Facebook about evading drugs testing on part of an emergency dispatcher sufficient ground to disqualify said dispatcher from her job", the answer would shift to: "Probably not".
However, if you were to take the question as: "Suppose you are a manager in charge of emergency services. Suppose you catch one of your employees, in a fairly critical position too, writing snarky stuff on Facebook about evading drugs testing. Is that a risk to you? Would it make YOU look bad if she did anything wrong in her job (however unrelated to actual substance abuse)?", then the answer is a definite: "Yes". For that reason said manager will face the choice of (a) actually looking into the matter, forming a personal judgement, and exposing himself and his career tot potential damage just to be fair to an employee or (b) simply firing her and getting a replacement. Which option do you think would make more sense from a CYA perspective and would also make said manager look good, competent, ruthless, and dedicated?
There are no bonus points for coming up with answer (b). So that particular dispatcher is hereby dispatched. Such is the power of new electronic media, classical all-American CYA considerations, and age-old guilt-by-association thinking.
In this case, the City of West Allis is a "government", not a "business", and its emergency dispatchers are government employees, not private employees in some sort of dispatching industry. The First Amendment has been held to apply to state and local governments since 1925, and applies to some extent even when the government is acting as employer.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Are my first-amendment rights applicable?
No, as they protect you from the government, not from private entities.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Yep, the city made out like a bandit and got a convenient excuse.
This also happens to be exactly why I keep my Facebook free of anyone from work. People seem to think that they need to "friend" anyone they met even briefly and then wonder why it gets them into trouble. You can't be fired for things you said on your Facebook page if your page is set to private and nobody from work can read it. It's that damned simple.
You know, we wouldn't even have this problem if we didn't try to prohibit Americans from so many things...
We brought this on ourselves with our own rhetoric (not just right-wing religious crap that results in things like the war on drugs, legalized discrimination against gays, and a steady erosion in women's rights, but right-wing libertarian rhetoric about the supremacy of the market for solving all the world's ills and making businesses more powerful than democratically elected governments, and left-wing political correctness that had people fired for speaking controversially about certain topics).
Indeed, we wouldn't have this particular problem if people weren't propagating moronic notions of "property rights" trumping every other constitutional right, including that of free speech (and freedom of association). If freedom of speech applied, as it was intended, everywhere, for everyone, then you couldn't be fired for saying something stupid, be it to your colleagues, your flatmate, your co-workers (outside of business hours), or whoever, in whatever medium.
But we've lost track of that--now people, especially in the United States, promote the notion that "speech has consequences", which is true, but not the way they mean, and not like this. Getting fired for bad jokes is not a "natural consequence" of telling bad jokes any more than landing in prison for saying something the government (or a powerful business leader with friends in government) doesn't like. Both are an artifice to suppress speech and, in this particular case, an excuse to replace one person with seniority with someone else who is no doubt cheaper and more compliant. Scare people into compliance AND replace an experienced worker with a newbie who will work for peanuts: two birds, one stone.
Thanks to libertarian group-think, we are no longer citizens with constitutional freedoms and rights, we are merely peasants, living and eating at the sufferance of our corporate masters. And you know what? Most of us are too busy arguing vehemently for the rights of our masters to do whatever they want in the name of "it's their property, so no 'government' (read: constitutional) constraint should ever apply. Ridiculous, but the country is lousy with people who think exactly that, consequences be damned.
"Love is hate", "no is yes", "war is peace", and we live in a free society. Just so long as you don't actually try to exercize those freedoms against the wishes of your corporate master.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Wait, do you mean *on the job* freedom of speech, or only when you go home?
If the former, that would certainly change the nature of *my* job in fundamental ways.
I work at a public library. At work (and in the presence of the public), I'm not supposed to express an opinion on basically *anything* (well, anything of substance; I can talk about the weather). Religion, politics, history, education, science, you name it. This goes to extremes in my line of work. When a patron asks me for books on how the fall of Rome resulted in the creation of angels (yes, this is a real example), I'm supposed to try to help them find books on that, without comment. In practice this means books on angels and books on the history of Rome. I know very well that the books on the history of Rome won't say anything about the creation of angels and the books on angels won't say anything about the fall of Rome, but I cannot *tell* the patron this. I have to keep a straight face while I help them find the books.
So my job would be pretty radically different if on-the-job free speech were legally mandatory.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
My insurance company made us sign an affidavit that all covered persons were non-smokers. If we did not sign they would increase our employee premium by 40%.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
You're right. As much as I hate what's happened to her, this can't be a black & white situation.
What if an employee at an abortion clinic spends her evenings and weekends attending anti-abortion rallies? What if she spends her time organizing those sorts of rallies?
What if a secret service agent assigned to keeping the President alive spends his personal time popping off about how much he hates the President?
Two examples. Extremes, yes. But they show that there are circumstances where private actions are so radically inappropriate for an employee that continued employment is... inadvisable. I'm not saying her case is one of those, but as much as it rubs me the wrong way, I can see the shape of the argument behind her dismissal.
"Oh no... he found the