FACE- TO- FACE CONFRONTATION

Last year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) sued the American Medical Response of Connecticut Inc, because of a disagreement of why Dawnmarie Souza, a union employee, had been fired. The Connecticut-based ambulance company claims it fired the worker because of complaints about her work, while the employee claimed she was terminated because she criticized her boss on Facebook. I feel either scenario is cause for firing but, probably, those who are employers will agree and those who are employees will feel the opposite.


The NLRB filed the suit arguing the worker's negative comments were protected speech under federal labor laws.

According to the Associated Press, “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. Both policies interfered with longstanding legal protections that allow workers to discuss wages, hours and working conditions with co-workers, the board said.”

So a company has a policy stating that employees should not disparage their employer and it turns out to be illegal. One would think it would not have even been necessary to set a policy forbidding vilifying the boss because an employee would know as a matter of good conduct to only speak civilly about the person signing their paycheck. Think of the triumphant glee of the workers now that they know they can mock and ridicule the boss and suffer no consequences.

I looked back at my old employee file from when I had a company and had forgotten that I had fired three people, at different times, for personal use of the company e-mail system. In all three cases, the employees had been on vacation and I had checked their company e-mail accounts to make sure that a client was not trying to reach them. I guess I was lucky that none of them had gone to the NLRB.

Chuck Cohen, a labor and employment lawyer and former NLRB member during the Clinton administration was quoted in the AP story saying,

"The line can go over to disloyalty or disclosure of truly confidential information. This is not without boundaries, but we just don't have a good sense yet of where the boundaries are."

So neither employers nor employees know exactly what is or is not allowed. I only know that if I had an employee who posted on Facebook an expletive filled rant against me, I would fire them. The NLRB be damned!