Technology and Workers Rights Essay Example for Free

Technology and Workers Rights Essay Whether it is over a cup of coffee with friends at the local Starbucks, in a crowded lunch room at work, or on a coworker’s Facebook wall, employees are talking about their jobs, especially to one another. New trends in modern technology, such as the recent explosion and popularity of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, continue to constantly change the way employees can engage, share, and voice their work related concerns. According to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an independent government agency charged with mediating disputes between management and labor unions, this new trend has become an important reminder that sometimes harsh criticism by employees is protected by federal law at work, at home, and now on the Internet. Although social media provides another forum for employees to exercise their protected collective activities, such as share complaints or address concerns to improve working conditions and pay, employers must make sure newly developed social media policies give due consideration to employees’ rights that are protected under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The New York Times recently published that under the NLRA, â€Å"employees have the right to join together, with or without a union, to exercise their protected collective activities to share complaints, address concerns with employers, and negotiation to improve their working conditions and pay.† The NLRA also protects employees’ rights to discuss work-related issues with other employees that was first made into federal law back in 1935. Basically, criticism of an employer’s practices about wages, hours and working conditions is protected no matter how it is expressed, as long as it is ‘protected, concerted activity.’ The NLRA says that â€Å"protected† is any statement about wages, hours or working conditions, and â€Å"concerted† means the employee’s statements were engaged in with or on the authority of other employees. Workers need to be aware that statements made through this type of forum have to be directed to other employees or to the company on behalf of the employees – not just personal gripes. However, employers need to understand that it doesn’t matter where or even how the employee makes these statements as long as it is â€Å"protected† and â€Å"concerted†. As popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter continue to influence the way co-workers communicate on the job and outside the workplace, companies feel they do have the right to legally monitor their employees’ activities online, in order to ensure a most professional and lawsuit-proof workplace. â€Å"Bosses can penalize employees for what they deem as â€Å"inappropriate† post, videos and pictures on social-networking sites, even if a worker uses those sites during non-working hours†, states Lewis Maltby, author of the workplace rights book, Can They Do That? Though the most frequently cited justification for workplace monitoring is to prevent employee theft, sabotage, and violent incidents on the job, companies have also voiced concerns that they run huge risks with employees leaking â€Å"trade secrets† or other confidential and proprietary information about their people, products, and services to outside competitors online. In his book, The Naked Employee, author Frederick Lane, a workplace expert on the impact of technology and society, points out â€Å"employers are increasingly more interested in hiring employees who will not expose the company to additional costs and liability, while not hiring employees who will increase their cost through negligence, misconduct, and wrongdoing† (28). But the biggest threat companies are now beginning to fear is the line between an honest online discussion that may lead to defamation of a company, which can be blurry in certain situations, making it even more difficult to distinguish the truth. Although computers have revolutionized employees’ workplaces in ways that earlier generations could not have imagined, U. S. companies, such as retail giant Wal-Mart, may realize they are in catch-up mode with modern technology, due to new challenges brought on by the recent explosion of social media sites. The NLRB found that employers facing this growing trend need to establish social media policies that do not infringe on workers’ rights. For example, the NLRB learned that one company mandated it’s employees to stay away from controversial topics such as religion and politics, and adopt a professional tone in the use of their social media, while other companies had gone so far as to blatantly forbid their employees from posting anything potentially misleading about the company online, and even told their employees to be careful about â€Å"friending† other co-workers on Facebook. The Washington Times reported that in June of this year along, â€Å"the NLRB also found that six of the seven corporate social media policies it examined included provisions that failed to pass regulatory muster, proving to be too vague or intrusive on their workers’ rights to free expression online.† NLRB General Counsel, Lafe Solomon, cited other companies, including DIS H Network and Target, have also maintained similar corporate social media policies that at least partially violated provisions of the NLRA. This delicate balance became strikingly apparent in a recent case filed with the NLRB by a non-union employee fired from a non-unionized emergency medical response team. The employee filed a charge with the NLRB against the company for wrongful discharge after losing her job for posting negative comments about her boss on Facebook. According to the employer, the posting violated a company policy that prohibits employees from making negative remarks on the Internet about the company or its employees. However, the employee claimed that the policy and her discharge from the company violated the NLRA by denying employees their right to engage in the protected, concerted activity of sharing complaints about working conditions with fellow workers. The case settled before an actual hearing with the company agreeing to revise its policy to eliminate any social media restrictions on its employees that could be in violation of the NLRA. In the initial complaint against the company, the NLRB cl aimed the employer’s policy was overly broad and prohibited employees from writing personal personal depictions of the company online without permission or posting any disapproving comments. Cases such as these should serve as a reminder to every employer that the NLRA applies to unionized and non-unionized workers alike. But in this increasingly technologically savvy world, the larger questions looming for both employers and employees alike should be what are the boundaries of an employee’s privacy, and who is more entitled to draw that line. â€Å"Companies should protect themselves and their employees by setting clear expectations on proper social media use in the office,† says Dean Debnam, CEO of Workplace Options, a public policy polling company that surveys American workers. â€Å"However, employers must be cautious of how far they take these regulations. While social media polices are not a problem, survey results show that employees do not support any intrusive measures, such as demanding access to passwords.† As new avenues of self expression created by social media and newly developed technologies evolve, employees should definitely be mindful as to what constitutes a legitimate basis for termination. Companies’ rights to dismiss employees at will, unless that is some statute, like the Labor Act, prohibits a particular act of retaliation, should not be taken lightly. In this tough economy where companies feel that image is still everything, even applicants who have applied for jobs may find out later they have been denied employment, due to messages communicated to their friends on social networking sites they thought were private and password protected. The bigger notion that’s scary for some employees is that once you are hired, you may find that your employer has taken drastic steps to make sure that access to your privacy extends well beyond company working hours. Lane agrees that workplace monitoring is a major problem, because â€Å"technology makes it possible for employers to gather enormous amounts of data about employees, and often goes far beyond what is necessary to satisfy safety or productivity concerns (3-4). Few rights are as deeply treasured by American citizens as their freedom of speech. As the Internet and social media sites becomes more mainstream within the workplace, employers must find better ways to draft and implement employment policies that protect the company from things such as legal disputes and charges of discrimination, while at the same time making sure employee’s rights under the NLRA and other federal employment laws are protected and preserved. Works Cited Buddenberg, Roger. â€Å"Can Workers Vent on Facebook? – Lawyers’ Tips on Social Media for Workers.† Omaha World Herald (NE) 10 Oct. 2011. Academic Search Premier. Web. 30 Oct. 2012. Devaney, Tim. â€Å"Tweeting Workers ‘Friended’ by NLRB; Memo Warns of Restricting Rights.† Washington Times 26 June 2012. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 Sep. 2012. Kim, Susanna. â€Å"NLRB Backs Workers Fired After Facebook Post Ripping Boss.† ABC News, 10 Nov. 2010. Web. 4 Dec. 2012. Lane, Frederick S. The Naked Employee: How Technology is Compromising Workplace Privacy. New York: Amacom, 2003. Print. Petrecca, Laura. â€Å"More Employers Use Tech to Track Workers.† USA Today. USA Today, 17 March 2010. Web. 6 Sept. 2012.