The National Labor Relations Board has recently begun warning employers that restrictions on employee use of social media may violate labor laws for both union and non-union employees. This is because the 1935 Wagner Act generally protects the right of employees to talk to each other to discuss employer conduct, wages and working conditions, so-called “concerted activity.” According to legal experts cited in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, name-calling plain and simple probably isn’t protected, but more than a 100 employers have recently been accused of improper application of social media policies as it relates to employee comments online. The NRLB has so far left a number of areas unclear such as the relevance of an employee posting a rant from a workplace computer, but it seems clear to us that this is another case in which employers need to be very cautious about censoring or firing employees for anti-company or anti-supervisor statements. The NLRB may yet deem that a posting on Facebook by someone with workplace colleagues as friends constitutes de facto “concerted activity.” This is just another area in which social media has opened up a new avenue for potential reputational damage and a further reason why handling your “talent” well has become a critical brand strategy.
Tags: concerted activity, employee rants, social media, Wagner Act
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