This week in the War on Workers: How can what you say on Facebook get you fired?

Can you be fired for what you say on Facebook? Sometimes. But when? No one is really sure yet.

The emergence of social media platforms that potentially give people the chance to speak to audiences beyond their close friends and co-workers, and where lines between more or less idle chatter and intentional organizing can be blurred, complicates the question of what's protected, and makes companies care a lot more since criticisms of them can be so much more public than water cooler talk. The National Labor Relations Board is taking up a few social media-related cases, and Josh Eidelson looks at the issues involved.

Workers are generally protected when engaging in "concerted activity":

In earlier pre-Facebook cases, the NLRB considered several factors in deciding which speech counts as collective action: whether multiple workers were involved in the discussion in question, whether it related to work conditions, whether it was unacceptably disloyal or malicious, and whether it was intended to instigate activism. 'Sometimes griping is the incipient stages of 'Let's do something about it,' ' says former NLRB Chair Wilma Liebman. Other times, it's 'just griping.'

Cases being considered include caseworkers angrily discussing a co-worker's plan to tell management they weren't working hard enough and a bartender complaining that her boss had gotten her tax withholding wrong. Everyday complaints, in other words, with the key question being whether workers were actively trying to improve conditions together, or just complaining. Eidelson writes that:

U.S. Chamber of Commerce Labor Policy Director Michael Eastman says the board should think about whether to be more sensitive to Facebook posts than it is to what employees say around the water cooler, given the potential for publicity that could damage a company's reputation.

But that would undermine the point of the National Labor Relations Act. Workers' rights to collective action often conflict with owners' desires to control their corporate image. But the former is enshrined in law; the latter isn't. The power of social media to air criticism shouldn't change that.