The complaint filed by a medical technician employed by American Medical Response of Connecticut claiming she was illegally terminating in part because of her comments on Facebook, has ended in a settlement. While the employee will not be returning to work and the financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed, the company did agree to revise its “overly-broad” restrictions to insure they don’t “improperly” restrict employees from discussing work issues on social media websites while employees are not at work.
Next step for employers
Carefully review your employment policies related to what employee can and cannot say about their employer and when those restrictions are operative. If employers aren’t ready to revise the language of those sections because its unclear what language is now acceptable, note the section of the NLRB news release that states that American Medical Response will not discipline employees from discussions they have on social media sites, off hours, about their work. HR professionals should be aware that they shouldn’t use those sections to discipline their employees until that language has been suitably revised.
Reading Tea Leaves by Randy Wilson 
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