Wait, an employer can’t fire an employee on FMLA leave caught on Facebook on vacation?

Actual firing Facebook photo

Suppose you have an employee who takes FMLA leave for rotator-cuff surgery. Let’s say during said FMLA leave, you discover that the employee is vacationing on a Caribbean island. And, further suppose that you discover this employee’s island vacay via his own public Facebook posts, which included photos of him on the beach, posing by a boat wreck, and in the ocean. Or, more accurately the employee’s co-workers saw the photos and ratted him out to management.

So, what do you do?

2nd Circuit holds that it’s perfectly okay for an employee to curse out his boss on Facebook (NSFW)

It’s been two years since the NLRB determined that section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act protected an employee’s profanity laced Facebook rant simply because he ended it with a pro union message. I held out hope that the court of appeals would see the folly in the decision and send a clear message to employees and employers that such misconduct remains a terminable offense. NLRB v. Pier Sixty (2nd Cir. 4/21/17) [pdf] dashed that hope.

Communicating with employees is key when a PR crisis strikes

Lots has been said about how United Airlines mishandled violently dragging a passenger from an overbooked flight. And none of it is good. Yet, make no mistake, how United CEO Oscar Munoz communicated with his company’s employees immediately following the incident did not do anything to make it any better.

United CEO email to employees obtained by ABC's @Shahriar44R: "there are lessons we can learn from this experience" pic.twitter.com/N1TbohuRc3

— Michael Del Moro (@MikeDelMoro) April 10, 2017

Social media may distract employees, but should we care?

I posted this from work yesterday

Earlier this week, I asked when employees will learn that online comments can, and will, be used against them. There is another half to the workplace-social-media equation—employers, who have the task of regulating their employees’ use of social media, which happens more and more in the workplace.

Yesterday, Cleveland reporter Olivia Perkins discussed a recent survey, which found that nearly 90 percent of employees access personal social media accounts at work, to varying degrees of distraction.

When will employees learn that online comments can, and will, be used against them?

Business in the front, party in the rear

I’ve recently given two different speeches discussing the balance between an employee’s privacy and an employer’s right to know. One of the themes of this talk is that social media has irreparably blurred the line between one’s personal persona and one’s professional persona, and employees best be careful with that they say online, because employers are watching and holding them accountable.

Case in point? Buker v. Howard County (4th Cir. 3/20/17) [pdf].

What’s good for the goose … NLRB protects employee’s Facebook post critical of his union

It won’t take much searching through the archives to find posts discussing the NLRB’s protections for employees’ Facebook posts critical of their employers (here, for example). Protected speech under the NLRA, however, cuts both ways. Section 7 not only protects anti-employer comments, but also anti-union comments. Thus, it would make sense that the NLRB would conclude, as it recently did in International Union of North America, Local Union No. 91 [pdf], that section 7 protects an employee who posts on Facebook comments critical of his labor union.

On the news: Hyman on reckless employee tweets and our new President

Last Thursday morning I received a call from Mike Brookbank, a reporter for WEWS, our local ABC affiliate. “I saw your quotes on Money.com on how to post on social media about President Trump without losing your job. I’m pitching a similar story for tonight’s news. Care to be interviewed?”

Cleveland Clinic doctor feeling ill after anti-vax blog post stirs trouble

A wellness physician at the Cleveland Clinic is in hot water following his blog post on Cleveland.com, in which he argued that parents avoid vaccinating their children. The doctor, Daniel Neides, is the medical director and chief operating officer of the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute.

In his post, he attacked flu shots for children and questioned the safety of childhood vaccination schedules, citing a debunked link between vaccines and autism. His byline used the Cleveland Clinic’s logo and identifies him a Cleveland Clinic physician.

Is social recruiting discriminatory?

Yesterday, I noted that the EEOC is examining the impact of “big data” on how employers reach employment decisions.

Looking at an issue and doing something about it, however, are two entirely different animals. I wonder what business the EEOC has looking at this issue at all. The EEOC’s mission is to eliminate discrimination from the workplace. Certainly, there is no claim that neutral data points intentionally or invidiously discriminate based on protected classes.

Regulating social media at work is a Sisyphean task

According to Ajilon (as reported by BenefitsPro), American employees spend 140 per year (or an average of 33 minutes per day) on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social networks. Aggregated across all employees, the survey estimates this personal time costs employers $192.4 billion each year.

These numbers, however, merely beg the questions — (1) should you care and (2) what can you do about it?

Free Speech, Social Media, and Your Job

One of the biggest misconceptions that employees hold is that the First Amendment grants them free speech rights in a private workplace. Quite to the contrary, the First Amendment right to free speech grants private-sector employees zero constitutional rights or protections.

Today, I bring you a guest post by Ellen Gipko of HubShout, which takes a deep look at this important issue, with a special focus on online speech and social media.

Court permits use of employee’s own racist Facebook posts in race-discrimination case

I read with interest this morning’s post on Eric Meyer’s Employer Handbook Blog, entitled, Court says employee’s Facebook page on race stereotypes is fair game at trial. The post discusses a recent federal court decision which permitted an employer to impeach at trial a race-discrimination plaintiff with her own racial Facebook posts.

Your employees are social media-ing at work, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it

A recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center confirmed what I have long thought. Your employees are using social media a work — 77 percent of them. And I believe even that number is low.

http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/06/22/social-media-and-the-workplace/pi_2016-06-22_social-media-and-work_0-01/

Don’t forget about confidentiality when training your employees on social media

I’m not getting Snapchat. Maybe I’ve finally found a social channel that doesn’t fit me. Or, maybe I’m just too late to the game. Or, maybe with Twitter, and LinkedIn, and Facebook, and Instagram, and this blog, I don’t have the time or attention for one more social channel.

