Alabama Employment Law Report : Alabama Employment Lawyer & Attorney : Daniel J. Burnick : Sirote & Permutt Law Firm

Immigration

     On Wednesday, October 5, Judge Blackburn denied requests made by the Department of Justice and a coalition of civil rights groups to delay implementation of HB 56 while on appeal.  Last week, Judge Blackburn upheld the vast majority of HB 56, while enjoining several provisions of the law.  The groups will be appealing to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, and have stated that they may seek a stay from the 11th Circuit to prevent the law from staying in effect pending the appeal.  I will post updates as they occur.

     In the meantime, there are numerous reports of students leaving schools throughout the state, workers leaving their jobs and several arrests have been made pursuant to HB 56.  Interestingly, the first arrests reported arose from a drug bust, and those arrested were from Yemen, and were not Hispanic.

NLRB

     I have previously reported that the NLRB was going to require the posting of Notification of Employee Rights effective November 14, 2011.  Because there appears to be much confusion over what businesses were covered by this requirement, the NLRB has delayed implementation of the posting until January 31, 2012.  At least 3 lawsuits have been filed seeking to prevent the NLRB from requiring this posting. 

Social Media and the NLRB

     The NLRB has been active in reviewing terminations or other disciplinary action as the result of social media posting.  I reported in February that the NLRB had contested the termination of an employee at an ambulance company.  Another social media firing case involved a BMW dealership in Chicago, where an employee posted negative comments about one of the dealership's events, when they planned to bring a hot dog cart to provide food to customers.  The salesman complained that the dealership should provide better food for it's customers.  This same salesman also took pictures of an accident that occurred when a customer was test driving a BMW and hit the accelerator instead of the brake pedal, and crashed.  These photos were posted at the same time he posted pictures of the hot dog cart.  The dealership learned of the postings the next day, and terminated the salesman.  The NLRB claimed that the posts were protected concerted activity since part of the salesman's compensation was customer satisfaction, and the postings about the hot dog cart concerned his compensation.  The NLRB administrative judge ruled that the posting about the hot dog cart was protected, but found that the posting about the accident was not, and that the dealership terminated is employment based on the accident related posting. 

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Last November, I wrote about a case in Connecticut where the NLRB filed a complaint accusing American Medical Response of Connecticut of illegally firing an employee for posting comments on her facebook page, claiming that the posting was "protected concerted activity" under the National Labor Relations Act.  The NLRB announced that the case against AMR has been resolved by AMR agreeing to revamp its policies so they don't restrict employees rights. According to the NLRB, the settlement also included an agreement from AMR that they would not discipline or terminate employees who discussed wages and other work issues while not on the job.  The NLRA allows employees to discuss the terms and conditions of their employment with co-workers and third parties. 

There was a separate private settlement agreement reached between AMR and Dawnmarie Souza, the employee who had been terminated.  I have not been able to determine the terms of that settlement at this time.

Practice pointer.  Although the AMR case involved a union work force, employers should be aware that the NLRA covers non-union work forces as well.  Many times I hear about or see policies that restrict employees from discussing the terms and conditions of their employment, including wage information, with others.  Under the NLRA, this restriction is probably prohibited.

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                 On November 3, 2010, Legal Times reported that the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) Hartford office filed a Complaint against American Medical Response of Connecticut, Inc. alleging that the ambulance service illegally terminated Dawnmarie Souza, for posting negative comments about her supervisor on her personal Facebook page. The NLRB contends that American Medical Response wrongfully denied Ms. Souza her union representation during the investigatory review, and that the NLRB was charging that the company “maintained and enforced an overly broad blogging and internet posting policy.” The NLRB, in their press release, stated that her supervisors “threatened her with discipline because of her request for union representation….Later that day from her home computer, the employee posted a negative remark about the supervisor on her personal Facebook page, which drew supportive responses from her co-workers, which led to further negative comments about the supervisor from the employee.” Ms. Souza was fired three (3) weeks later.

