business
Accord reached in Facebook dispute
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted Feb. 21, 2011
The National Labor Relations Board has announced that it reached a settlement with a Connecticut ambulance service that it claimed illegally fired an employee for comments made on Facebook.
The NLRB's Hartford regional office issued a complaint against American Medical Response of Connecticut after it dismissed an employee for making derogatory comments about her boss on Facebook. The NLRB argued that the employee's Facebook posts were a protected activity because the employee was discussing terms and conditions of her employment.
The employee at the center of the dispute posted comments about her boss after she was denied union representation to help her prepare a response to a customer's complaint.
The board said the ambulance company has overly broad rules in its handbook regarding blogging, Internet posting and communications among employees. It also said the company illegally denied union representation to the employee.
Under terms of the settlement, the company must revise its employee handbook to reflect policies that do not improperly restrict employees from discussing their wages, hours and working conditions with co-workers when not at work. The policy must state that it will not discipline employees for engaging in such activity. The company promised it would not deny union representation and that employees would not be disciplined for requesting union representation.
When the case was made public last fall, attorneys advised physicians to revisit social media policies to prevent similar situations at their practices.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2011/02/21/bibf0221.htm.