You know who does get Snapchat? Apparently some staffers of Australia’s Labor Party, who snapped some screens of their party’s confidential campaign strategy.

NLRB judge protects the lone wolf in Chipotle social-media firing decision #RaganDisney

I spent last Thursday and Friday in Disney World. It wasn’t a pleasure trip, although Epcot was toured during some down time. I was invited to speak at this year’s Ragan Social Media Conference, which, I have to say, was one of the best organized and produced events I’ve ever attended. It was a day-and-a-half of cutting edge information on using social media for marketing and PR. My session covered how employers can protect their brands from employee social-media missteps. It’s always fun to watch a room full of non-employment lawyers’ mouths gape when I start talking about the NLRB.

So, to anyone out there who was at my session, Chipotle Services LLC, decided earlier this week by an NLRB judge, is mandatory reading.

The case involves an employee fired by Chipotle after he took to his personal Twitter account to voice his displeasure about the state of his wages and other working conditions at Chipotle. For example, in response to a customer who tweeted “Free chipotle is the best thanks,” the employee replied, “nothing is free, only cheap #labor. Crew members only make $8.50hr how much is that steak bowl really?” Another, directed at Chipotle’s communication director, concerned a lack of pay for snow days.

The NLRB judge had little trouble concluding that Chipotle had fired the employee for engaging in protected concerted activity: speech about his wages, benefits, or other terms and conditions of employment between or among employees.

I agree that the NLRA protects tweets about wages and days off. Pay attention, however, to how this judge defines “concerted”, as it is becoming apparent that one employee, voicing his concerns to about work on social media, without any engagement from co-workers, is sufficient to constitute “concerted” protected activity:

Kennedy’s tweet concerning snow days was directed to Chipotle’s communications director but visible to others; Kennedy’s other two tweets were in response to customer postings, and likewise visible to others. All these postings had the purpose of educating the public and creating sympathy and support for hourly workers in general and Chipotle’s workers in specific. They did not pertain to wholly personal issues relevant only to Kennedy but were truly group complaints. I conclude that Kennedy’s postings constitute protected concerted activity.

In other words, as long as an employee is addressing a group complaint, the activity is concerted, regardless of whether any other employee engages.

Earlier this year, I predicted the breadth of the NLRB’s coverage of “concerted” in social-media cases:

If, as the Board suggest, employee intent is the measuring stick for whether a lone employee’s activity is concerted, then any employee’s solitary social-media post can be considered concerted merely by the employee stating an intent to initiate or induce group action. And, since social media is inherently social (i.e., group in nature), doesn’t this test suggest that all such activity is concerted.

So, we have another social media case in which an employee triumphs over an employer based on a liberal interpretation of NLRA protections. Fear not employers, for this case has a silver lining. According to Jane von Bergen of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the employee has offered to accept food vouchers in lieu of back pay: “You cannot deny that their food is delicious, but their labor policies were atrocious.” If only every case was that simple to resolve.

Court rejects customer’s claims based on harassing Facebook posts by employees

Consider the following scenario. An employee makes offensive posts on his personal Facebook page about one of your customers, which include the following:

“I seen Maurice’s bougie ass walking kahului beach road … nigga please!”

A number of other employees comment on or like the post, including a comment to “run that faka over!!! lol.”

When the customer learns of the posts and comments, he complains. You investigate and fire the offending employees.

Case over, right? Not so fast. The customer sued the employer for negligence relating to its supervision, retention, and training of the offending employees.

“Lady Murderface”, Yelp, and the National Labor Relations Act

By now, you’ve likely heard about the employee fired by Yelp for her very public blog post directed at her former employer’s CEO, criticizing her $24,000 annual salary. Here’s a particular biting excerpt:

I wonder what it would be like if I made $24,000 more annually. I could probably get the headlight fixed on my car. And the flat tire. And maybe even get the oil change and renewed registration — but I don’t want to dream too extravagantly. Maybe you could cut out all the coconut waters altogether? You could probably cut back on a lot of the drinks and snacks that are stocked on every single floor. I mean, I could handle losing out on pistachio nuts if I was getting paid enough to afford groceries. No one really eats the pistachios anyway — have you ever tried answering the phone fifty times an hour while eating pistachios? Those hard shells really get in the way of talking to hundreds of customers and restaurants a day.

Guest Post: Social Business and HR, Part 2

By Mike Wise

First, thanks again to Jon Hyman for the chance to write on a different but related topic – Social Business. As I mentioned in Part 1, I’m finding that a surprisingly high percentage of HR folks have not yet tapped into the incredible power of the Social Web. Perhaps this series will be helpful, at least at a high level. Feel free to question or comment in the Disqus form at the end of the post.

In Part 1 of this 3-part series on Social Business, the subject was Online Reputation Management. In this Part 2, the focus will be on Social Business and Internal Communications. We will finish the series in Part 3 with a look at the 3 R’s - Recruiting, Recognition, and Retention and how Social Business amplifies those efforts.

Professionalism, social media, and the workplace

An employee was recently terminated because of this post on his personal Facebook page:

#ElderlyChristmasSongs and age discrimination

Yesterday, #ElderlyChristmasSongs trended on Twitter. Yes, it’s meant to be a joke, and, yes, some were even funny. Now here’s the part where I get to play Employment Law Scrooge.