Today, I attended a Continuing Legal Education Program at the Chicago Bar Association presented by the Young Lawyer’s Section. The topic of this course was the issue of employee misconduct as it relates to Social Media. Here is the one takeaway from the course: Employees who would have once had a discussion about employer treatment of its employees amongst themselves can now do in public via Facebook. Even if the comments are disparaging about the employer, such as “my supervisor is an asshole”, the speech is protected and so are the employees jobs.
Bottom line, union employees getting ready to strike for wages, file a complaint against supervisor or just to “bitch about work” can do so now in public with no repercussions.
Now obviously there are alot of exceptions to this, but bottom line, as your company size grows, so does the need to have a good employee manual covering social media disclosures by employees.
For more information about setting up a top flight employee handbook or updating yourself, consider calling these two fine attorneys who put on this excellent CBA CLE Presentation today.
Adam Wit, Attorney, Littler Law Firm of Chicago
Kathryn Siegel, Attorney, Littler Law Firm of Chicago
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