dooced
I was reading today how someone was apparently dismissed for gross misconduct for writing about their work in their blog. No they weren’t discussing trade secrets or discussing things that is privileged information; although they did discuss such things as:-describing the office as having a framed portrait of the Queen on the wall,
"Cadbury's chocolate, Tetley tea, beers after work",
an office Christmas party where someone breaks the "unwritten rule" of pulling his cracker before the senior partner and his wife have pulled theirs, and,
of accidentally showing her cleavage while helping to set up a video conference meeting.
Nothing that is going to send the share price plummeting, but apparently she has committed gross misconduct and was given the sack. Of course we only have her word for it that this is the true cause of her being fired, her ex-employers are not commenting!
She does claim that she worked on her blog during office hours, and took some time off to meet her boyfriend when she had told her employers she had nanny problems ( I don’t know if she admitted this in her blog).
This is not the first person to have been sacked for their blog: Heather Armstrong was sacked in 2002 for writing about her colleagues and work in her blog – she coined the phrase ‘dooced’ after her website dooce.com. Also, flight attendant Ellen Simonetti was fired, she said, for ‘a misuse of uniform’. She had posted on her blog, pictures of herself, in her uniform, on an empty plane.
This all may be fine and well. If your company has a strict policy of not discussing work outside of the work place, and they are enforcing this, great! My employer will take disciplinary action against an employee whose conduct affects the reputation or business interests of my company.
Now I am not a lawyer, but if from my blog you can tell that I work for Acme Pipe Flanges Welders Ltd., and in my blog I mentioned that in my free time I attended a demonstration on employment rights for riveters, could they sack me?
posted by Luke @ 4:01 PM
1 Comments:
Companies nowadays are getting smarter. When we enter a workplace there's always an agreement we have to sign. Most often, we don't read it and just sign the paper right away or if we read it, we forgot what's in it after some time.
A couple of years ago, a young legal editor in my previous company was sacked because he helped union members in my company get in touch with a lawyer by using office email. My colleagues rallied behind him to try and help him get his job back but it was futile. What we didn't pay attention to and often ignored was everytime we turn on our office computer there was a pop-up box that says something like the use of the office PC is strictly for office-related work and any personal use is punishable by law.
Same with blogging at work. There usually is a line in the agreement that time and property should be work-related and often the law works around that even if we don't divulge any company trade secrets in our blog.
PS. So where was Peanut???!!!
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