Occupational Health & Safety: Employers wondering how far they legally can go in monitoring employees' social media activity should be cautious now, keeping an eye on both the National Labor Relations Board and proposed legislation in statehouses and Congress, says Steven W. Suflas, a labor and employment partner with Ballard Spahr LLP and managing partner of its New Jersey office.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Social Media Minefield
Occupational Health & Safety: Employers wondering how far they legally can go in monitoring employees' social media activity should be cautious now, keeping an eye on both the National Labor Relations Board and proposed legislation in statehouses and Congress, says Steven W. Suflas, a labor and employment partner with Ballard Spahr LLP and managing partner of its New Jersey office.
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I have always been very surprised by the laws that do and do not exist to protect online privacy and free speech. Perhaps it is largely a generation gap between those that grew up with the Internet and those that did not. I don’t believe that it has taken this long for legislation to start protecting privacy and freedom of speech on the Internet. One example of new legal protection highlighted in this article is a part of the National Labor Relations Act that protects any complaint about employment or workplace standards made by two or more employees. This could seriously affect the amount of power that employees have to discuss and change workplace conditions over social networking websites. It is also good to see that legislators are beginning to fight the absurd practice of demanding social networking login information from job applicants.
It's reassuring to see that outrage over some employers' demands regarding social media has spread from the blogosphere to lawmakers' desks. Asking for social media login credentials is analogous to searching employees' persons or homes, and is must therefore be an immediate concern of any organization trying to protect workers' rights.
I hope that once either legislation is passed or a concise summary of why existing legislation would cover is found that it is spread to jobseekers and workers so that they can refuse employers' requests without fear of losing the job.
its really interesting that National Labor Relations Board is tackling this topic. i can't count the number of times that i have heard ‘don't put anything online that you don't want to be public’. this is something that i think is abused the most things we put online or really what our friends and acquaintances put online are being used as measures of character. there are certain rights to that material that is really fuzzy because its in the ether of the internet. the fact that the National Labor Relations Board is the one trying to impose limits is intriguing because they do have a fair bit of say over companies but i think this is a much bigger issue. you could arguably even apply the copyright issues of youtube and other online video providers to enter into that conversation.
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