Business Opportunities Weblog

What Can Angry Workers Say Online?

By on October 4, 2011 in News

Social media has given companies the opportunity to reach out to potential customers. However, it has also given angry employees a place to vent their work-related frustrations.

Workers – on and off the clock – are taking to their Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts to complain about everything from jerky bosses to rude customers to slacking co-workers to crappy company policies. There’s even a cottage industry of rant sites for disgruntled workers cropping up on the Internet such as Jobitorial.com. The knee-jerk reaction from most employers is to fire the worker.

“Everyone is trying to figure this out,” said Nancy Cleeland, director of public affairs for the National Labor Relations Board. Social media sites have become the office water cooler, a place where people hang out, float ideas and air their job complaints. But as Cleeland noted, “the audience potentially is so much bigger.”

At the moment, technology is ahead of employment law. Employers are being sued when their workers post photos of minors on porn sites from company computers. They’re being sued by the Federal Trade Commission for allowing employees to peddle their products without disclosing that they work for the company. They’re also being sued when they fire workers who rant about their jobs on social media sites. They’re being sued even when they have social media policies.

But the findings are going both ways – in favor of employees and employers.

“Both parties need to be careful with what they do online,” said Mark Neuberger, a management-side labor lawyer with Foley & Lardner in Miami. “There’s no direct easy answer to what’s allowable.”

Photo by Jason Empey

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Angela Shupe has added 5,783 posts to Business Opportunities Weblog.

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  • http://n.a. Cindy Hawkins

    I for one would be pleased to see the growth of Internet law, in the shape of law firms that deal with Internet crime and fraud, and the new social media issues that use of the Internet has forced us all to deal with. I think some kind of legal parameters should be considered, though what form they will take I cannot imagine. I am not a lawyer, only a net user, and have been shocked at the bad language I see, the breaches of privacy, information which might be libelous or unethical in some way, etc. On the one hand, the net can be a remarkably effective way to elicit support, get information, voice anger, expose an injustice in the workplace, communicate with others throughout the globe. But doesn’t that carry an implied responsibility? It should. Though at this point, I think it’s a work in progress.

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