Here’s some good news: In two separate cases, authorities have stamped their official OK on the termination of employees who’d written offensive posts on social media sites.
In the first case, Paterson, N.J. teacher Jennifer O’Brien posted, “(I’m) not a teacher — I’m a warden for future criminals” on her Facebook page, according to a story in The Record.
She was suspended. And then following a hearing, administrative law judge Ellen Bass ruled O’Brien should lose her tenured job.
Citing Paterson’s problems with poverty and violence, Bass wrote, “O’Brien has demonstrated a complete lack of sensitivity to the world in which her students live.
“The sentiment that a 6-year-old will not rise above the criminal element that surrounds him cuts right to the bone.”
The final firing decision now goes to the state education commissioner, who has 45 days to issue a ruling.
An unacceptable job title
The second case involves a man who used a profane and not-socially-acceptable term as his job title on his LinkedIn page.
His employers didn’t see the posting until several months later.
In the meantime, company employees used social media to discuss a wage and hour lawsuit concerning another firm’s practice of giving workers comp time in lieu of overtime.
The first employer had a similar policy, which it eventually changed.
After the policy change, the employer discovered the profane job description on LinkedIn. Company officials told the employee the post was in violation of its electronic communications policy and fired him.
He filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, saying his questionable LinkedIn post wasn’t the real reason for his discharge — it was the comments he had made about the companies overtime policies.
But NLRB officials didn’t buy it. Barry Kearney, NLRB associate general counsel, wrote in an advice memorandum that “there is no evidence that the employer was even aware (of the employee’s comments about overtime), and certainly no demonstrated animus towards employees discussing their working conditions.”
What’s more, Kearney said, the employer only discovered the offensive post as part of an assessment of problems it was running into on the firm’s LinkedIn page.
