Post by Moses on Dec 10, 2004 20:39:44 GMT -5
Blogs May Be a Wealth HazardĀ By Rachel Metz
Story location: www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65912,00.html
02:00 AM Dec. 06, 2004 PT
What do a flight attendant in Texas, a temporary employee in Washington and a web designer in Utah have in common? They were all fired for posting content on their blogs that their companies disapproved of.
The rise of blogging over the past few years has, inevitably, given way to another phenomenon, as companies are forced to confront employees' easy access to ranting and raving about work in public online forums like Blogger and LiveJournal.
While some companies like Sun Microsystems and Microsoft express blog-friendliness, for employees who are unaware of their company's stance on the practice or working at firms without clear policies, the consequences of posting work-related entries or photos can be sudden and shocking. This issue could be solved, experts say, with some policy tweaking.
Ellen Simonetti, the flight attendant in Texas, said she was suspended without pay, then benefits, and subsequently fired, by Delta Airlines this fall. Allegedly, her release was for posting photos of herself in uniform on her blog, which contained a mix of fact and fiction, she said. She'd never mentioned Delta by name as her employer, Simonetti said, and once Delta contacted her about the photos, she removed them from her site.
Simonetti said she has filed a discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and she's also trying to appeal to Delta to reclaim her job. She's not aware of any company policies regarding blogging, she said, and if Delta wants to fire her for violating uniform-use guidelines, there are plenty of others that should be let go, too.
"I just want fair treatment, you know?" she said.
Simonetti, like others who reported similar experiences, said if she'd known what the repercussions would be, she'd never have posted the photos.
Delta spokeswoman Benet Wilson said she couldn't say if the airline has any blogging policies, nor whether Simonetti was even an employee of Delta.
"All I can say about this is that we do not discuss internal company employee matters," she said.
Microsoft had a similar response when asked about Michael Hanscom, who had an experience similar to Simonetti's. Last October, he was working on Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, campus as a temp contracted to Xerox. One day, he saw some then-new Power Mac G5 computers being unloaded on site, and, tickled by the idea that Microsoft would be using Apple hardware, he snapped a photo and uploaded it to his blog.
"I didn't think it was much of a big deal at that point," Hanscom said.
Evidently, somebody disagreed, because four days later he was called into his manager's office and told that because he was hosting the photo on his own site, he couldn't be ordered to remove the offending photo, but he could be ordered off the property, as he soon was.
Hanscom said he wasn't given the option of removing the photo and keeping his job, and he's not sure how anyone found out about his blog post or how high up the managerial food chain the incident went.
He was told, however, the photo was considered a security violation because he wrote on the same page some details about where he took the photo and his office's proximity to the photo site, he said.
Microsoft would not say much about the circumstances of Hanscom's release.
"We don't comment on personnel issues, so there's not really much I can share here," a company representative said.
She did, however, say a number of Microsoft employees have blogs, and are supported in doing so as long as they follow the company's confidentiality agreement.
She said she couldn't say whether any Microsoft employees have been fired for blogging, because she couldn't say whether that was what happened in this instance. Nor could she confirm whether Hanscom was subject to Microsoft's employee rules at the time he was working at its site.
Companies can generally fire employees for any cause -- or no cause, said Wendy Seltzer, an intellectual-property attorney who deals in free speech issues and works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"If they didn't like the way you talked one day, they could, absent a specific agreement otherwise, they could fire you on the spot," she said.
Companies should recognize blogging is something their employees may be doing, and should set out clear policies regarding it, Seltzer said.
"I'd expect there are consultants out there right now that are trying to talk to companies about how they should work blogging into their company's marketing," Seltzer said.
Louisiana State University assistant communications professor and self-described blogologist Kaye Trammell agreed. Trammell studies blogs and wrote her doctoral dissertation on celebrity blogs.
Trammell said she'd expect larger companies and those prone to having tech-savvy employees to start addressing the issue, if they haven't already.
"I don't necessarily think a company needs to create a blogging policy. I think whatever policies they have in place should be expanded to include blogs," she said.
Such clarification might have helped Heather Armstrong, the Utah web designer who lost her job in 2002 after her then-employer caught wind of her blog containing several stories she'd written about the types of people she'd worked with. She was soon fired for the postings.
Companies need to be clear with employees about what's OK and what's not in the blogosphere, Armstrong said.
