Judge Forces Employer To Rehire Workers Who Vented On Facebook

The modern workplace presents new legal problems

After a group of New Yorkers took to Facebook to complain about the non-profit they all worked for, the non-profit took action to rectify the situation — by firing the five discontent employees. They took their case to the National Labor Relations Board, and now a NLRB judge has ruled that National Hispanics of Buffalo has to hire the Facebook venters back along with back-pay.

Employers, take note. The NLRB has recently been outspoken about when employers can and can’t retaliate against employees over their perceived social media misbehavior. Private employers have to respect workers’ right to “protected concerted activity” — in other words, the right to talk among themselves about horrible working conditions — per the National Labor Relations Act. In the case of the New York non-profiteers, administrative law judge Arnold Amchan ruled that after-hours Facebook wall complaints about being over-worked constituted legitimate “concerted activity.”

After Mariana Cole-Rivera posted a status update about a co-worker who accused her of not doing enough for her impoverished clients, other co-workers chimed in to make comments such as, “What the f… Try doing my job. I have 5 programs,” “Tell her to come do [my] f***ing job n c if I don’t do enough, this is just dum,” and “I think we should give our paychecks to our clients so they can ‘pay’ the rent…(insert sarcasm here now).”

The defamed co-worker saw the messages (doh!) and passed them along to a supervisor. In firing the vocal Facebook users, the supervisor cited the company social media policy’s ban on cyber harassment of co-workers. This all took place in October 2010, and the non-profit has not since replaced the workers, instead distributing their tasks to others.

The judge decided that the heated Facebook conversation did not constitute harassment and that the non-profit erred in de-friending the workers. “Employees have a protected right to discuss matters affecting their employment amongst themselves,” wrote Judge Amchan in his decision [pdf], which orders the non-profit to rehire all five workers and make them “whole for any loss of earnings” suffered. As Inc. notes, this is the first NLRB case regarding social media use that doesn’t involve union workers.

Employees, while taking note of the fact that you do have a bit of protection from workplace firings over after-hours Facebooking, do also take note of the fact that this situation might have been avoided if these five had simply not friended the co-worker they didn’t like, and had their privacy settings such that she couldn’t see what they had written.

Related: When You Can and Can’t Fire Employees For Social Media Misbehavior

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The Battery-Saving Tips a Family Learned From Irene

In my suburban Connecticut neighborhood as well as other areas along the East Coast rendered powerless by Hurricane Irene, iPhones, Android phones and tablets were often the only means of connecting to the world beyond.

I got electricity back only last Sunday, a week after the storm. But Irene was a great teacher. I developed a number of power-saving strategies that I can use in other situations. And because battery power was so scarce, I was forced to identify the apps I truly needed, versus the ones that merely took up space on my devices.

The apps I relied on were Facebook, Gmail, SkyGrid and the weather-related apps, Weather+, MyWeather and the Weather Channel. (All are free on Apple and Android. Weather+ is Apple-only).

Games were more critical than I would have thought. They kept my children occupied at the height of their cabin fever, and the newest Apple hit, Jetpack Joyride ($1), quickly earned a place as the household favorite.

As Irene approached, SkyGrid, a customized news feeder, and the weather apps provided updates. People have for years been building home pages on Yahoo, Google and other Web sites with headlines from their favorite niche sites. SkyGrid reproduces that experience in a mobile format. The app’s user-friendly design and wide range of available feeds make it easier to build a customized page on your device than on a desktop computer.

When the app opens, the headlines load quickly and offer enough information for you to make a fast read-or-skip decision.

I appreciated that speed throughout the power failure, but also on the eve of the storm. Once all my back-up batteries were plugged in and the rest of the family was asleep in the one room that was outside the drop zone of falling trees, I opened SkyGrid for a final check of the news.

As the early reports of devastation in the mid-Atlantic states scrolled onto the screen, I knew our odd sleeping arrangement wasn’t paranoia.

The weather apps helped too, of course. I typically rely on MyWeather Mobile for forecasts and maps because it loads quickly and packs information into a more accessible format than the others on the market. But as the storm neared, I discovered that the Weather Channel offered more frequently updated maps, so I used that instead.

At 2:50 on Sunday morning, when the power failed in my neighborhood, our smartphone and tablet operations focused almost entirely on battery preservation. (We would regain electricity at around 8 p.m. the following Sunday.)

I reduced the brightness of every screen to its bare minimum, and, unless we were trying to call or text someone or use an Internet-related app, I put the phone into airplane mode. That prevented the phone from expending energy trying to maintain a cell signal.

I also closed music apps on the iPhone so they didn’t draw even a tiny amount of power by running in the background.

For Android, the process of shutting off your active apps is more complicated but more informative. Within the Settings section of some phones, check Battery Manager and Applications.

Before the storm hit, I turned on my Droid2 and, in Battery Manager, I saw that the Android System was responsible for 22 percent of my battery consumption, while the “Android OS” was responsible for 6 percent.

I then went to Applications, and from there looked up Running Services. I found a long list of apps I wasn’t using, as well as an option to close them.

I shut down Skype, eBay and others, and clicked back to Battery Manager to find the Android System down to 17 percent of my battery usage and Android OS down to 3 percent. Small differences, sure, but every minute counted.

During the power failure I relied on quick checks of SkyGrid for major news and Facebook for local news.

I know a few people who steadfastly refuse to “give into the pressure to join Facebook,” as they put it. But I am sure I knew well before them where my family could find hot showers and live electrical outlets. And the social connections provided a morale boost during the week.

Weather+ became my favored meteorological service. Unlike the more ambitious Weather Channel and MyWeather Mobile apps, Weather+ offers only a single-page view of the critical weather metrics for your area. Quick on, quick off, save the battery. That battery life was critical when our children were in the throes of video game detox. Jetpack Joyride, from the makers of Fruit Ninja, instantly leaped to the top of their list of favorite apps.

Yes, it resulted in an automobile joyride for the parents, because the car charger was often the only way to power up, but thanks to Facebook, we could at least point the car in the direction of a shower.

Quick Calls

If you have no musical training or instrumental expertise, but you own an Apple mobile device, you can still compose great music with TNR-i ($20), Yamaha’s reproduction of its Tenori On (which can cost more than an iPad ). …For those who never got enough of Tetris, a free version of the game is newly available on Android.

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