Most employees in California are at-will (public employees are excepted and have a whole other set of rights) and in fact, the only state that is not at-will is Montana. This means that your employer can terminate your employment at any time, for any reason provided it does not violate any federal, state or local laws. This doesn’t mean that they can fire you for blogging. What it does mean is that they can fire you for blogging on company paid time or for revealing company secrets, or representing yourself as an employee of a company and acting in a manner which would violate the company’s policies. If you can stay away from all of that, then you can blog to your heart’s content. If not, the company can justify a termination. Take the case of the flight attendant for Delta who was fired for posting pictures of herself in uniform in a manner considered to be suggestive. Although I might necessarily take the same actions as Delta’s HR department (I’d probably issue a warning first), they were justified in invoking their at-will clause, provided that they invoke it consistently to anyone else who does the same (or similar) thing. Consistency is the most important thing in HR. All employees should be treated the same according to company policy and procedure. Any failure to do so is a failure on the part of the company and the employee should not have to suffer for it. All the employee needs to do is abide by company policy and we’ll all get along.
That's pretty good advice. Go read the rest and start a discussion with Lori, especially if you blog at work or blog about your boss!
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