Nope.
Unless there is a bright line between business-related "disloyal" postings, and private opinion, we are basically gutting the notion of personal conscience. The potential for abuse of such meddling is enormous.

I have already encountered coworkers and managers - both in the US and here in Israel - who think my personal religious and political beliefs are crazy, or beyond the pale of political correctness.

They are already using "diversity education" to impose their opinions on many of The Rest of Us, using similar shadowy notions of "bad judgement" and "potentially harmful speech".

Sorry - I should not have to curtail my private free speech, assembly, or other activities to remain employed.

Facebook posts that don't relate to work are none of my employer's business - just like any other form of public speech.

i agree with b-d. it's one thing to fire someone for badmouthing the company on facebook. but if my second job is working as a prostitute on grand avenue, that is none of my boss' business, unless it affects my actual performance at my actual job. ok, ok, getting arrested for prostitution doesn't really qualify as sick leave, but beyond what actually affects my performance and the actual company - i should be able to say and do whatever i want on my own time. i mean, it is MY time, not my company's. otherwise i want to be paid 24/7.

I doubt that anyone posting my boss is an asshole really hurts the company. Truth is everyone is enevitably an asshole at one point in their lives, no one is suprised by it.

And which is really more 'damaging' to the comapany? A supervisor who treats people and clients like crap, or the guy who mentions the fact that everyone already knows?

And another thing, of your comany owes you no loyalty, why do you owe it loyalty, other than what you contractually agree to for cold hard cash?

I have no problem with holding people responsible for things they post on the internet or Facebook or Twitter or whatever. The internet is no different than any other public forum and you should own anything that you say there.

BUT there must be some sort of nexus between your statement and your employment to justify termination or discipline. Employees are entitled to have both a private life and a personal life. I should not be required as a condition of employment to keep all of my religious and political beliefs a deep, dark secret. If an employee want to write posts or blogs advocating their religious beliefs (or non-beliefs) or advocating/disparaging politicians or laws they believe unfair, that is their absolute right.

For instance, I think that if an employee wants to post "It's unfair that gay people can't marry", that is none of the employer's business. But if the employee posts "My company is unfair because it doesn't give gay domestic partners free health insurance", that's the company's business.

I don't know. lujlp, unless its ability to continue giving you cash depends on its staying in business, which your comments might be hindering.

Excepting possibly Amy's assistant, none of us have the perfect boss and work for the perfect company. There are unfair things that happen, such as good people getting laid off through no fault of their own. If you've ever been on either end of that, it is traumatic. Unfortunately, Sally Shrew in the hot project is indispensable at the moment, while Dan Dependable in infrastructure support is one of five interchangeable parts. The search for cosmic justice continues. Sally stays, Dan departs. People know it's not fair. The intelligent ones know that if it were Sally, and the project flops, it would be Dan and a bunch more out the door.

TestyTommy, I think you make a great point. Most of the time, what you do on line is none of your company's business, but if you're trashing your employer, you are treading on dangerous ground. "Don't bite the hand that feeds you" and all that. If you put yourself in the employer's place, would you really want to keep paying somebody who trashes your company? Now take it a little further: Somebody who was canned for trashing his company is now coming to you looking for a job. Would you want to hire him given his behavior?

In any case, how the company reacts to employee criticism requires a degree of judgment. Going back to TestyTommy, I agree that "It's unfair that gay people can't marry" is none of the company's business. Now, "My company is unfair because it doesn't give gay domestic partners free health insurance" may get the company's attention. Whether it's worthy of termination is another matter. It's certainly a topic for discussion. If the employee works his way down to "CompanyX is a bunch of homophobic fascist whatchamacallits because they don't give gay domestic partners free health insurance," well, then we're more into company-trashing, and I can't imagine management would want to keep an employee who behaves like that.

i should be able to say and do whatever i want on my own time. i mean, it is MY time, not my company's. otherwise i want to be paid 24/7.

Absofrakkinlutely.

That's kinda like the time I was working for a furniture company, long time ago (B.F.*), and one of the managers was at a bar where my band was playing. He didn't know I was there until I was onstage.
This was a Friday night, and we had to work the next day. I showed up, on time, a tad hungover, but I was able to do my job, and do it well. He crunched my cookies for 40 minutes straight until I told him "Even if you DID pay me enough so I didn't have to have a second job, I'd STILL be with the band! Leave me alone and let me do my job!" He tried to fire me for yelling at him. His boss told him "No way. She stays. YOU, however, can leave. You know where the door is." Guy spent the rest of his day trying to convince his boss he "was only kidding" and didn't know he was "upsetting [me]." No one is safe and nothing is sacred. Company loyalty (to and from employees) is a thing of the (way long agao) past.

*Before Facebook

Word to the wise is that what you say on the Internet can effect your employment. Congress can pass laws until they're blue in the face, but the only thing that does is raise the cost and risk. A clever enough employer can always find a reason to dismiss someone that can't be tied back to a Facebook posting in a court of law, even though the Facebook posting might be what motivated it.

