Caution: Blogging Can be Hazardous to Your Health

Is blogging protected as free speech?

I’ve now read at least three articles about people being fired for what they say in their blogs. Here’s the latest story. Naturally, there are some things that should just be common sense:

• Don’t talk shit about your boss or your coworkers
• Don’t reveal company secrets
• Don’t blog from work
• Don’t mention your company on your blog if you are a bigot of any sort. Companies generally don’t like to have their names associated with bigots

I have taken great pains to either not talk about work, or to talk about it only in broad terms or as humorously as possible. But I know that I have read blogs written by industrious people who write about indsutry developments. For instance, I read the blog of someone who attended a VoIP (Voice over Ineternet Protocol) conference and it gave me a lot of valuable information and the responses to the blog were even more insightful. The ability to have this free and public interchange of information is beneficial to everyone.

In an ideal world, blogs are used as a global means of conversation. People get on the soapbox and sound off. Of course, as with any conversation, it works best if everyone can observe a certain level of ettiquette. But do we destroy the livlihood of those people whose ettiquette we don’t like? Is that fair?

As much as we might like to pretend otherwise, the online and offline worlds collide, and this is one area where the collision could have some serious impacts on your life. No one wants to come home and say, “honey, I got fired for calling my boss an asshole on the Internet.” (Note: Wim, you are the best boss I have ever had. Really. Ever. And forever.)

But should companies be allowed to fire people who don’t reveal secrets, or who don’t make personal attacks? If I write about a disagreement I had with my boss at work and I don’t mention the details and I don’t attack him personally (because, Wim, you know I would never do that), should I be allowed to be fired? Is that reasonable? If I disagree with management about a public action they have taken and say so on my blog, is that a firing offense? How is it different from saying, “I disagree with what my company did” at the local bar? Or even in the hallways of your own office?

What if I love bugs and I write a blog about how much I love bugs, but I work for a pest control company and mention their name and they don’t like that because they’re all about the wholesale genocide of these wonderful, harmless creatures… is that kosher?

In the Yahoo! article there was a flight attendant who was fired because she had some pictures of herself in her uniform doing things like leaning over and (gasp) eating on a plane. And she was fired. She’s suing (I know, you’re all surprised), but not because they fired her, but because they didn’t fire male employees who had done the exact same thing. Now that just smacks of discrimination.

The solution that the article highlights is blogging policies put out by companies. Now, I tend to agree that it’s better to clearly state to your employees what you will and won’t fire them for, but as a blogger myself, I don’t know how I would feel about the company telling me what I can and can’t say on my blog. It starts to get into an area where companies manage the personal lives of their employees. It’s the same thing as if they said, “We don’t want you to walk down the street in a ‘Gay Pride’ shirt and tell peopel that you work for us here at Wal Mart”. I don’t believe that companies should have that right.

Some things are easy. Breaking disclosure agreements? Clear out your desk. Calling your co-workers, employees, or bosses ethnic and racial slurs on your blog? Pink slip. Publishing libel and slander? Pink slip and a side of lawsuit. Fine, no problem with that, those are all actions that would clearly be in violation of employee manuals in any company.

But what about mentioning that you work for the Republican party on your “gay pride” advocacy site?

Blogging is public speech. And I think it should have the same protections (and the same liabilities) that other forms of public speech have.

It will be interesting to see how the first cases of blog-related wrongful termination lawsuits will pan out. Sparks always fly when society, and the law, try to catch up with technology.

In the mean time… Wim… I got nothing but love for you baby.