Social media can be many different things. For many millennials, it can be their primary source of communication with others in their hometown or across the world. For businesses, it can serve as an effective marketing tool, allowing for instant, widespread connections with customers. For some employers, however, social media can prove to be a litigation trap. As the law struggles to keep pace with the ever-changing landscape of today’s technology, uncertainty looms for how employers should treat their employees’ use of social media.
The past few years have seen an increasing number of employees bringing claims to the National Labor Relations Board claiming their employers have violated the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). While it may be hard to imagine the drafters of the NLRA, which was enacted in 1935, could ever have predicted the emergence of social media, many of the core principles of the NLRA apply to social media. Section 7 of the NLRA protects an employee’s right to engage in concerted activities, which may include activities such as an employee initiating group action among other employees or an employee bringing complaints to the attention of management. Social media websites may serve as the forum for concerted activity as employees interact with each other and the public.
