The next time you update your Facebook status or MySpace account, think twice. Your social networking could cost you your job.
The next time you update your Facebook status or MySpace account, think twice. Your social networking could cost you your job.
Being fired on the basis of a Facebook status update is a relatively new phenomenon in South Africa. However, a 23-year-old administration clerk at a clothing factory south of Durban was recently fired for calling his boss a “serial masturbator” on Facebook. A 25-year-old was suspended for venting about his employer’s alleged laziness. In the UK, a teenage girl lost her job after describing it as “boring” on Facebook.
One would think that if the Constitution states that everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to receive or impart information or ideas, then the employees should not have been fired. However, Willem de Klerk, Law Clinic Professor at Wits, argues that the Constitution promotes freedom of expression so long as what is expressed is based on fact.
However, even a true statement can be seen as defamatory, which is why de Klerk warns that "malicious social networking comments are as illegal as verbal defamatory statements". A defamatory statement injures the reputation of a person in his character, business, profession or office. According to de Klerk, if an employee deliberately makes comments to be malicious, then he or she should be fired.
Robert Brand, Journalism and Media Studies lecturer at Rhodes, believes that the problem is therefore not the “tool of communication” being used, but rather the message being communicated by the individual. “Posting such messages is the same as writing a letter to a newspaper,” says Brand.
When we use these social networks we fail to realise that what we post extends beyond our intended social circle. Deshanta Naidoo, content manager at the social and mobile media company Cerebra, points out that unlike verbal comments, the use of technology means that web entries can be located and linked back to you.
Therefore when it comes to social networking, especially if used to voice opinions about the work place, it is best to stick to company policies. Otherwise “the employer has a legal right to mete out appropriate discipline,” says Naidoo. Nonetheless there exists the need for companies to change their workplace policies to cover issues such as social netowrking to mitigate the chance that they can be defamed online.
According to labour lawyer Johann van Zyl, many South African companies have blocked Facebook and are considering labour policies designed to prevent employees from bringing the company into disrepute in their private time. Therefore think twice when you update your account. Follow Brand’s advice: “If you can’t say it in public or to your boss’s face, then don’t say it at all.”
