A US company that fired an employee after she criticised her boss on Facebook has agreed to revamp its policies to ensure they do not restrict workers’ rights.
Ambulance service American Medical Response of Connecticut reached a private settlement with employee Dawnmaire Souza, after the US National Labor Relations Board, a US federal agency that oversees union elections and investigates claims of unfair labour practices, took up her case in November. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, however.
The NLRB had claimed that AMRC had illegally dismissed the emergency medical technician for describing her supervisor in unflattering and vulgar terms because the posting constituted “protected concerted activity” under the National Labor Relations Act. The Act allows employees to discuss the terms and conditions of the employment with co-workers and others.
The Board also alleged that the firm denied Souza access to union representation during an investigatory review.
It said of the settlement: “The company agreed to revise its overly-broad rules to ensure that they do not improperly restrict employees from discussing their wages, hours and working conditions with co-workers and others while not at work, and that they do not discipline or discharge employees for engaging in such discussions.”
AMRC’s policy had prohibited staff from depicting the company “in any way” on social networking sites on which they posted a picture of themselves. The company also promised that staff requests for union representation would not be denied in future and that personnel would not be threatened with disciplinary action for requesting it.
But lawyers were disappointed that no legal precedent had been set to help guide employers when devising social media policies. James Hays, a partner at law firm Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton in New York told the Workforce Management publication that he had hoped to obtain an administrative law judge’s decision on the matter.
“Did her comments meet the criteria for protected concerted activities or did it amount to water cooler talk? We don’t know,” he said. “The company made modifications to its policies, but what are they and what in the policy was problematic to the Board? Unless they issue a copy of their revised employee handbook and someone gets a copy of the old one and does a comparison, we’ll never know.”