Having said that: Just because something is legal doesn't make it a smart thing to do. In the field I work in, word gets around about who the good and bad employers are. The word is usually accurate and there is nothing the companies can do to stop it. I once made the mistake of accepting a job with a company that had a poor reputation in the city where I had lived previously. I thought it would be OK because I was moving to a different city and that the problems might be confined to that company's installation in the previous city. No. The problems were company-wide. Six months later, I moved again to get a new job and get away from that company. That was 20 years ago, but to this day that company still has a crap reputation around the industry. I'd work in a convenience store before I'd take a job with that company again.

I have an even better solution.

Don't have a Facebook or Myspace account.
Never, ever send anything personal from (or even to) a company or work account.
As much as practical, let no part of your personal life happen on company time.
You exist as on employee solely to do the companies bidding. That is why they pay you. What you do on your own time is both meaningless and irrelevant.
Just do not ever let your life outside work hours affect your performance at work.
That is all any company cares about.
How much money you make for them.
If you cost them money, time, or effort, you pose a drain on resources that they must eliminate.
All business, no matter what they say to you, or in it for the money. They had better be.
If they weren't, YOU would not have a job.
So, back to work work, and be quick about it.

Most of the time, what you do on line is none of your company's business, but if you're trashing your employer, you are treading on dangerous ground.

This is the point. I stood up for a blogger who was potentially going to be fired by the LA Times. He doesn't blog for the paper, but he posted stuff about internal issues at the paper (printing issues). I felt he was wrong (because you don't have a right to make public internal issues at a business unless that's your job or you're somehow authorized), but I don't think he did it to hurt the paper, and he's a great guy, and a good public face for the paper, so I wrote to the publisher and asked them to not fire the guy. They ultimately didn't, although I believe he was suspended for a little while.

What has ultimately helped everyone at my job is that just about everyone has a Facebook account and a deep online footprint. Yeah, they could fire someone for something Internet related, but then they'd have to fire all of us, and HR at my company just doesn't have the desire to do that much work. I suppose they could keep files just in case they needed a quick reason to fire someone, but this has never been a problem for anyone there.

Wow. I'm so thrilled to find out that Amy Alkon read my article!

I think your wise to let your employee have her own online life. I'm LinkedIn to the people I work with, but not on Facebook, and I never even discuss anything controversial on Facebook. I'm Facebook friends with former coworkers and employees, but not current ones.

I don't want to know what my editors are up to in their free time, although I'm sure it's all on the up and up.

*you're.

Gah. Sorry for the bad grammar.

Mutual admiration society! Following you in my RSS reader now.

For the most part, I agree with the "work at will" philosophy, and someone shouldn't have to keep employees they don't want. A great example is my dad, who owned two businesses... without him, the businesses wouldn't exist. He basically was the business.

There are times when I'm uncomfortable with work at will. My wife worked for a company for 12 years, and to this day she still supports their mission. However, she got hosed. During budget times, and after our twins came home, she asked them if it would help for her to go part time to save them money and so she could spend more time with the twins... a win win. They accepted her offer, then laid her off 2 months later and rehired her under contract. Same work, except
1. No more pension.
2. No more sick leave (did I mention she's had cancer twice?)
3. No more life insurance (make that cancer twice and two small children)
4. Higher tax burden
5. Lower pay because they'd reassign her work to a salaried employee at every turn because "they had to pay them anyway."

My beef with what they did to her was that they accepted her offer under false pretenses, and used it to avoid unemployment benefits and severance pay (part timers don't get that). It's perfectly legal, and I would be okay with that if it were a private business. But all this was done to her by a newly appointed CEO who will likely move on soon (he also gave himself a big raise that, coincidentally I'm sure, amounted to about what they cut from her in pension, tax burden, and benefits).

She moved on, and even when he leaves soon, I doubt she'll get her job back. So because of an unethical, backstabbing ass, she lost her position in a business that serves a good mission she devoted her entire career to and still supports.

So I'm not arguing, work at will has a good point, but there are drawbacks when it is an entity that is not owned, it is entrusted with a mission.

Best,
Trust

Does somebody want to tell me the difference between MY trashing a company and an employee trashing the company?

And...
Truth is the defense against libel. Why can't it be defense against firing? A company whose employees can complain about a legitimate issue which has not been corrected by the company is only different from a whistle blower in degree!

That 3rd point about loyalty to the company was nauseating. I actually like my company, work well for them, and am compensated well, but if they can basically fire me for any reason, I reserve for myself the right to go work for a competitor, should they be more attractive, with the proper two weeks notice, subject to the usual non-disclosure agreement, blah blah blah.

With that being said, it is good to put in some significant time with a company, so that the next one doesn't think you're a flight risk.

I was laid off in September, so this is kind of interesting to me. My company closed my plant, which actually turned out to be a good thing from a job-hunting standpoint (it's always nicer to say they let EVERYONE go rather than they let YOU go) and they did give me 30 weeks severance and are carrying my insurance, so, while I'm ticked off and bummed out they did this, they DID treat me pretty damn well, and I could have been a LOT worse off.

That said, I spent 15 years with this company, and this is what I got. Now, it looks really good to potential employers that I have that kind of track record, and worked my way up from the shop floor to the accounting department, but in my darkest moments of bitterness it's hard not to complain. It's just human nature. The difference is, I don't post up my complaints on Facebook. I live by the rule "never put anything in writing you'd be embarrassed for your mother to see". It seems to work.

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