Beware of blog

[question everything]

The Daily Breeze

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Beware of blog

Firings over work-related content on personal Web sites prompt calls for better company policies.
By Anick Jesdanun
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK -- Flight attendant Ellen Simonetti and former Google employee Mark Jen have more in common than their love of blogging: They both got fired over it.

Simonetti had posted suggestive photographs of herself in uniform, while Jen speculated online about his employer's finances. In neither case were their bosses happy when they found out.

Although many companies have Internet guidelines that prohibit visiting porn sites or forwarding racist jokes, few of the policies directly cover blogs, or Web journals, particularly those written outside of work hours.

"There needs to be a dialogue going on between employers and employees," said Heather Armstrong, a Web designer fired for commenting on her blog about goings on at work. "There's this power of personal publishing, and there needs to be rules about what you can or cannot say about the workplace."


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Find this article at:
http://www.dailybreeze.com/business/articles/1384272.html

[Occulus]

1. This won't end until corporate personhood does.

A company in MI recently told all its employees they could no longer smoke- on or off the job. They're considering ordering their employees to "eat healthy", which presumably means if they're seen eating unhealthy, they could get canned.

This is getting totally out of hand. We need to revoke corporate personhood ASAP, so chartered corporations have no rights, only priveleges. They are not alive, they are not human, they do not deserve to exist, but should do so only at the people's pleasure.

This kind of repressive rule speaks volumes about what business really thinks of our rights as a people. They have employees by the balls in this economy, and they know it and are exploiting that fact.

[question everything]

7. I worked for an engineering company

that went through rough times and laied off many in all the departments.

When I was called for a part time job a year later, I was shocked to see how the parking lot was barely half full of what I remembered.

Only one department did not lose a single employee. Yes, you guess it the personnel department.

[WilliamPitt]

2. I gotta say

that there has to be a wee bit of personal responsibility involved here. What kind of brain-dead fool writes bad things about their boss/work/whatever in a public space accessible by millions. I am all about free speech - hell, I make my living with it - but you are not going to catch me dogging out my boss or my co-workers in public.

I have a friend who was recently in a long-distance relationship. He would get glowing emails from his girlfriend...and then a month later she dumped him. Not long after, he found her 'online diary' blog...and compared the time stamp of her emails to him with her posts on the blog. She would send an email filled with love and light, and then 20 minutes later post a blog entry that dogged him out.

Moral: If you'ere going to keep a diary, make it the paper variety.

I'm shocked, shocked that someone found my internet material!

:eyes:

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. Ding Ding Ding

These people think that because a blog is ostensibly "new media" that the old rules of decorum cease to exist. That's not cutting edge. It's stupid.

What would happen if your boss overheard you ripping her up in a restaurant (the "she's sitting right behind me, isn't she" phenomenon). Probably the same thing.

Of course, we could ask the more general question here: What forms of social interaction carry over from older media on to blogs? What new forms do blogs enable?

[question everything]

8. The flip side of this is employees using company computer

for personal tasks including emails.

The only "personal" tasks that I would do would go to my yahoo account to check for mails. And if I did surf the web, I was certain that the sites would not offend anyone. Not even this one.

As far as anyone should be concerned - emails and phone calls and using the computer on company times can be monitored and acted upon.

But I agree that what people do in their own time - like smoking - is not the employer's business.

This, BTW, is why I am against employer provided health insurance, though I know that this is the reason why going on one's own is so expensive without the tax benefits that employers get.

Employers can and do demand to know the providers of medical services. Not the nature, but the names. Thus, if there is only one clinic or a physician in town that performs abortion, and a female family member visited that physician, that visit is no longer a protected private matter.

[mattclearing]

3. I don't write about anything related to work anywhere.

I think common sense is the issue here. Sheesh.

[WilliamPitt]

4. Exactly. See #2 above.

[mattclearing]

5. Agreed. n/t

[Trillo]

9. Command and control over time not paid.

Why is it that employers want control over aspects of employees lives during off-hours? This type of generalized command and control is reported repeatedly over the years, specifics vary over time, now it's personal blogs, but why in the propaganda there are never calls for employers to pay employees for 24/7?

Employers want to hold employees responsible, without taking fair responsibility themselves. Command and control over time not paid.

[RedSock]

10. "Simonetti had posted suggestive photographs of herself in uniform"

Pics?

[lostinacause]

11. One of the situations deals with a person spreading

privileged information over the public realm. Most (if not all) companies have either implicit or explicit contracts regarding this type of thing. How would you feel if a doctor spread information about, you, her patient using the excuse of controlling over time not paid. When an employee whether through stupidity or his choice releases damaging information toward a company, they don't deserve to work there.