Gibbons Law Alert
The highly publicized “Facebook firing” case, brought by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and discussed in a November 12, 2010 post in the Employment Law Alert, ended with a settlement announced on February 7, 2011. According to the Complaint, American Medical Response of Connecticut Inc. (“AMR”) terminated an employee for criticizing her boss on her Facebook account.
2011 should be the year in which all companies renew their commitment to training employees. Specifically, all employees should be trained on important company policies, such as the anti-harassment and discrimination policies, and human resources employees and supervisors should be trained on consistently problematic topics such as performance management, accommodating disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act and leaves under the Family and Medical Leave Act and similar state laws.
The importance of making reasonable accommodations to workplace dress codes based on an employee’s religious practices was the focus of a recent settlement between the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Essex County, New Jersey. According to the Complaint filed by the DOJ in United States of America v. Essex County, New Jersey, Yvette Beshier, a Muslim corrections officer, was suspended and then terminated because the religious head scarf she wore violated the Essex County Department of Correction’s uniform policy. The DOJ alleged that Essex County’s treatment of Beshier constituted religious discrimination in violation of Tile VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act because it failed to accommodate her religious beliefs.
Employers wanting to prohibit damaging communications from being made about them by employees through blogging and rapidly evolving social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn should be aware of a recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Complaint against American Medical Response of Connecticut, Inc. asserting that two of the more common employer restrictions on employee blogging and social media communications constitute unfair labor practices and are, therefore, unlawful. In its News Release, the NLRB pointed to two of the provisions in the company’s blogging and internet posting policies as being unlawful under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
Flu season is here. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently is not reporting high levels of influenza outbreak or predicting pandemic levels of the virus this year, the flu will nevertheless impact businesses whose employees become ill and/or need to take time off for flu-related reasons. With a handful of restrictions, employers are permitted to adopt policies and practices to encourage flu prevention, to control workplace flu outbreaks and to maintain optimal efficiency during flu season, provided that their practices are applied consistently, non-discriminatorily and in keeping with published employment policies and handbooks.
In this technology age, employees increasingly make personal use of workplace electronic communications applications. The legal ramifications of such personal use – and how employers can create policies that balance the right to monitor the workplace with employees’ expectations of privacy – were examined in an informative panel discussion, “Electronic Communications Policies in the Wake of Stengart and Quon” during Gibbons P.C.’s Fourth Annual E-Discovery Conference on October 28, 2010.