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Feds Settle Case of Woman Fired Over Facebook Posts
Mr.Intel writes "Employers should think twice before trying to restrict workers from talking about their jobs on Facebook or other social media. That's the message the government sent on Monday as it settled a closely watched lawsuit against a Connecticut ambulance company that fired an employee after she went on Facebook to criticize her boss in 2009."
No just kidding I fucking love my job.
TBH, I think employers in the States are a little presumptuous over the lives of those who work for them.
Meddling with your employees only turns them against you. Stop it.
If you are worried about what people will say about you over social networking sites, then it's time to have better policies that make sense to everyone, and consider your employees first, but this doesn't cover disloyalty, so if you work for Pepsi or Coke and you drink the other company's products on your social media you could still be fired.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
So if one of my employees writes somewhere that he thinks I'm a moron or he insults my wife or spreads nasty rumors about my sex life I just have to keep happily giving him my money?
That's crazy.
Yes, that's exactly what this states. Because his private conversations in a private place, or even his public conversations in a public place, on his or her own time, are absolutely none of your business.
From a professional standpoint.
Just like if one of your employees went to a bar after work and was ranting about you. You would have no justification in firing them for their behavior off the clock like that.
You are paying for your employee's time, knowledge, and skills. You have to earn their loyalty and respect.
I didn't think you were right at first, but it turns out you are!
The legal arguement in this case was:
Lafe Solomon, the board’s counsel, said: “This is a fairly straightforward case under the National Labor Relations Act — whether it takes place on Facebook or at the water cooler, it was employees talking jointly about working conditions, in this case about their supervisor, and they have a right to do that.”
That act gives workers a federally protected right to form unions, and it prohibits employers from punishing workers — whether union or nonunion — for discussing working conditions or unionization.
Additionally, this is a federal labor law, so it applies even in states with At Will employment laws.