Filed under: News
In today's social media-driven world, it seems like a permanent electronic record is being kept of everything. Our incessant need to keep everyone informed of what we're doing (and thinking) can often backfire however. Facebook updates have been used to catch criminals. Tweets have been used as evidence in divorce proceedings. And of course, you can't get away with badmouthing your boss online, and expect to keep your day job.
In what labor officials and lawyers view as a ground-breaking case involving workers and social media, the National Labor Relations Board has accused a company of illegally firing an employee after she criticized her supervisor on her Facebook page.
This is the first case in which the labor board has stepped in to argue that workers' criticisms of their bosses or companies on a social networking site are generally a protected activity and that employers would be violating the law by punishing workers for such statements.
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The labor relations board announced last week that it had filed a complaint against an ambulance service, American Medical Response of Connecticut, that fired an emergency medical technician, accusing her, among other things, of violating a policy that bars employees from depicting the company "in any way" on Facebook or other social media sites in which they post pictures of themselves.
The case involves Dawnmarie Souza, who had to prepare a response to a customer's complaint about her work. Ms. Souza was unhappy that her supervisor would not let a representative of the Teamsters, the union representing the company's workers, help prepare her response.
Ms. Souza then mocked her supervisor on Facebook, using several vulgarities to ridicule him. She had written, "love how the company allows a 17 to become a supervisor" - 17 is the company's lingo for a psychiatric patient.
The labor board said that her comments "drew supportive responses from her co-workers" and led to further negative comments about the supervisor.
[Note to self: make sure my boss isn't following me on Twitter.]
I'm somewhat on the fence about this one. Souza apparently made the Facebook posting on her own time and on her own computer, not while working. Having a conversation with friends about work, after work is as American as apple pie, and such conversations are often critical of employers. We've all done this.
While you could certainly question how smart it is to badmouth your boss on Facebook, maybe that's the only way Souza felt she could get the incident off her chest. Since many of her co-workers were friends, it only makes sense that they'd pile on. It's not the wisest of ideas to put this out in the (semi)public domain, but it's just a sign of the times. I'm sure we've all put things online that in retrospect don't seem like such a good idea.
Then again, referring to your boss as a psych patient probably isn't all that smart either. Did she deserved to be fired for this? According to the courts, no.
Either way, this is food for thought for all of us. Watch what you say, you truly never know who's listening (or reading).
Question: Should Souza have been fired for talkin' smack about her boss on Facebook, or is what you do on your own time your own business?
Jay Anderson is a freelance writer from Washington, DC, whose work has been featured in the Washington Post and on NPR. When he's not busy talking smack here, he runs the award-winning blog AverageBro.com. Follow him via Twitter @AverageBro.