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Violating Unspoken Policies
She says she lost her home and car, and that her children had to live with their father for a time because she was broke. (Eventually she got a new job as an office manager.)
Jerry Gilliland, a spokesman for the labor department, declined to discuss details of the case. He said the agency’s policy banned the use of office technology for personal reasons, except in rare cases with manager approval, and that employees learned of the policy at their orientation. Gilliland added that state law also bans the use of electronic equipment for private purposes.
Newitt says she thought the policy covered Web surfing, not e-mail, and was stunned to be fired without a warning.
The ePolicy Institute’s Nancy Flynn says that companies don’t always communicate their computer-use policies adequately. According to a 2006 ePolicy survey, 76 percent of organizations said they had a written policy about e-mail use, but only 42 percent conducted training about the policy and explained how violators would be disciplined. (Short of firing, violators commonly face fines that range from $1,000 to $3,000 per infraction.)
Workers have little protection. No federal law compels a firm to say when monitoring software is installed. And Connecticut and Delaware are the only two states to require employers to tell workers they’re being monitored.
Bloggers, too, are learning they have little protection for what they say about employers on personal websites. Freedom of speech doesn’t ensure job security. And some are finding that online activity can damage a career before it begins. Stacy Snyder was working toward a bachelor of science in education and a teaching certificate from Millersville University in Pennsylvania. Her supervising teacher at the high school where she was doing in-class training says Snyder was inviting students to visit her MySpace page. Among the contents: a photo of Snyder wearing a pirate hat and holding a plastic cup. A caption read “Drunken Pirate.”
High school officials called Snyder’s MySpace activity inappropriate and unprofessional. Subsequently, she says, she had to forfeit the teaching certificate and switch to a bachelor of arts degree. She has sued Millersville for what she says is unfair punishment; the university refutes her claims. In any case, her teaching career may be over already.
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