Today, Molly DiBianca, in her blog, The Delaware  Employment Law Blog, reported that an employee and her supervisor were Facebook friends.  After the employee filed a charge of discrimination with the EEOC, the supervisor unfriended the employee.  When the employee later added a claim for retaliation, one of the facts supporting the claim was the fact that the supervisor unfriended her.  As Ms. DiBianca wrote, "The employee felt the "unfriending" was the equivalent of what getting the “cold shoulder”—just in a virtual or electronic context.  Although the cold shoulder is not the traditional type of workplace retaliation, it can constitute an adverse employment action under the Burlington Northern standard—especially when it’s one of several “bad facts” tending to show that the employee was singled out after filing a complaint."

Practice pointers.  With the NLRB entering the social networking fracas, there is one more governmental agency for employers to be concerned with when dealing with social networking in the workplace.  When considering whether to implement or change a social networking policy, employers now need to consider the concept of "protected activity" as viewed by the NLRB. 

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Recently, a trial court in New York found that the Facebook and MySpace sites of a plaintiff in a personal injury case were discoverable.  In Romano v. Steelcase, Ms. Romano fell off her chair at work and filed a lawsuit claiming that she was severely injured and had multiple surgeries on her neck and back.  She sued Steelcase, alleging that the chair she was sitting in was defective.  Romano had profiles on both Facebook and MySpace that were not publicly available and were set up as "private" pursuant to the sites' privacy settings.  Steelcase subpoenaed the information from these sites, Facebook objected, and Romano refused to consent to the release of the information.  Steelcase argued that what was publicly available on Facebook and MySpace was inconsistent with her claims in the lawsuit, and sought access to her current and past pages, including any deleted pages, even if limited to her "friends" or "connections".  The trial court relied on a decision from Canada, that held that "To permit a party claiming very substantial damages for loss of enjoyment of life to hide behind self-set privacy controls on a website, the primary purpose of which is to enable people to share information about how they lead their social lives, risks depriving the opposite party of access to material that may be relevant to ensuring a fair trial."  The Judge in the Romano case examined the language in the privacy policies of both Facebook and MySpace, which state "this information may become publicly available."  The court wrote that:

     "Thus, when Plaintiff created her Facebook and MySpace accounts, she consented to the fact that her personal information would be shared with others, notwithstanding her privacy settings.  Indeed, that is the very nature and purpose of these social networking sites else they would cease to exist.  Since Plaintiff knew that her information may become publicly available, she cannot now claim that she had a reasonable expectation of privacy.  As recently set forth by commentators regarding privacy and social networking sites, given the millions of users, "in this environment, privacy is no longer grounded in reasonable expectations, but rather in some theoretical protocol better known as wishful thinking."

Practice pointer.  As expected, there is often useful information available on social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, etc, for all parties involved.  Individuals should not post anything on their sites that they expect to maintain as private: it may not happen. 

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Last week, I lectured at the UAB's Social Media class that is part of the School of Business on how social media impacts the workplace.  Having two sons in college, who use social media on a regular basis, this topic is near and dear to me.  We talked about how HR managers are using online searches to check on potential and existing employees, and that improper postings may prevent one from being hired, or get an existing employee fired.  We discussed the fact that when you begin working at a new job, it is likely that at least one of your new co-employees will investigate you online to learn more about you.  So, the question becomes what is inappropriate?  The answer is not clear, since it depends on who is doing the hiring and firing.  I emphasized the use of common sense, if there is a picture, joke or comment that you would not show/tell your mother, it should not be posted on line.  These may include pictures in various states of undress, skimpy clothes, drinking, using drugs (remember Michael Phelps?), carrying firearms, racial/sexual jokes/comments, or criticizing current or past employers or supervisors.  I advised the class that there is nothing wrong with keeping a personal album of photographs from their college days, but if there is anything that is even close to being questionable, it should not be posted online.  This includes pictures that may be posted on their friend's sites, since the links can be easily traced. 

