Facebook Firings: Feds, Managers Navigate ‘New Territory’ In Employment

WASHINGTON — The federal agency tasked with enforcing labor law has been fielding complaints from workers across the country who have been fired or disciplined for their work-related indiscretions on Facebook. Although the feds have taken up the cases of a number of jaded workers, others have essentially been told they have no one to blame for their workplace troubles but themselves.

That includes a Walmart worker who referred to his manager as a “puta” — Spanish for “whore” — on the social networking site after a spat over store displays, as well as a frustrated Illinois bartender who took to Facebook to air his desire to see the “redneck” patrons on the other side of the bar “choke on glass” as they drove home drunk.

The latter worker was canned and the former admonished for their respective online outbursts, and both appealed to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in hopes that their employers’ actions would be deemed unlawful. In both of those cases, the NLRB declined to issue complaints on the workers’ behalf, essentially saying the punishments were legitimate.

Like others that have preceded them, the two cases give workers, managers and lawyers a better idea of where the labor board stands in what is still a largely unexplored area of employment law. Although the NLRB deals primarily with issues surrounding union elections, the board has stood out in recent months as an agency willing to grapple with the question of when firing someone over a Facebook missive is fair game.

“The NLRB is the one making big splashy decisions, and people are drawing conclusions from those,” said Tina Hsu, a lawyer specializing in employment and social media at Shulman Rogers in Potomac, Md. “They seem to be trying to discern whether private or non-work postings are having an adverse effect on the workplace. That’s a difficult or blurry line to draw.”

“It’s new territory,” said Nancy Cleeland, spokeswoman for the NLRB.

Cleeland said the agency received “several dozen” pleas from fired or otherwise punished workers in the wake of a complaint the board issued last fall in a Facebook case. Because of the inundation, board officials have asked that the NLRB’s regional offices steer any Facebook cases toward the agency’s Washington headquarters, where the general counsel is currently drafting a report that will outline certain Facebook scenarios and how the board has acted upon them.

“It’s to give more guidance and to help employers understand where we’re coming from on these,” Cleeland said.

In the case from last fall, an employee at a Connecticut ambulance company was fired for knocking her boss on Facebook. “Love how the company allows a 17 to become a supervisor,” Dawnmarie Souza wrote, “17″ being an insider’s term for a psychiatric patient. The company, American Medical Response, had a policy that forbid employees from criticizing the company online. The NLRB took up Souza’s complaint, arguing in part that such a policy was too broad.

In its complaint, the board’s counsel said that Souza’s online griping amounted to “protected concerted activity,” for which, under American labor law, an employer cannot fire a worker. The agency basically argued that the Facebook chatter was no different from workers gathering around the water cooler to discuss working conditions. The case was settled in February, with American Medical Response agreeing to no longer punish employees for such online discussion.

The agency has applied that virtual water cooler argument to a handful of other Facebook cases, including that of a Chicago-area car dealership worker who was let go after criticizing his employer. The employee mocked management for serving hot dogs from Sam’s Club at an event designed to promote a luxe new BMW model. The NLRB filed a complaint in May arguing that the firing violated labor law.

But according to the board’s counsel, a worker’s sniping doesn’t always amount to protected activity.

In the Walmart case, an employee at one of the retail giant’s Oklahoma stores alighted on Facebook after an argument with an assistant manager, as reported on Labor Relations Today. “Wuck Falmart!” he wrote. “I swear if this tyranny doesn’t end in this store they are about to get a wake-up call because lots are about to quit!” His Facebook friends included several Walmart co-workers. One responded with “bahaha like! :)” and another with “Lol.”

In response to his friends’ comments, the employee called the manager a “super mega puta,” going on to say that if the situation at the store didn’t improve, then Walmart “could kiss my royal white ass!” A co-worker who saw the posting provided the boss with a printout of the exchange.

The manager prepared a written disciplinary report saying that the worker’s behavior reflected poorly upon the company and that he would be fired if it continued. The worker appealed to the NLRB, but the board’s counsel threw out the case last month, finding that the Facebook tirade was nothing more than “an expression of an individual gripe,” rather than concerted activity with other co-workers. “Mere griping,” the dismissal noted, “is not protected.”

NLRB counsel dismissed the bartender’s complaint for similar reasons. In that case, a bartender at JT’s Porch Saloon Eatery in Lombard, Ill., had a back-and-forth on Facebook with his stepsister, complaining that waitresses at the bar didn’t share their tips with bartenders and that he hadn’t seen a raise in five years. He threw in the comments on the “redneck” drinkers for good measure. The night manager later informed the bartender that he would probably be terminated for the remarks.

