Over the past years, there has been an unending misguided GOP attacks on NLRB that little Americans have little knowledge about it but nearly all of them are affected by it. In one of the cases, the National Labor Relations Board decides to limit employer action over social media activity. This ruling on social media discipline puts employers in difficult situations. More often, employees have posted harmful speech about their employers and this has forced employers to walk a fine line between protecting themselves and respecting their employees. The national labor relations board consequentially formed the national labor relations act that limits how employees relate with each other and with outsiders. The board has also issued rulings that have serves to guide companies on what they can do or cannot do when it comes to disciplining employees on social media misbehavior (National Labor Relations Board, 2011).
In a case in 2010, salesperson Robert Becker wrote two Facebook posts on his employer on serving cheap foods. He was fired a week later but NLRB filed a complaint claiming his posts were protected (Kurtz, 2012). The law judge agreed to the saying the posts addressed working conditions and upheld the company’s decision to fire him. In another Facebook post, Becker posted pictures of an accident at a neighboring land rover dealership that was part of his employers group where a teen drove a vehicle down into a pond during testing. Along the pictures Becker wrote “this is your car n drugs” the judge issued a ruling again in fair of Becker and agreed that the online posts were protected by federal law and added that the land rover accident had nothing to do with his conditions of employment.
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It is easy to agree with the ruling primarily because the employee was addressing the poor client services that would hurt his commission and unaddressed terms and conditions of employment that were not clearly stated by the employer. The laws should be communicated effectively to both the employer and employees. The NLRB policies on social media are appropriate and should be implemented by all public and private employers.
On the other hand, the social media policy should also include employee protection policies from harassment. Employee performance appraisal policies and improved working condition policies. With implementation of these policies, poor employer-employee relationships will never be the same again. However, the NLRB has created fear in corporate America by protecting employees with disparaging online speech. The ruling involving Robert Becker clearly shows that there is a fine line between appropriate and inappropriate online speech.
- Kurtz, B. (2012, October 8). NLRB Upholds Employee’s Discharge in First Facebook-Related Decision. Mondaq Business Briefing. Retrieved March 12, 2015, from http://www.highbeam.com/
- National Labor Relations Board | NLRB. (2011, February 4). Retrieved March 12, 2015, from http://nlrb.gov/
