There is two side to the the story. 1) Employer should never ask for passwords to anyone's privately owned Internet accounts, gmail/facebook/twitter whatever.
But 2) Employees should never use social network to revel work problems, company secret, or make fun of co-workers, complain and demonize co-workers. If someone is found violating that principle, there should be ways for independent party to verify the complain/violation, and for companies to take action.
I have seen social network abused by individuals to do something really tasteless to their coworkers, and something needs to be done about that.
At the time, Hester was a teacher's aide at Frank Squires Elementary in Cassopolis. According to a letter from the Cassopolis schools superintendent to the Lewis Cass Intermediate superintendent, a parent who was friends with Hester on Facebook notified the school about the picture.
There is two side to the the story. 1) Employer should never ask for passwords to anyone's privately owned Internet accounts, gmail/facebook/twitter whatever.
But 2) Employees should never use social network to revel work problems, company secret, or make fun of co-workers, complain and demonize co-workers. If someone is found violating that principle, there should be ways for independent party to verify the complain/violation, and for companies to take action.
I have seen social network abused by individuals to do something really tasteless to their coworkers, and something needs to be done about that.
The highlighted is the most important thing you wrote. "If someone is found" to be spreading information about the company. Yes, that is (and should be) grounds for termination, just as if they'd printed out a page and walked it off the premesis.
That does not, however, entitle an employer to go on a fishing expedition looking through all of an employees posessions (both digital and physical) for evidence of such a breech without first knowing that such a breech had occured. Suspicion or accusation without proof is not enough.
I couldn't care less what the teacher does on their time.
It's their time to use as they see fit, not mine.
Negative Ghost Rider.
It's not any different than abortion.
Men control women's bodies in the U.S.
Just as you must supply all password's and account for everything you do outside of work.
You belong to the Government and Corporations.
Right, because people who are against abortion just want to control women's bodies. They have no interest in protecting the unborn at all.
The complaining parent can hand over her Facebook password.
MotionMan
Everyone should be fired if they do not give their password to their employer.
You and everything you do both on and off work belongs to the Corporation.
We shouldn't need unions to protect ourselves from common sense.
I think they wanted the picture as evidence and to know who it was and I would assume the parent would not know who it was but seeing as the person that was fired took it they needed her to provide it.
Lots of places demand you give them a urine sample, some even require a blood test, background checks aren't all that uncommon, and a credit check is apparently necessary to get a job at many places now. I see this as just the next step in the process. I assume that at some point a list of every website you've ever visited will be required as part of an interview as well.
Get used to it, this is you're life, this is your future. You will conform and you will supply all the information that's asked for. You'll turn over every single piece of information about your life and convince yourself that it's really not all that bad.
For doing this, you'll get a reasonably well paying job and a lot of false security. It's a win win deal.
Employees should never use social network to revel work problems, company secret, or make fun of co-workers, complain and demonize co-workers. If someone is found violating that principle, there should be ways for independent party to verify the complain/violation, and for companies to take action.
No. Flat out.
If I want to bitch about my coworkers OFF the clock then I have every right to do so and the company can't do jack fucking shit, and it better stay that way.
A lot of schools have moral clauses in their teacher contracts and I think things like this are already covered in those clauses. I know our teachers can even be punished for acting inappropriately outside of work. We have had a few spotted at clubs doing inappropriate things (smoking pot, showing their tits, etc...) by coworkers and it was enough to bring disciplinary action to them.
So really, it all depends on what you signed up for when you took the job.
That makes sense I suppose, but normal jobs where you don't interact with children don't and shouldn't have such rules.
Note: I'm not commenting on the OP article, just social networking posts in general.
Stupid but I get where the school is coming from. It's easy to say it's her own time and what she does with it is her own business, but turn that around and look at how much negative press organizations suffer from poor employee behavior off the clock and how visible that sort of thing is through Facebook and internet media. Customers want to feel like their bankers, teachers, legislators, and corporate execs are conservative business people. When they're 'caught' being human it becomes a PR disaster for both employee and organization.
You can't say that it's "her own time" anyway, well, at least not with teachers (this was just a teacher's aide.) Like it or not, teachers are held to a higher standard 24/7; not just while they're working.
No. Flat out.
If I want to bitch about my coworkers OFF the clock then I have every right to do so and the company can't do jack fucking shit, and it better stay that way.
It's not about off the clock or not, it's about who your FB friends are and who knows about your bitching. If your friends are just a few close personal/family friend, no coworker, no big network of friend of friends who may be connected to work....etc, then go bitch away. But otherwise it's not much different than going on public tv and bitch about your coworker where your boss, other coworkers, general public would find out. Your coworker could easily sue you for damage of reputation. Your boss could fire your ass for damaging work relationship.
The problem with social network is what you say/post can have little or big impact depending on how many people you are connected to, not like email which is for your eyes only. If your employer would know about you saying $hit, you are connected to way too many people to be talking crap in your social network account.