The National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) has issued a press release stating that they are pursuing unfair labor practice charges against a non-profit company called Hispanics United of Buffalo (“HUB”) for firing five employees who were discussing the terms and conditions of their job on Facebook.

In this case, an employee of HUB posted a comment on her Facebook page regarding a co-worker’s allegation that employees did not do enough to help HUB’s clients.  Five of the employee’s co-workers then responded to the initial comment, by defending their job performance and criticizing their working conditions.  After learning of the employees’ responses, HUB discharged the five employees, and reasoned that their comments constituted harassment of the original employee mentioned in the initial comment.

The NLRB filed an unfair labor practice charge against HUB, and alleged that the Facebook discussion constituted protected concerted activity under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”).  As I noted in this prior blog post, under Section 7 of the NLRA, employees have the right to talk about the terms and conditions of their job with others, and cannot be disciplined for doing so.

This case is similar to another well-known “Facebook Firing” case involving a company called American Medical Response (“AMR”), where the employer discharged an employee for criticizing her supervisor and working conditions on her Facebook page.  That case received a lot of press, and was eventually settled.

The HUB case is also similar to the AMR case, because the NLRB decided to issue a press release about the case.  I should note that it is uncommon for the NLRB to issue a press release on unfair labor practice cases.   By issuing a press release in this case, the NLRB is again putting employers on notice that they should not be disciplining employees for engaging in protected activity through the use of social media.

You can read the NLRB’s press release here, and a copy of the formal complaint here.