In exchange for his salary. If he does not like the deal he can always quit.
Nevertheless, the constraint still exists. I understand about “right to work” laws. That doesn’t make what the employer did right. It just makes it legal. And I’m not arguing whether it is legal. Coercion is coercion, and if threatening someone’s livelihood isn’t coercion, I don’t know what is.
My employer makes me work in exchange for my salary. Imagine that! Threaten my well-being like that! There oughta be a law!
I assume that was agreed upon before you sealed the deal. And who the fuck is talking about what you do at work? Did you agree that your employment was contingent upon doing whatever your employer told you to do while on your own time?
It seems to me that if the employer determines that their interests are best served by not having people post about their employment and some employee decides he does not like that then the employer is and should be entitled to dismiss the employee. That’s what I think.
I’m sure you do. Do you think if an employer decides to fire anyone who doesn’t like potato salad they are entitled to? How about firing anyone who doesn’t belong to the YMCA? Or anyone who has a Bush sticker on their car?
The employer in question isn’t requiring folks not to post “about their employment.” They are requiring folks not to say who their employer is. That’s fucking ridiculous. It may be legal, but it ain’t right.
That’s really not apparent from your post. “Right to work” laws relate to not being forced to join a union.
The phrase you were probably looking for is employment at will.
Thanks. My point obtains, however.
It’s far from ridiculous. If no one holds themselves out as associated with Company X in a forum in which questionable things are sometimes said and done, then there is little to no risk that the public will associate Company X with any questionable conduct by those who are, in fact, affiliated with it – a goal that I don’t think many here would bother denying has a legitimate business rationale.
The alternative, as has been pointed out, is to have everyone free to claim affiliation with Company X, then undertake a massive (and necessarily ex post facto) policing and punishment operation if and when it turns out that a handful of jackasses have done something that brings Company X, whose name is proudly on their splash pages, into disrepute.
Many companies don’t allow their employees to wear their uniforms into bars – if you want to get a post work beer, you need to change. That’s ridiculous – you’re denying me the right to advertise to the bar that I’m a UPS driver (I’m still not sure why the “freedom” to post who your employer is would mean much to anyone)! Or actually – that makes perfect sense – I don’t know how many of my drivers are going to get stupid drunk, but if this policy is observed, I do know there won’t be a front-page photo of a guy with prominent UPS logos being dragged out of a bloody bar brawl by six cops.
The attitudes on here are a bit weird, IMHO (I know, wrong board) – I’m factually surprised to see this outside a high school stick it to the man forum or some sort of union-steward-complaint box. Companies need to have policies. Frankly, if you do your job well, most companies don’t care what you do or say outside of work, as long as you don’t get caught and cast publicity on them. Policies like this reflect the common-sense reality that as far as dubious Internet content goes – the odds of “getting caught” are inherently high. Risk mitigation.
Your assertion that it isn’t “right” for an employer to silence the employee in this fashion means you believe the employee should have a “right” to speak out thusly, unimpeded by the employer. No such “right” exists. It never has, it never will.
There is an attitude, prevalent among many on the Internet (at least, it’s oft repeated here) that no one should ever suffer bad consequences for having said things, especially if those things are not inherently injurious to others. This Board has numerous adherents to that concept. :dubious:
I’ll deny it. What I so as an employee of Company x has fuck all to do with my own time. I can’t remember a news story about someone behaving badly, say committing murder, or rape, or drunk driving, or kidnapping, or what have you, that implicated the perpetrator’s employer by association. It just doesn’t happen.
As far as I know, everyone is free to claim association with Company X. Watch this – I WORK FOR MICROSOFT. GODDAMN THE USA! Let’s see what happens to me.
p.s. I don’t work for Microsoft.
That’s a piss poor analogy. Wearing company property implies that one is operating under the company’s instruction. Simply stating “I work for Company X” doesn’t. Suppose I get drunk and assault someone in a bar, as you suggest. Would any reasonable person who knows where I work assume that the company wanted me to do it? Why? Really. What the fuck does where I work have to do with what I do on my own time?
Cool. *An ad hominem argument.
Yes, companies need to have policies. But that by no means proves that any policy a company enforces is a good one. Especially when they declare Policy A on Tuesday, and declare Not A on Thursday, as the company in the OP did, metaphorically speaking.
Christ. You have a really annoying habit of putting words in my mouth. Will you please just stop it? This isn’t the first time I’ve asked you. Just stop it. Please.
Saying that something isn’t right is not at all the same as asserting a right. It isn’t right for my girlfriend to leave the sink full of dishes. However, making that statement is not remotely an assertion of anyone’s right to anything. And you know it. How did you graduate law school without understanding that words can have more than one definition?
It’s been explained why the two directives are not “A” and “anti-A.” They were “Don’t claim association with us as an employee” and “please friend us, which doesn’t imply necessarily that you work for us, and does get our name out there as someone who has lots of friends, even if some turn out to be dubious.”
A meaningless distinction, unless the company was directing non employees as well to friend them. The two directives combined have a sufficient WTF? factor as to render them mutually exclusive. “Please friend us, but by no means admit that you work here”? Please. Inasmuch as neither directive has fuck-all to do with working for the company, and they are apparently the work of a, shall we say challenged mind, I see no reason to obey either one. Yes, it could get me fired. Doesn’t make it right. And refusing is hardly “sticking it to the man.” It’s simply asserting one’s dignity. Agreeing to perform work for a particular remuneration doesn’t make me their puppet.
Something similar was decided by the courts. The man was a flight attendent and he put a picture of him on a site in his uniform. The company wrote him up and the whole thing blew up way out of proportion. The result was the court ruled the employer does have a right to limit HOW their image is displayed.
So while he couldn’t pose with his uniform or anything else that would identify him with the company, he could do it in a general way. For instance, he couldn’t say “I am a flight attentdent for Southwest Airlines.” But he could say “I work as a flight attendent.”
Courts have ruled basically while there is no obligation to speak positive of your employer, the company has a right not to expect the employee to speak negatively of the company. This does NOT hold up to illegal things. The company has absolutely no right to expect an employee to do anything which is illegal.
For instance if, in your state, you were told to serve alcohol to a minor. I must note for this example there are many laws that allow alcohol to be served to minors. For instance, religious ceremonies, this would vary.
This is coupled with whistleblower laws , but even those have a lot of exemptions.
Really with the ability to post anonymously it seems ridicoulous to ask for trouble.
You have to remember the right to free speech is not absolute, and it CAN be traded away. For instance, non-disclosure agreements. Many celebrities make their staff sign these. The theory behind them is working for a celebrity is a trade off of your rights. While you don’t give them up, you can limit them contractually
You assert that the employer should not in any way act against the employee for the employee’s actions in this case.
That’s the same as the employee having a “right” to act that way vis-a-vis the employer. If you don’t understand that, you should perhaps learn this vital connection before getting aggrieved about what I said. 
Okay, I’ll just leave it that you feel way more strongly about the right to post whatever you want, even as it might implicate your employer, than I do, and for this forum, we should probably agree to disagree. I certainly don’t think you are “wrong” to have those views. We’ve also made different trade-offs in what degree of buttoned-downness we’re willing to accept, even if it seems kind of arbitrary, in exchange for our pay packages. I don’t feel I’ve sold my soul, certainly, but then, posting on Facebook, period, is of little interest to me, and the supervisory part of me would like to ban anyone from using it, period, because they’ll inevitably be using it at work, or with co-workers, or embarrassing the company (the time wasting, questionable photo swapping, and profane and/or flirtatious grabass postings that I hear about routinely are dismaying from both a potential liability and a public relations standpoint).