legal guidlines : social media

TBagpuss

It might also depend also on whether the employer has a code or policy about social media and or behaviour outside work, and what it says.

A savvy employer would googlethe names of applicants to see whether there is anything worrying lurking online, and might then raise this early on if it is an issue.

In specific cases, the reasonabless of the employer's actions are likely to depend very heavily on the circumstances, both of the 'embarassing ' photos or videos and of the type of job.

sangie595

Helvetica_Van_Buren wrote: »

Legally, no. There is no law that covers this scenario.

Contractually, it depends what the contract of employment says about social media use.

That's really all there is to it.

Not so, I'm afraid. This is a school. Let's hypothetically say that the defence is "Look I was very drunk or else I'd have never let anyone record me shooting up heroin, and besides which it all happened before I worked here so there's nothing you can do about it". That defence would sink like a lead balloon. It all depends on the exact situation and circumstances, but "in the past" and"non-teaching" are not defences that will work if the circumstances are such that the school considers this to be serious.

Undervalued

sangie595 wrote: »

Not so, I'm afraid. This is a school. Let's hypothetically say that the defence is "Look I was very drunk or else I'd have never let anyone record me shooting up heroin, and besides which it all happened before I worked here so there's nothing you can do about it". That defence would sink like a lead balloon. It all depends on the exact situation and circumstances, but "in the past" and"non-teaching" are not defences that will work if the circumstances are such that the school considers this to be serious.

Exactly.

As I said earlier it does not need to be spelt out in an employment contract.

Behaviour which brings the employer into disrepute, whenever it took place, if serious enough can always be grounds for dismissal.

The employment contract can go further, perhaps by banning employees from certain social media activities altogether.

Equally the activity, unlike your example, does not even need to be illegal. Was there not an example a few years back of an employee being dismissed because he and his wife had run a (perfectly legal) pornographic website that catered for a particular interest?

Malthusian

Nobody is going to accidentally come across a 5-year-old video of some random person in a compromising position on YouTube. Let alone an 11-year-old one. (Unless that person is a celebrity or it made the national news but that seems unlikely from what we've been told.)

So OP's hypothetical concern must be of someone informing the school that there's a video on YouTube featuring their employee doing something compromising, and here's the link.

In which case OP's real problem is not the video but the person he thinks is going to try to get him sacked. Hypothetically.

Undervalued

Malthusian wrote: »

Nobody is going to accidentally come across a 5-year-old video of some random person in a compromising position on YouTube. Let alone an 11-year-old one. (Unless that person is a celebrity or it made the national news but that seems unlikely from what we've been told.)

So OP's hypothetical concern must be of someone informing the school that there's a video on YouTube featuring their employee doing something compromising, and here's the link.

In which case OP's real problem is not the video but the person he thinks is going to try to get him sacked. Hypothetically.

No, I see it as both.

Obviously had he not behaved in a "compromising" way in the first place nobody could have videoed it. That is ultimately where the problem lies.

It is easy to blame the person who videoed it and put it on social media (if that was done without his permission). Equally he may want to blame whoever has drawn his employer's attention to it. But, you can't blackmail somebody who has nothing to hide and you cannot video what didn't take place!

Not that many months ago there were lewd allegations about the former prime minister's behaviour during his student days. It was suggested that a wildly compromising photograph existed. If he had indeed behaved in that way and a photograph had surfaced then that would have been career over in an instant. We will probably never know but the whole story should be sobering lesson to everybody. You don't need to be famous (although obviously you would be a greater risk) but these days nearly everything is recorded and can be published indelibly worldwide in an instant.

sangie595

Undervalued wrote: »

Exactly.

As I said earlier it does not need to be spelt out in an employment contract.

Behaviour which brings the employer into disrepute, whenever it took place, if serious enough can always be grounds for dismissal.

The employment contract can go further, perhaps by banning employees from certain social media activities altogether.

Equally the activity, unlike your example, does not even need to be illegal. Was there not an example a few years back of an employee being dismissed because he and his wife had run a (perfectly legal) pornographic website that catered for a particular interest?

Yes, there have been a few such cases. Some even less controversial. The problem is that, for a headteacher, they run an organisation which, at its core, must operate a set of ethical standards. If Johnny sees that Mr X, even though not a teacher, did / does.......... (Whatever) then it can reflect on the school, on the colleagues - it can even get a head teacher dismissed if they are seen to tolerate it. There in fact was a case of a teacher who liked to party. Nothing more than that. So yes, went out drinking and stuck it all on Facebook. Sacked. because the pupils found it! Going out drinking isn't illegal. Being a party girl isn't illegal. Getting drunk isn't illegal. But you can still be sacked for your behavior. Even past behaviour

Malthusian

Not that many months ago there were lewd allegations about the former prime minister's behaviour during his student days. It was suggested that a wildly compromising photograph existed. If he had indeed behaved in that way and a photograph had surfaced then that would have been career over in an instant. We will probably never know

Actually it's a well known objective fact that the story was completely made up by Lord Ashcroft. There is no more reason to believe that David Cameron performed a sexual act with a pig than there is to believe the same of you, if I decided to allege it.

but the whole story should be sobering lesson to everybody. You don't need to be famous (although obviously you would be a greater risk) but these days nearly everything is recorded and can be published indelibly worldwide in an instant.

I'm not sure how the story matches the moral. The whole problem with the pig story is that nothing was recorded or published. There was nothing to back it up whatsoever. No photos, no corroboration from the numerous contemporaries who would have been there, nothing. The lesson is that people will believe any old nonsense if they want to. We had the bizarre spectacle of left-wing activists falling over themselves to lap up the word of a Tory tax exile and vulture capitalist, someone they would normally treat as Satan incarnate, simply because he had an axe to grind against another Tory who didn't give him a cushy job.

Back to the point of the thread. I don't disagree that the OP's problem is both the evidence and the blackmailer. But the problem is that of course you can blackmail someone without evidence. You just say "£1,000 in a brown envelope or I'll tell everyone what you did at that party in 2005. Oh and by the way I've got the video on a USB stick." The USB stick may not even exist. But no matter how flimsy the evidence, it is always a dilemma whether to call the blackmailer's bluff. The allegation may be enough to ruin your career, even if no evidence exists whatsoever, if the blackmailer decides to post a letter underneath the door of every parent.

That's why the bigger problem in the OP's case is not the video but whoever is playing the part of Lord Ashcroft.

Undervalued

Malthusian wrote: »

Back to the point of the thread. I don't disagree that the OP's problem is both the evidence and the blackmailer. But the problem is that of course you can blackmail someone without evidence. You just say "£1,000 in a brown envelope or I'll tell everyone what you did at that party in 2005. Oh and by the way I've got the video on a USB stick." The USB stick may not even exist. But no matter how flimsy the evidence, it is always a dilemma whether to call the blackmailer's bluff. The allegation may be enough to ruin your career, even if no evidence exists whatsoever, if the blackmailer decides to post a letter underneath the door of every parent.

But you cannot blackmail somebody if they have done nothing wrong! So, if you didn't do the alleged compromising act then there can't be any genuine evidence.

OK, you can threaten to make a false allegation but the would be blackmailer can't have any evidence to back up his claims if it never happened.

Getting back to the (hypothetical) example here. The OP is not disputing that the compromising behaviour happened or that the video evidence exists. He was asking if the employer could discipline him for it, despite it happening before he was employed. To which the answer is yes.