Ok so you have no expectation of privacy at work. Your job can monitor your Internet use, what you send via email and who you send it too. (You also don't have any "constitutional rights" at work but that's another blog.) We may not like it but we tolerate it. But you should be able to do whatever you want, whoever you want and however you want to OUTSIDE of work. You should be able to protest corporate greed with your twitter feed, join anti-whatever groups on Facebook and show pictures of yourself making out with all kinds of co-workers on Myspace. Yet people are being fired daily for things done on social networking sites that may reflect negatively on an employer or are simply undesirable. This needs to be fixed.
The law says you have a "duty of loyalty" to your employer--which includes representing yourself at all times as a representative of the organization. But this amounts to legalized slavery. Sure you get paid (some of us better than others) but if your social life is now dictated by professional rules, you lack freedom. Add to it that your employer (unless it's the government) can violate your constitutional rights all day (except to discriminate against you on the basis of sex, race, gender, religion, etc) and you pretty much are a slave.
The constitution guarantees us certain rights that the government can't deny us. You have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your home and in your body; you can exercise free speech and assemble with other like minded individuals in a peaceful manner; you can even own a gun (whether you can carry it is another matter). Your employer on the other hand doesn't have to adhere to these rules. You can be fired for drug use or abuse and may even be subjected to intrusive drug tests to obtain evidence against you. Grouping into cliques can be frowned upon depending on the make of up that clique (it's "too" something). Sure businesses have legitimate reasons for being able to write certain rules (there's some serious liability depending on your job for showing up to work drunk or high) but at some point it goes too far.
What one does on their own time and using their own resources should be their business. The government respects it--there are Supreme Court cases that actually decide if laws against anal sex while performed at home are constitutional--so why can't your employer? So long as one doesn't cross the line of defamation, one should be able to say whatever they want about their employer. Changing your status to "my benefits suck" should be okay so long as it's true. Tweeting that a co-worker is gross because they don't wash their hands should be fair game. Generally anything you do on your own time using your own resources so long as it doesn't defame your employer should be cool. But it's not.
There's a general idea out there that employers are afraid to fire you because they don't want to be sued. While that may be true, proving a case against an employer for wrongful termination or termination based on discrimination is very difficult, especially since the fired individual has to PROVE they were fired for X. In other words, they have to know or find out they were fired BECAUSE they were pregnant, or Jewish or Asian--or because they had a big box of porn in their house. Until this is rectified--watch what you say online folks.
Kiss my Converse!
Sho-Nuff
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