Hi. Welcome to the blog for my IB English B class at Jur Hronec High School in Bratislava, Slovakia. Below you will find links to other websites and discussion questions. My students are required to comment on one of these postings every month and also respond to each other's comments. Feel free to add your two bits, but be aware that all comments are monitored before being posted.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Facebook as a forum for employee gripes
Another case of modern technology changing the way our lives work. What do you think about the law in question? Is Facebook too much of a public space for such comments? Should the law include a clause about using insulting language as this employee seems to have done? Are employers going to far in their attempts to make sure that their workers do not form unions? Are they going too far in terms of trying to control employee discourse? Is their desire to squelch criticism self-defeating?
I think Facebook is being involved in too many cases, not only in justice. This social network is a bit too public to publish vulgar comments on supervisors. Because when a comment is published on the user’s wall, all friends can see it. And if the user wants to allow his/her wall to be seen by everyone, every person having a Facebook account can see what the user wrote. This means, that the user is not only criticizing the supervisor with his/her co-workers, but publicly in front of all the people. As written in the text, the employees have the right to criticize and comment their supervisors among themselves, but only to the stuff related to their work and work of their supervisors.
ReplyDeleteI think that employers are going a bit too far with making sure their employees don’t form unions and that there are more effective ways of ensuring this. Team-building activities are very important in all kinds of businesses. This activities which might be sports or game-playing, are capable of building a perfect team, increasing cooperation among the employees as well as supervisors. It bonds the supervisors and employers, and makes each side understand the decisions of the other side.
Another way how to ensure that the criticism from their employees does not spread in the public is to show the ability to see and try to solve the criticized problems. This will not only show the professionalism of the company, but also improve the employees’ satisfaction – thus increasing effectiveness.
I think the comment made by Ms. Souza can not be considered as protected under federal law, as it clearly ridiculed the supervisor as a person, with no relation to the work, damaging his name in front of the public.
I think that what Ms. Souza did is a sign of her immaturity. In the article is written that her supervisor refused to let a representative of the Teamsters help her prepare a response to customer’s complaint about her work. “Ms. Souza then mocked her supervisor on Facebook, using several vulgarities to ridicule him”. This is not a behavior of an adult. Behavior similar to this is popular among young people and teenagers that mock their teachers, parents or siblings and post disparaging comments all over the internet, but mostly on Facebook.
ReplyDeleteThe question whether or not she should have been fired for this is irrelevant in this case I think. The company said in the statement that: “The employee in question was discharged based on multiple, serious complaints about her behavior,” I agree with this statement, from my point of view the fact that she posted offensive comments on Facebook wasn’t the actual reason why she was fired. If she was a good employee then there won’t be any complaints on her behavior. I think the Facebook comments only accelerated the process. Without them she would maybe stay longer at the company, but I think she would be in the future fired as well thanks to her behavior to her co-workers and supervisors.
I think this case is pretty clear and straightforward. The only reason why it drew so much attention is because the comments were posted on Facebook and not “at the water cooler”. I don’t see anything bad at posting critical comments about your employer at Facebook and discuss them with your co-workers, but only if they are true. This was probably the case of Ms. Souza, but again this wasn’t the reason why she was fired. She was a bad employee AND posted critical comments on Facebook. And she was fired for the first thing.