Injured Worker Caught Misbehavin’ Online (or: How an Employer Learned to Stop Worrying and Love MySpace)
While employers have legitimate concerns about employees revealing company trade secrets and other confidential work information on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc., employers have also found social media useful for snooping into their employees’ personal lives.
Today The Virginian-Pilot reported that Dollar Tree, which suspected a cashier was abusing a workers’ compensation claim ($100,000 in payments for a back injury), located the worker’s MySpace page and found she had accepted a side job taking photographs.
Sure enough, the company’s representatives investigated and found the employee carrying camera equipment and picking up children at an event with nary a sign of back pain. Dollar Tree subsequently appealed the case and won.
This is one of the first media reports we’ve seen confirming that a large corporation like Dollar Tree has successfully used MySpace to bust an injured worker.
Injured Workers Beware:
What you say and do on MySpace can and will come back to haunt you if you’re doing something wrong.
Richard Meneghello, a partner at Fisher & Phillips, LLP, warned that electronic communication tends to embolden people, enabling them to say things they wouldn’t say otherwise. People often let down their guard when it comes to electronic media because, unlike face-to-face meetings, there’s a lack of immediate repercussions.
“It is sort of shocking actually how few people really comprehend the extent to which anything they put online is going to be sort of available at some point or another for everyone to see,” Margaret DiBianca, [email protected] an associate with Young, Conaway, Stargatt and Taylor, told the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation Law Center. “They are not advertising it to the world in their mind because they’re posting it on a ‘private setting,’ but there are lots of ways for an employer’s security consultant to get around the privacy settings.”
DiBianca explained it’s more common, though, that another employee will disclose it. “Another employee who has legitimate access to the person who is out on workers’ comp has been ‘friended’ by them, has access to the site, gets on and sees it, and then turns it in either directly to the employer or to a friend, who then sends it to another friend, and it makes its way to the employer.” (workersxzcompxzkit)
DiBianca is unsure how the law will develop, what with more Gen-Y’ers entering the workforce and using social networking at an early age, leaving a high-tech paper trail for everyone to see and peruse. “Technology is ingrained in their daily life,” said DiBianca.
Contributed by: Robin E. Kobayashi, LexisNexis Law Center Staff
Lexis-Nexis Workers’ Compensation Law Center.
WC IQ Test: http://www.workerscompkit.com/intro/
WC Books: http://www.reduceyourworkerscomp.com/workers-comp-books-manuals.php
WC Calculator: www.reduceyourworkerscomp.com/calculator.php
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All state laws vary. You can also ask your insurance broker for advice on all workers’ comp issues.
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