Technology has a big impact on the workplace. The internet, computers, and cell phones have changed the way we work. We can communicate more easily, access information quickly, and work from anywhere. Social media sites like LinkedIn help professionals connect and find jobs, while video-sharing sites like YouTube have lots of content for people to watch. These tools have made the world smaller and given us access to a lot of information. Twitter has 110 million users and 300,000 new users join every day. More than a third of the users access Twitter on their phones. The Library of Congress has all of Twitter’s tweets for research. Facebook has over 500 million users worldwide, and more than 150 million access it on their phones. The average Facebook user has 130 friends and posts 90 pieces of content each month. Businesses use social media to promote themselves for free. The rise of technology and social media has created new legal issues for employers. For example, a labor union in Scotland is using Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to talk about workplace issues and unionization. The law says that employers can’t stop employees from discussing unions and workplace problems. However, it’s not clear how these rules apply to social media. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint against a company for firing an employee over her Facebook posts. The company had a policy that banned employees from posting pictures in company uniforms or saying bad things about the company. The NLRB said the employee’s posts were protected by law, and the company’s policy was wrong. In another case, a comedian got in trouble for saying bad things about her family on social media. This shows that what you say online can have serious consequences. Employees sometimes claim that they worked extra hours for their employer without getting paid. With the rise of social media, there are also cases where employees get in trouble for posting work-related stuff online. For example, a female firefighter sued her city employer, claiming she was treated unfairly for posting work-related photos on her personal MySpace account. The court ruled against her, but the case shows how tricky it can be for employers to enforce rules on social media. A woman sued her old job for racial harassment because a coworker made racist comments about her on Facebook. The court said the comments weren’t serious enough to count as harassment, and the company did the right thing by investigating and stopping the comments. But it raises questions about employees using social media at work and what the company should do if someone is being harassed online.
Source: https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/the-times-they-are-a-changin-the-impact-of-technology-and-social-media-on-the-public-workplace-part-i/
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