The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) determined that Pier Sixty LLC, a New York catering service, violated federal labor law by firing an employee server after he posted a Facebook message protesting supervisory abuse and encouraging other employees to vote for a union in an upcoming election. At a recent catering event, employee, Hernan Perez, posted profane messages on his Facebook page about the company’s assistant banquet director and included “Vote YES for the UNION!!!” at the end of his profanity. After the company investigated the allegations about the posting, they fired Perez about two weeks later. However, the NLRB found that Perez’s “impulsive reaction” on Facebook was “activity protected by the [National Labor Relations] Act and his post “reflected his exasperated frustration and stress after months of concertedly protesting disrespectful treatment by managers.” The NLRB also determined that Perez’s behavior did not interrupt or interfere with the company’s customer relations, and while the board states that it does not condone the vulgar language used by Perez in his Facebook post, he never lost the protection of the NLRA and had therefore been unlawfully fired for his protected concerted activity.
