On May 18, 2011, the National Labor Relations Board (the “NLRB”) announced its issuance of a complaint against Hispanics United of Buffalo (“HUB”) arising out of HUB’s termination of five employees who posted comments on Facebook criticizing HUB’s working conditions. As we previously posted with regard to the In re American Medical Response of Connecticut, Inc. case the NLRB lodged a similar charge against American Medical Response of Connecticut, Inc. (“AMR”) on October 27, 2010 based on that company’s termination of an employee who posted remarks about her supervisor on her Facebook page.

In the HUB case, the complaint claims that one employee used Facebook to post a co-worker’s allegation that workers were not doing enough to help the organization’s clients. That prompted other employees to defend their job performance and criticize workload and staffing issues. HUB claimed that the Facebook comments constituted harassment of the co-worker who originally posted the comment and, therefore, the terminations were justified. The NLRB, however, disagrees.