"As long as companies ignore the fact that, you know, their employees do have voices, as long as no one comes up with an official policy, this will continue to happen," she said.
Story location: www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65912,00.html
02:00 AM Dec. 06, 2004 PT
What do a flight attendant in Texas, a temporary employee in Washington and a web designer in Utah have in common? They were all fired for posting content on their blogs that their companies disapproved of.
The rise of blogging over the past few years has, inevitably, given way to another phenomenon, as companies are forced to confront employees' easy access to ranting and raving about work in public online forums like Blogger and LiveJournal.
While some companies like Sun Microsystems and Microsoft express blog-friendliness, for employees who are unaware of their company's stance on the practice or working at firms without clear policies, the consequences of posting work-related entries or photos can be sudden and shocking. This issue could be solved, experts say, with some policy tweaking.
Ellen Simonetti, the flight attendant in Texas, said she was suspended without pay, then benefits, and subsequently fired, by Delta Airlines this fall. Allegedly, her release was for posting photos of herself in uniform on her blog, which contained a mix of fact and fiction, she said. She'd never mentioned Delta by name as her employer, Simonetti said, and once Delta contacted her about the photos, she removed them from her site.
Simonetti said she has filed a discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and she's also trying to appeal to Delta to reclaim her job. She's not aware of any company policies regarding blogging, she said, and if Delta wants to fire her for violating uniform-use guidelines, there are plenty of others that should be let go, too.
"I just want fair treatment, you know?" she said.
Simonetti, like others who reported similar experiences, said if she'd known what the repercussions would be, she'd never have posted the photos.
Delta spokeswoman Benet Wilson said she couldn't say if the airline has any blogging policies, nor whether Simonetti was even an employee of Delta.
"All I can say about this is that we do not discuss internal company employee matters," she said.
Microsoft had a similar response when asked about Michael Hanscom, who had an experience similar to Simonetti's. Last October, he was working on Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, campus as a temp contracted to Xerox. One day, he saw some then-new Power Mac G5 computers being unloaded on site, and, tickled by the idea that Microsoft would be using Apple hardware, he snapped a photo and uploaded it to his blog.
"I didn't think it was much of a big deal at that point," Hanscom said.
Evidently, somebody disagreed, because four days later he was called into his manager's office and told that because he was hosting the photo on his own site, he couldn't be ordered to remove the offending photo, but he could be ordered off the property, as he soon was.
Hanscom said he wasn't given the option of removing the photo and keeping his job, and he's not sure how anyone found out about his blog post or how high up the managerial food chain the incident went.
He was told, however, the photo was considered a security violation because he wrote on the same page some details about where he took the photo and his office's proximity to the photo site, he said.
Microsoft would not say much about the circumstances of Hanscom's release.
"We don't comment on personnel issues, so there's not really much I can share here," a company representative said.
She did, however, say a number of Microsoft employees have blogs, and are supported in doing so as long as they follow the company's confidentiality agreement.
She said she couldn't say whether any Microsoft employees have been fired for blogging, because she couldn't say whether that was what happened in this instance. Nor could she confirm whether Hanscom was subject to Microsoft's employee rules at the time he was working at its site.
Companies can generally fire employees for any cause -- or no cause, said Wendy Seltzer, an intellectual-property attorney who deals in free speech issues and works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"If they didn't like the way you talked one day, they could, absent a specific agreement otherwise, they could fire you on the spot," she said.
Companies should recognize blogging is something their employees may be doing, and should set out clear policies regarding it, Seltzer said.
"I'd expect there are consultants out there right now that are trying to talk to companies about how they should work blogging into their company's marketing," Seltzer said.
Louisiana State University assistant communications professor and self-described blogologist Kaye Trammell agreed. Trammell studies blogs and wrote her doctoral dissertation on celebrity blogs.
Trammell said she'd expect larger companies and those prone to having tech-savvy employees to start addressing the issue, if they haven't already.
"I don't necessarily think a company needs to create a blogging policy. I think whatever policies they have in place should be expanded to include blogs," she said.
Such clarification might have helped Heather Armstrong, the Utah web designer who lost her job in 2002 after her then-employer caught wind of her blog containing several stories she'd written about the types of people she'd worked with. She was soon fired for the postings.
Companies need to be clear with employees about what's OK and what's not in the blogosphere, Armstrong said.
"As long as companies ignore the fact that, you know, their employees do have voices, as long as no one comes up with an official policy, this will continue to happen," she said.