The Labor Law Insider | Offensive Speech in the Workplace - Part II: Drawing the Line
Only a few days after being hired by the University of Michigan’s football program as the assistant director of football recruiting, Glenn Schembechler (son of longtime Michigan head coach Bo Schembechler) resigned after his...more
On May 1, 2023, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) issued its decision in Lion Elastomers and United Steelworkers, making it more difficult for employers to discipline employees for outbursts and similar misconduct...more
Non-union employers, this goes for you, too! An employee's use of bad language doesn't necessarily mean that the employer can take action against him. Even if the language arguably violates the employer's no-harassment...more
On July 21, 2020, the NLRB released the decision General Motors LLC and Charles Robinson (GM) which is significant not only for its substance but for its timing. The GM decision held that abusive conduct and speech is not...more
The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) provided useful clarity on when an act by an employee is done “in the course of employment” making the employer liable. The claimant had seen a colleague’s social media post featuring a...more
Social media has transformed the ways legislators and their staff interact with constituents. Through social media platforms, our elected officials share insights into the legislative process, communicate with constituents,...more
The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) generally prohibits employers from retaliating against employees based on their union-related activities or for taking concerted action to improve the terms and conditions of their...more
Many people enjoy spouting off what they view as 140-character tidbits of wisdom on the social media platform Twitter. But recently several individuals have found themselves in trouble with their employers (read: former...more
Social media has upended a number of industries. Is Wall Street next? Facebook is getting into the video game live-streaming business....more
Last week, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals backed the National Labor Relations Board’s position that employee social media postings are protected concerted activity under federal law, even if they use obscenities that...more
The internet has generated countless new ways to communicate and share thinking. Some posted information is negative, which can still be useful when messages are truthful, in good taste, and constructive. But some negative...more
After watching the firing of the digital communications manager for the Houston Rockets during their run through the playoffs (read the story here in the Houston Chronicle). I figured it would be a good time to revisit the...more
We have written previously about the expanding scope of social media activities that the National Labor Relations Act protects and the tight limits the NLRB places on an employer’s ability to discipline employees for...more
The National Labor Relations Board recently demonstrated how far it will go to protect employees in the name of protected concerted activity. In Pier Sixty, LLC, an employee took to Facebook to call his manager a...more
I don’t know if you are or aren’t. That’s probably for a different timeforhardselfassessmentlawblog.com (wish I had purchased that domain). However, I do know that your employees apparently can call their manager a nasty...more
Most of the case law in the UK on dismissals related to employees' social media activity has been at employment tribunal level and therefore the recent decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (“EAT”) in Game Retail v Laws...more
A Georgia seventh-grader created a fake Facebook profile that defamed a classmate, according to this Wall Street Journal story. In middle school fashion (I am not looking forward to parenting through this period), a boy...more
If an employee calls his supervisor a “nasty motherf[**]ker” on Facebook, would the employee lose the protection that he would otherwise enjoy under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)? Probably not, according to...more