Yesterday, Stephanie Goldberg wrote an article for CNN.com entitled "Young job-seekers hiding their Facebook pages".   Ms. Goldberg's article notes that 70%of recruiters and hiring managers have accessed the Internet and rejected candidates based on what they found online.  She refers to a Microsoft survey that reveals that 79% of hiring managers use the Internet to better assess applicants.  One of the questions asked last week in class was about the possibility of setting up 2 different Facebook pages: one for professional purposes, and one for "fun" under a different name.  I advised the student that that was not a good idea, since there may be links or other ways of finding both sites. Ms. Goldberg also answered this question when she noted a student who did just this changed his alias after 2 weeks "when he realized Facebook users also can be searched by e-mail address, school and network...". 

Ms. Goldberg quotes several students who have changed their privacy settings to restrict access to their Facebook pages to only their "friends".  She even referred to a career counselor at Penn State who recommends "that students with potentially incriminating photos or posts change their name on social networking sites."  One of the students last week at UAB asked a similar question: what if i restrict access to my photographs?  My response to that question was what if the HR person interviewing you asks you during the interview to access your Facebook page?  If you say no, at least in Alabama, which is an employee at will state, you may not be hired.  If you say yes, and permit access, and there is inappropriate material, you may not be hired.  So, it boils down to why take the chance.

Practice pointer.  Any employee or perspective employee needs to seriously consider what information is available about him/her on the Internet: if it is inappropriate, it may have an adverse impact on your employment.  This is true even if access is restricted to your own social networking sites or you use a alias: there are ways gain access, both legally and illegally.  The bottom line is to use common sense:  if you would not want your mother so see the picture or hear the joke, don't put it on the Internet. 

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 Facebook, Inc. effective Saturday, June 13th, announced that users of the Facebook website will be allowed for the first time to create personalized URLs for their Facebook pages (facebook.com/yourname). There is a risk that some Facebook users will attempt to incorporate third party brands into their personalized Facebook usernames.

Facebook, Inc. has created an online form for rights owners of registered trademarks interested in preventing their trademarks from being registered as usernames by Facebook users.  Unfortunately, time to register your trademark has expired. 

Trademark owners, if there is an infringement on your trademark, can file their complaint on the Facebook platform by submitting relevant information to Facebook, Inc. through their trademark protection contact form. 

Practice Pointer.  If you have a registered trademark that you want to protect, I would recommend that you check Facebook on a regular basis in the event  someone else does is using your trademark. 

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Several weeks ago, I gave a presentation on behalf of Sterling Educational Services to a number of attorneys and HR professionals entitled "Employee Privacy In The Workplace".  I addressed a number of areas, including employee privacy, evaluating performance and employee off-duty misconduct.  During the presentation, the majority of the questions dealt with social networking and privacy issues involving the internet and other electronic devices.  Several recent artilces that appeared in the Birmingham News demonstrate how the internet and other electronic advancements continue to outpace the corporate world.  On April 15, an article by Mary Orndorff dealt with several Alabama Congressmen who use Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and Youtube.  On the same day, an article appeared concerning police and fire agences using Twitter to communicate that was published by Carrie Antlfinger with the AP.  Today, an article by Ian Rapoport appeared in the sports section about the University of Alabama football coaches using Twitter for recruiting purposes.  Another articlesappeared this week dealing with the use of GPS devices in divorce cases.

With technology continuing to advance at a rapid pace, it is advisable for employers to have the appropriate policies and procedures to deal with the use of Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Myspace, Youtube and GPS devices both on company time and off of company time.  Many disgruntled employees post their views in the public domain, which may have an adverse impact on their company.  Others post positive views, which would be beneficial to the company.  Some policies are a single paragraph, while others are multiple pages long. What it comes down to is be respectful, and if you can't say it to your mother, don't say it on the internet!!

Practice Pointer.  It is advisable for employers to have a policy tailored to their needs concerning social networking.  The policy needs to be reviewed and updated on a regular basis, as technology continues to advance.

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