Federal Government Approves of Facebook Boss Bashing

[DeadProxy]

This is why you dont have your boss on your facebook friends list

 

[Baresark]

Folks are proclaiming 'freedom of speech!' like they do when someone bans them from a message board. The thing needed to be understood here is that the first amendment and the entire constitution is a limit on GOVERNMENT. It's 'Congress Shall Make No Law' not 'My Boss Shall Not Fire Me'. If you think it's an awesome idea to force private industry's manners through law, go ahead and keep thinking that but you'll have to make a new law to do so because the First has no business there. Of course, then you'd have to totally violate the first amendment to do so but it's not like anyone cares about that anyway.

If you're on someone's private property, they can say anything they want to you and compel you to leave. You're not being forced to be there and you willingly entered into an arrangement when you took a job, you should watch your conduct and be aware of the repercussions.

As for the people that defend it otherwise, I'm guessing it wouldn't be okay for an employer to openly berate and insult his employees in a similar manner to this?

The thing is, if they were to not protect her in this situation, they would be allowing her freedom of speech to be taken away from her. It's not simply saying the government can't, it's stating a right given by fact of existence, that you have. A right is nothing if you cannot exercise it. It is also governments role to protect this right anyway, not just from itself. There is also laws prohibiting you from firing someone for such reasons though. Your not allowed to fire someone unless it's due to poor work performance. The woman could have all the animosity in the world toward her boss, but if she took direction and did what she was told to do, they still don't have grounds to fire her. Your bosses like or dislike towards you does not have any bearing on your work, unless it's actively preventing you from doing your job. It's the same for employees, doesn't matter how much you hate your boss and what you say to your friends behind their back, if you are doing your job as it was described to you when you took it, then you are not in fact allowed to be fired from it without an extraordinary situation. Such a situation would include economic trouble, but then there is an order to who gets fired.

As a side not, what was the boss thinking, union people can get away with murder. Geez.

 

[Baresark]

Haha, lets face facts, she probably didn't like her job anyway. I wish her all the best and think she should probably grow a brain.

 

[thepyrethatburns]

As has already been said, the only reason that she won this is because the company didn't pursue this. Freedom of Speech has been very clearly defined through the courts as not applying to private entities. (This sort of thing comes up, at least, once a year on Gamefaqs when someone gets banned and yells the same thing.) If the company had pursued this through the courts, she would have lost.

On the plus side though, this settlement frees up the boss to use his own Facebook account to detail her work performance as well as his own opinion of her. When she inevitably does get fired, she might find out that it would have been better for her to just accept "lesson learned" on social media rather than taking the court route.

 

[Wandrecanada]

You can't punish someone for whatever they might say about whomever or do in their private life.

But that's the point, it wasn't private. What she said was published on Facebook for all to see. I'm totally against the ruling in this case. She might as well have said it to his face, and slagging your boss off to his face is as good a reason as any to get fired.

Couldn't her comments even be considered defamation of her boss, and make her susceptible to getting sued herself?

I am of course saying this under the assumption that she did post it openly, as the wording in the article implies. If it was said in a private message then I would change my position.

What you're talking about is called libel and it's up to the person and not the company to sue. If she was disparaging the company it would be different but she targeted the person.

This is a pretty clear first amendment rights violation.

 

[Weaver]

I'd say he's totally a scumbag if he creeps facebook profiles of his employees all night in case they said something bad about him.

 

[newguy77]

Don't most employment contracts have some sort of clause stating that they can fire their employees at any time for any reason just to keep grey area stuff like this from happening in the first place?

 

[Weaver]

I'd say he's totally a scumbag if he creeps facebook profiles of his employees all night in case they said something bad about him.

you realise most big businesses do this at least a small amount. Its frighteningly obvious when people are lying about being sick etc and all they need to do is look at a status. Whilst its a shady and unethical practise perhaps, but calling him a scumbag for something which is fairly widely done is a little off-base. He wasn't looking through her page for her lifestory, HE SAW HER STATUS thats not even remotely "creeping". Thats he fault for being a bit dim end of.

You assume she has her boss as her friend then? Could it not just be she had her profile to public?

For the record, my page is private and closed off. If my boss wanted to friend me I would decline.

 

[Jack Macaque]

Unions save the day once again.

See if this woman was mouthing him because she just don't like him then yes you are a fool, but if he say was harassing her or something like that then that's a different story, I believe there was something about that awhile back about some boss advancing on an employee and she mouthed him off on FB, he fired her then she swung a massive lawsuit at the company, it was up here in Canada I think.