By: Ana S. Salper
No governmental body has been more active in addressing social media’s impact on the workplace than the National Labor Relations Board (“Board”). For both unionized and non-unionized employers, the Board has been aggressively scrutinizing the contours of employer discipline of employees for their activities on social media sites, and has regulated and constricted the scope and breadth of employer social media policies. Following his first report in August 2011, National Labor Relations Board Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon has now released a second report describing social media cases reviewed by his office.
Solomon’s report covers 14 cases, half of which address issues regarding employer social media policies, the other half of which involve discharges of employees after they posted comments to Facebook. The report underscores two main points:
1) Employer social media policies must be narrowly tailored enough so as not to prohibit protected concerted activity under the National Labor Relations Act (the “Act”), such as the discussion of wages or working conditions among employees, and
2) Mere “gripes” made by an employee on a social media site are generally not protected if they are not made in relation to group activity among employees.
One of the cases highlighted by the report is of particular relevance to hospitality industry employers. The employer, a restaurant chain operator, had a section in its employee handbook entitled “Team Member Conduct & Work Rules.” The rules provide that “insubordination or other disrespectful conduct” and “inappropriate conversation” are subject to disciplinary action. The Charging Party was a bartender at one of the employer’s restaurants. The employer hired a new General Manager for the restaurant, who in turn hired a personal friend as a bartender. The Charging Party and other bartenders immediately began having various problems with the new bartender. One such problem involved the new bartender receiving preferential shifts over the Charging Party, who was the most senior bartender and until then had been able to secure the more profitable weekend shifts based on her seniority.
A few months after the new bartender began working at the restaurant, the Charging Party learned that the new bartender was serving customers drinks made from a pre-made mix while charging them for drinks made from scratch with more expensive premium liquor. The new bartender was spoken to about this and a note was made in his personnel file. Following this incident, the Charging Party posted various updates on her Facebook page indicating that a coworker was a “cheater” who was “screwing over” the customers, and that dishonest employees and management that “looks the other way” will be the “death of business.” The Charging Party was Facebook “friends” with coworkers, former coworkers, and customers.
In the days that followed, several coworkers complained to the General Manager about the Charging Party’s Facebook posts, worried that customers would see them. The Employer then discharged the Charging Party for violation of the work rules, specifically for communicating unprofessionally to fellow employees on Facebook.
In reviewing the case, the Board concluded that the employer’s work rules were unlawfully overbroad because the prohibitions on “disrespectful conduct” and “inappropriate conversations” would reasonably be construed by employees to preclude protected activity under Section 7 of the Act. “Protected concerted activity” is generally found when an employee is engaged in discussions about his or her wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment with, or on the authority of, other employees, and when such activity is the logical outgrowth of concerns expressed by the employees collectively. The Board upheld the Charging Party’s discharge, however, because it found that her posts on Facebook regarding her fellow bartender’s job performance had only an attenuated connection with terms and conditions of employment.
The case accentuates the line the Board has drawn between:
1) employee protests over quality of service provided by an employer, which are unprotected where such concerns only have a tangential relationship to employee terms and conditions of employment, and
2) employee protests addressing the job performance of their coworkers or supervisors that adversely impacts their working conditions, which are protected under the Act.
If, for example, in this case, the Charging Party had made the posts because she had a reasonable fear that her failure to publicize her coworker’s dishonesty could lead to her own termination, her activity would have been protected. Instead, the Board found that she made the posts because she was upset that he was passing off low-grade drinks as premium drinks and management condoned the action.
Thus, hospitality employers should be on notice: if you have not done so already, it is time to carefully craft and review your social media policies and any other handbook policy that is broad enough to encompass social media site usage. In addition, be mindful of your disciplinary and discharge decisions based on employee conversations that you may deem inappropriate or unprofessional – for the Board may view them otherwise.