Bad Mouthing Your Boss Online Is Protected?

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You know, talking trash on your boss on Facebook or Twitter may (or may not) be protected by the law but, to be honest, it's just plain stupid.

Workers fired or disciplined for bad-mouthing employers on social-networking sites are fighting back using a decades-old labor law—a new front in the murky battle over what workers can do and say online. Since the rise of Facebook and Twitter, companies believed they had the right to fire employees who posted complaints or hostile or rude comments online about their employers.
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Who cares if it's protected... they can be fired for not working as a team and being more of a hindrance... this would be valid and would technically be for the same reason. Your boss is basically your team lead.
 
Just because you have a right to say something doesn't mean you have immunity from consequences.

I have always had the right to call my boss a fuckwad (he's not, he's :cool:, just an example) and he has the right to terminate my employment for insubordination.
 
I can see both sides of the coin. On one hand you should be able to say anything you want. Especially on your own time. On the other hand it seems pretty stupid to bad mouth people and trash talk about your job online as you never know who is reading it.
 
Too many people don't utilize strong privacy/security settings on Facebook & leave themselves wide open. Most of these people aren't being smart about how they do it in the first place & probably needed to learn a lesson about craptalking others openly.

Silence is golden, especially when you have something bad to say.
 
I have no issue with people badmouthing their boss, but when you do it online you are basically publishing the complaint for the world to see, which is my opinion takes it beyond a simple gripe and into the conduct unbecoming of an employee for any business.
 
People ofttimes see "rights" as an ability to do something without consequence these days.

Of course you have the right to badmouth your boss online. Nobody can take that right away from you - within reason, as long as it's not slander or libel. You better be able to back it up.

However, your boss also has the right to terminate your ass if he or she finds out about it.
 
Any employer that terminates an employee specifically for "Facebook Posts" is a retard. There are millions of legitimate excuses for an employer to terminate an employee for pretty much no reason. Unless you have a binding contract, here are a couple:

Substandard work performance
Substandard work quality
Poor work ethics
Not a team player
Not suitable for the position
Lack of experience
Lack of ambition

If you don't like your employee, for any reason, choose one and be done with it. Never use any excuse that could be construed as a personal...
 
Rights are great...you have the right to be stupid and get fired.
 
OregonLAN said:
Any employer that terminates an employee specifically for "Facebook Posts" is a retard. There are millions of legitimate excuses for an employer to terminate an employee for pretty much no reason. Unless you have a binding contract, here are a couple:

Substandard work performance
Substandard work quality
Poor work ethics
Not a team player
Not suitable for the position
Lack of experience
Lack of ambition

If you don't like your employee, for any reason, choose one and be done with it. Never use any excuse that could be construed as a personal...
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It's kind of funny. I had a boss that couldn't fire me for any of these reasons, but he was an absolutely horrible boss. He had 3 people just up and leave in one week, shortly after he visited. I thought he had fired them, but it turned out they quit. It turned out that he told them he wanted to switch them over to contractor status, and they just didn't like that idea.

I didn't like him at all, but I couldn't quit. He told me right from his second day that he wanted to keep me as a contractor, on a job that was supposed to be 6 months contract to hire. I had no health insurance, no paid time off, no sick days, no paid holidays, and he acted like I should be happy to stay as a contractor, and he wanted to do the same thing to guys who had been working as direct employees for years. He was one of the worst people I've ever worked for, even counting the morons I worked with in fast food jobs back in high school. I was stuck. I posted things in Facebook constantly about how I hated working for this guy. He lacked any leadership quality. He screwed over his employees constantly. He increased our workload without ever asking if we had the time for new things. It was horrible working for him.

Even better, though, was that he couldn't fire me. We were already down 3 people, and he was flying me to 2 different California cities (I live and work in Colorado) every other week to pick up the slack, and I was pulling overtime constantly. If he fired me, he'd be down to two people for 5 labs spread all over the country. Even if he saw what I had in Facebook, he couldn't do anything about it. I was doing my job and two other people's. I kept up, barely. Good work ethic, good work quality, even if I was a little under qualified for the position. (The only thing in that list you might hold against me is lack of ambition. I do what I need to do, and don't really care too much for moving up. I make enough to live the life I want, now, and that's all I need.)

Finally, they replaced him. Shortly after my next manager took over, he started working to get me full hire status. A couple months later, I got a 30% raise, health insurance, paid holidays, paid time off, and far fewer worries. I even stepped up my work a notch because I was so grateful. I'm still underqualified for the job, but I put in my best effort to learn what I need to get the stuff done. (It's hard to learn Linux and Unix stuff on the fly when you've been supporting Windows for 13 years.) I get my work done, and my current manager is great.

Sometimes, I guess those comments in Facebook, if they did get read by management, might have made things change.
 
CrimsonKnight13 said:
Too many people don't utilize strong privacy/security settings on Facebook & leave themselves wide open. Most of these people aren't being smart about how they do it in the first place & probably needed to learn a lesson about craptalking others openly.

Silence is golden, especially when you have something bad to say.
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Best to say nothing at all, especially on a medium that constantly change the privacy rules, where something was once private, is suddenly open to for the world to see.
 
Outamyhead said:
Best to say nothing at all, especially on a medium that constantly change the privacy rules, where something was once private, is suddenly open to for the world to see.
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This. Just don't post crap like that on social networking sites. Then your opinion actually stays private.
 
All boils down to ... maybe you are an asshole of a boss who would run this company into the ground if it wasn't for the hardwork of your employees, maybe you do have horrendous body odor, and who knows maybe not everyone in the world likes you. Instead of firing people over it, use it as constructive criticism... nah that's too logical, you're a retard and how you got a job higher than a monkey grinder is beyond me.

- Your Employee
 
The Boss who fires someone and uses what they posted on the internet as the official reason is just as retarded as the person who got fired for posting their shit talk on the internet in the first place.

There are plenty of ways to get rid of someone that won't get you and your company sued. Just as there are plenty of ways to express your dissatisfaction about your boss without getting yourself fired. People who fail to understand these very basic concepts deserve whatever they got.
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
I have no issue with people badmouthing their boss, but when you do it online you are basically publishing the complaint for the world to see, which is my opinion takes it beyond a simple gripe and into the conduct unbecoming of an employee for any business.
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What if your boss badmouths you online? Should you have any recourse?
 
People need to take responsibility, and if you dislike your current boss, talk to higher management or HR and dispute it in a correct manner. Or simply talk with your manager and let them understand the situation. They could be ignorant to what's going on and could make the changes needed to have better working conditions.
 
Genny said:
What if your boss badmouths you online? Should you have any recourse?
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Then you have a case against your boss. It's unprofessional and unbecoming of a business owner to harass employees, and in some cases, illegal.
 
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