In a cruel bit of irony, the owner of the establishment then fired the bartender via Facebook message.

As in the Walmart worker’s case, NLRB counsel found that the bartender’s complaint fell short of concerted activity since the posting didn’t involve an earnest discussion about working conditions with any of his co-workers.

According to Cleeland, the NLRB will probably release its report on Facebook cases sometime in the coming weeks. Careful not to call it a guide, Cleeland said it will merely detail particular complaints that have come before the agency and what the outcomes were.

Hsu said employers and workers alike could use a little guidance on social media, however small.

“You can’t stick your head in the sand and tell your workers to abstain,” she said. “They’re not going to. A lot of people growing up, they don’t know anything but communicating through Facebook. You have to teach them how to navigate this new area.”

‘;
var coords = [-5, -72];
// display fb-bubble
FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, ‘top’, {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: ‘clear-overlay’});
});

Share and Enjoy

5 Key Tips to Great Customer Service on Facebook

Have you ever had one of those friends that if you don’t respond to them in timely fashion they will start to tell the world (all your friends) that you are ignoring them or that you are anti-social and not worth inviting to any social event, wedding or party ever again.

The reality is that you may have just been away holidaying on a remote island off Peru, kayaking in the Himalayas, climbing Mt Kilimanjaro, having a family crisis in London and New York at the same time or “yes” you really don’t want to talk to them.

Facebook is Not Just About Marketing

Facebook is often seen as “the” place to market to your customers but not as a customer service channel.

The fact is that Facebook is real time and open for all the public to view with comments and  posts that are asking and in some cases begging for responses that require constant care and attention.

Private complaints via email or phone will only be known to a handful of people whereas Facebook’s messages are in the public domain making it imperative they are not ignored.

Good public relations and customer service means being proactive and not being afraid of the new social web. It means engaging with both the good and the bad news and not running away and ignoring the messages and conversations.

Conversations Will happen ‘With’ or ‘Without’ You

In a recent conversation with a customer  I learnt an organisation’s PR was being dictated  and controlled by an outsider who happens to understand and ‘gets’ that the web is open and that Google is indexing the on-line conversations and published content. The consequence is that whenever you Google the industry’s key phrases, it is not the organisation’s conversations or content that ranks on the first page but the vagabond “pirate” outsider’s comments and online properties that appear in the search results.

The reality…. an outsider controls the on-line presence of the brand!

So ignoring conversations on Facebook has the same consequence. “So have the conversation rather than have your PR and customer service controlled by Google’s indexing search engines”

What Major Brand’s Don’t Respond Well on Facebook?

A recent survey by Conversocial analysed 10 top retail brands on Facebook to measure average response times and attitudes to engagement with customers. The surprising result was that the Amazon’s Facebook page revealed that in an entire week of investigation and on-line conversation Amazon did not reply to a single query, despite constantly putting out marketing messages.

This earned  Amazon the unflattering average response rating of ‘zero’ with French Connection and River island not far behind. The two top brands by service ranking who on average responded in less than one hour were Next and Asos.com

So how do you provide great customer service on Facebook?

5 Tips to Great Customer Service on Facebook

1. Always Reply

Don’t pick and choose who you will respond to… ignored complaints get noticed and you only need one customer to go viral and you have a PR disaster on your hands. If you cannot manage two way conversations on Facebook then it is maybe best to not play in the social networking pen.

2. Enable Your Wall

It is much better to channel customer service to your wall rather than spread them to to all of your fans via updates visible in the newsfeed

3. Monitor your Fan Page Throughout the Day

We are all use to monitoring our email and answering phone calls, so treat your Facebook page the same way and constantly check in and respond quickly as if it was a phone call to return or an email to respond to. If you do this well you will boost your brand and gain a competitive edge

4. Add Personality to Your Responses

You are a human interacting (not a robot) so use your name and add some real human touches that may show your company’s light side..a touch of humour can put a smile on the dial.

5. Use a Page Management Tool

Use efficiency features such as auto-flagging so you know when a comments or post are published on your page. Then ensure you have procedures and customer  service workflow processes in place so responses are not missed. Some tools for assisting you in managing Facebook ‘Pages’ are apps like Vitrue.com , TheKBuzz.com and Involver.com

What tools do you use to manage your Facebook page?

Do you respond to all your customer’s on Facebook or could you lift your game?

Image by Zazzle.com

Popularity: unranked [?]

Author: Jeff Bullas

*This post originally appeared on Jeffbullas’s Blog and has been reposted with permission.

Find out how to syndicate your content with Business 2 Community.

Share and Enjoy