how to fire someone

TwitterLinkedInDiggBuzzEmail.Howard Levitt, Financial Post · Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2011

I've been in this game a long time. When an employer wished to fire an employee for cause, I used to say "Check their expense accounts and their job applications. Many employees gild the lily-1. To cover with or as if with a thin layer of gold.
2. To give an often deceptively attractive or improved appearance to.)
on their expenses and most lie on their resumes. Both are cause for discharge. But now, there is an even easier method -- check their Facebook postings and Google their names.

Two union supporters at West Coast Mazda in Pitt Meadows, B.C., foolishly posted status updates to their hundreds of "friends," many of them co-workers.

For a few weeks, one of them posted increasingly belligerent and threatening messages. He accused two of his male supervisors of sexual acts in the washroom, referred to one of them as "A COMPLETE JACK-ASS," and attacked his employer's products. One of his post's was threatening: "If somebody mentally attacks you, and you stab him in the [face] 14 or 16 times ... that constitutes self defence, doesn't it???," he wrote.

The other employee's misconduct was more isolated. Posting on only one day, his musings, sprinkled with obscene language, included an attack on his employer's ability to service the customers. Realizing he had crossed the line, he apologized, deleted the postings and closed his Facebook account the next day. It was too late. The employer had been monitoring Facebook and had made copies after their "friends" reported the abuse.

When confronted, they both denied making the postings, claiming someone else had gone on their account.

Since the union had just been certified and no collective agreement had yet been negotiated, they applied to the B.C. Labour Relations Board for reinstatement. Allison Matacheskie, vice-chair woman of the board, found their behaviour to be just cause for discharge. Given their audience of co-workers and former employees, she said, they "could have no reasonable expectation of privacy." In her view, the comments were "akin to statements made on the shop floor" in full view of everyone. However, she noted, if the second employee had admitted the postings and been honest during the investigation and hearing, she might have decided otherwise respecting him.

The Internet is a dangerous workplace tool. Downloading pornography invites criminal repercussions. Carelessly sent emails can inadvertently disclose confidential information. The ease and spontaneity created by smartphones invite casual, careless, breaches of civility codes, even defamation. From an employer's standpoint, permissive use of smartphones as workplace tools often comes back to haunt them--employees who work on them after hours have electronic evidence to support overtime claims.

Employees should be under no misapprehension. They should not post web-based comments or send emails they would not want to be printed in the pages of this newspaper. If they do, and it impacts on their employer's reputation or undermines its authority, it can be cause for their discharge.

- Howard Levitt practises employment law in eight provinces and is author of The Law of Dismissal for Human Resources Professionals. He can be reached at hlevitt@langmichener.ca.
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Read more: http://www.financialpost.com/news/features/Facebook+lead+cause+firing/4207432/story.html#ixzz1Cs8EAE36