Labor & Employment Law Blog

Many employers understandably seek to regulate employees' use of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to communicate about the employer or about workplace issues. As we previously reported here, for example, the National Labor Relations Board has recently determined in several cases that the employer violated the National Labor Relations Act either by adopting policies the NLRB considers to be an unlawful restraint of protected concerted activity by employees and/or by disciplining employees based on public criticisms of the employer the NLRB determined to be protected concerted activity.

Today, the NLRB Acting General Counsel issued a report summarizing the results of 14 NLRB investigations within the last year concerning employees' use of social media. That report, which can be downloaded here, provides a good deal of guidance about policies that may be deemed to be unlawful and about the circumstances when a social media posting is likely to be considered protected concerted activity.