Feds settle case of woman fired over Facebook site

[Andy Nguyen]

WASHINGTON – 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.
The National Labor Relations Board sued the company last year, arguing the worker's negative comments were protected speech under federal labor laws. The company claimed it fired the emergency medical technician because of complaints about her work.
Under the settlement with the labor board, American Medical Response of Connecticut Inc. agreed to change its blogging and Internet policy that barred workers from disparaging the company or its supervisors. The company also will revise another policy that prohibited employees from depicting the company in any way over the Internet without permission.

Feds settle case of woman fired over Facebook site - Yahoo! News

 

[bigbadwolf]

Facebook users have to be realistic and realise intel agencies and corporations have unfettered access to FB. Waxing indignant about changes in privacy policies at FB is a waste of time.

 

[DominiConnor]

I will repeat one of my standard warnings that your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles should be up to the same standard as your resume. You wouldn't put drug or alcohol abuse on your CV would you ?

I forecast that the result of this case is that my reassuringly expensive lawyers will be briefing their clients that they should not mention that they used Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Thus the net result will be quite small. Some large banks have several people whose only role in life is to cruise social media to check on current and new possible employees.
If you don't get a job, it's very hard to know why, especially in the USA. In Europe it's slightly different since you can require companies to give you any records they have on you.

BBW is being cynical, but not cynical enough. The US government requires security clearance for jobs that in other countries would need little more than checking they had the right number of heads.
If you have clearance, you then have access.

That means, as we saw with Wikileaks that any info that goes into the government can come out anywhere, at any time. I reckon I could get most of Facebook's data into a rucksack, albeit a heavy one.

I have heard the rumours about Facebook, being funded by the Feds and I'd give 70/30 they are not true.

My reasoning is thus:
1) Homeland security just ain't that smart. This is an organisation whose first head of IT turned out to have made up his degree. This was found out after he started the job.

2) Getting data on people isn't hard, I do that for a living, trust me on this. The hard work is understanding it. There are >500 million Facebookers, emitting large volumes of stuff with a really quite crap signal to noise ratio. I know for a fact that someone I've drunk with knows a tier 1, grade A, Al-Qaeda terrorist. That's in no way impressive, since the link is via a school and at least 100,000 people are at that 'distance' from him. In fact it would be suspicious to find someone who isn't two steps away from a very bad person.

3) The data hasn't leaked out, which as above is odd. This leads to the alternative hypothesis that HS/CIA/NSA or EPA really do get the data, but ignore it.
It embarrasses them to have spent all that money on something they can't use, so like the final scene from Indiana Jones, this treasure trove of data is in a really secure vault.

 

[bigbadwolf]

BBW is being cynical, but not cynical enough. The US government requires security clearance for jobs that in other countries would need little more than checking they had the right number of heads.
If you have clearance, you then have access.

There are >500 million Facebookers, emitting large volumes of stuff with a really quite crap signal to noise ratio. I know for a fact that someone I've drunk with knows a tier 1, grade A, Al-Qaeda terrorist. That's in no way impressive, since the link is via a school and at least 100,000 people are at that 'distance' from him. In fact it would be suspicious to find someone who isn't two steps away from a very bad person.

I'm just being realistic: no need to be cynical. Of the 500m FB users, only a subset are of interest to the authorities. The rest post pictures of their new puppies or where they went on their holidays. And this subset of troublemakers -- dissidents, contrarians, etc., -- are tightly networked. Show me a man's friends and I can say a fair bit about the man himself. For a dissident or contrarian a safe working assumption is that his internet activity -- forum postings, emails -- is being at least sporadically monitored. Remember you've got all these intel people with absolutely nothing to do except this sort of make-work.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

A reader asks: I have an employee who has gone onto Facebook and griped about my company. Can I institute company policies that prevent employees from doing this and terminate their employment them if they continue?

Answer: It’s a frustrating and embarrassing situation for a business to see its employees assailing it via social media platforms – but penalizing them for it is a tough, if not impossible, task.

The debate over the First Amendment rights of the employee to post their negative feelings about a company and the rights of the company to protect its private informa tion used to skew in the employer’s favor. That has changed, however, and today the federal government counsels against restricting employees’ Internet chatter, regardless of its nature, because it may violate their First Amendment rights.

That message was delivered in a recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) case. In November 2009, NLRB filed a complaint against American Medical Response of Connecticut (AMR ) (NLRB v. American Medical Response of Connecticut). In this case, AMR had a social media policy which did not permit employees to depict the company in any way whatsoever over the Internet without company per mission, and which also included a Blogging and Internet Policy that prohibited employees “from making disparaging, discriminatory or defamatory comments when discussing the Company or the employee’s superiors, co-workers and/or competitors.”

An AMR employee requested union representation at an internal investigation that the employee believed would result in disciplinary action. She was then threatened by her supervisors with disciplinary action for requesting representation. The NLRB, in a press release, said that after work on her home computer the employee posted negative comments about the supervisor on her Facebook page. Co-workers joined in and showed their support of her.

The employee was suspended and later terminated because the company viewed her Facebook postings as violating the company’s social media policies.
The NLRB investigated and asserted that the employee’s Facebook postings constituted protected concerted activity. Generally, a “concerted activity” is an activity in which two or more employees discuss their working conditions. That sort of protection has its roots in the right of free association. The NLRB also determined that, by prohibiting the employee’s concerted activity, the company’s social media policies were illegal.

The case settled this month. According to NLRB, AMR has agreed to revise its social media policies so that they do not improperly restrict employees from discussing wages, hours and working conditions.

That said, employers may still institute social media policies that do not interfere with the employees’ protected activities. The NLRB case does not appear to bring into question agreements employees may have to maintain the non-disclosure of confidential information and/or trade secrets. Nor does the decision address and does not appear to prohibit non-disparagement clauses in separation agreements.

This recent NLRB settlement is groundbreaking for social media law. If you’ve got a social media policies, it’s probably a wise idea to review it carefully with your company’s attorney to see if they run afoul of the NLRB’s expansive view of concerted employee activity.

http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/21/can-you-fire-someone-for-disparaging-your-company-on-facebook/

 

[MSFHQ]

Adjust the privacy settings or shut off your wall. Don't add coworkers to your friends list and don't upload pictures of yourself acting stupid. Pretty simple.


I also have no doubt that the government utilizes google and facebook when they want to find information on people. American citizens have themselves to blame for this crap.