National Nurses United

NewsBriefs.REV_June REV 8/20/10 4:35 PM Page 5 amount of personal information online," wrote Barbara Camens in a paper she presented at an AFL-CIO lawyers conference in June. "The speed and ease with which words, photos, and other graphic images are being electronically transmitted and widely disseminated...have greatly increased the opportunity for employer monitoring and greatly magnified the workplace risks to employees." Furthermore, said Camens, use of social media platforms are also "blurring many of the old lines" between work time versus break time, work activity versus off-duty activity, and private versus public information. Hospitals, other employers, and unionbusting firms are using social networking sites to surveil and dig up dirt on employees, as well as screen job applicants. Some 43 percent of employers are actively monitoring employee email; 66 percent monitor employee website visits on company computers; and 10 percent monitor social network sites for employee posts and photographs, according to Camens' paper. Software programs such as Social Sentry can be set to continuously search social media sites for keywords such as "union." Very little legal precedent governs what employers can and can't do to employees based on their activities on social networking sites, said Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit. And patient privacy laws, such as HIPAA, complicate matters further for medical providers. Nonunionized, at-will employees are most vulnerable and, while exceptions exist, can normally be dismissed for any reason or no reason. Unionized employees can attempt to challenge discipline or termination through arbitration, but since few legal protections are on the books for workers, employers tend to have great latitude at the moment. "The Internet is an incredibly dangerous area these days for workers," said Maltby. "You cannot imagine the things that you can get fired for." So what is Maltby's advice? While in most circumstances nurses have done nothing wrong and employers are just overreacting, it may be safer right now to err on the side of caution. "Don't say anything about work," he emphasized. "Just don't do it." Maltby acknowledged that this type J U LY | A U G U S T 2 0 1 0 of self-censorship was not fair and, in the case of RNs, actually could hurt the public if nurses weren't allowed to discuss how to improve their working conditions. But the ephemeral satisfaction of posting that Facebook comment might be cold comfort when you're sitting around without a job. With Facebook, users may erroneously assume that they're protected if they set all their privacy options to "friends only," not understanding that if any friend reposts their content, it's their friend's privacy settings that then apply. Even users who have been careful to establish separate work and personal Facebook accounts may find that certain "crossover" friends who are not as rigorous about their privacy settings may expose the users' content to unwanted eyes anyway, said Rebecca Jeschke, media relations director for the digital civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation. "It's really easy to forget who's listening or who might be listening," said Jeschke. Maltby warned that it's not too much trouble for people who are not your Facebook friends to gain access to your page anyway. "They can always make some pretense of losing your email address and asking one of your friends to login to see your profile," he said. "If they ask enough people, I bet they'll get in." If nurses can't talk about work, which for most is such a big part of their lives, what's the fun of using Facebook and other social media sites anyway? Many experts agreed, but cautioned that the law has simply not caught up to practice yet and until it does, users might want to be extra careful. "You can't be human on the Internet," said Maltby. "It's terrible. If people knew that your constitutional rights go up in smoke when you go to work, it would be easier to get some laws passed." —Lucia Hwang Bill to Partially Restore VA Nurses' Rights Advances NATIONAL n early August, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee approved legisla tion that would restore some essential rights for registered nurses who work at Department of Veterans Affairs facilities by allowing them to grieve pay issues. The committee passed the bill on a 10-6 vote. The bill, S 3486, introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio on behalf of the 155,000-member National Nurses United, would expand collective bargaining rights for VA nurses on compensation issues, as VA clinicians and nurses who work for other federal agencies already have now. Under U.S. Code Title 38, registered nurses working for the VA are currently barred from bargaining over any issue related to competence, peer review, or compensation. Irma Westmoreland, RN and acting I W W W. N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G president of the National VA Council, an NNU affiliate, explained, for example, how a VA nurse practitioner who recently worked on a weekend setting up a clinic for flu shots was denied her differential pay. "Having the right to grieve when a nurse is not paid correctly is the first step of equality for staff nurse rights in the VA," said Westmoreland. This isn't the end game legislation for NNU in the arena of VA nurse collective bargaining rights, but it is significant progress. Two more comprehensive bills, S 362, sponsored by Sen. Jay Rockefeller from West Virginia, and HR 949, sponsored by Rep. Bob Filner from California, have gained large numbers of cosponsors. HR 949 alone has 50 cosponsors. NNU represents 7,000 VA nurses at 22 VA facilities in a dozen states. "I cannot wait to see the day when full bargaining rights will be restored for VA nurses," said Westmoreland. —Donna Smith N AT I O N A L N U R S E 5

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