Ah, yet another ruling from the NLRB about a firing involving Facebook — only this one involves cheap hot dogs and Land Rovers.
An administrative law judge (ALJ) ruled in favor of a BMW dealership in Chicago after it fired an employee for posting remarks about the firm on Facebook.
One post was protected, one wasn’t
The employee posted comments online about two events. In the first, the staffer took umbrage that management served chips and hot dogs at a high-end luxury car event.
The second posting involved snarky comments about an accident at a nearby Land Rover dealership run by the same company, after a 13-year-old boy accidentally drove an expensive truck into a pond. The salesman posted a series of sarcastic comments along with photographs of the accident. When the firm saw the postings, it fired the worker.
The ALJ ruled the worker’s comments about the luxury event were protected – the decision to serve bad food could have affected sales, for example.
But the postings about the accident weren’t protected – they were made “as a lark” and had nothing to with the employee’s terms and conditions of employment. Since the dealership could prove it fired the worker for only the second comments, the NLRB sided with the employer.
The case is Karl Knauz Motors, Inc. v. Becker. You can read the ALJ’s full decision here.
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