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A writer called China Gorman has started a blog this week – which was profiled on the always-readable HR Capitalist.
China’s first blog post is an interesting one – and got me thinking about a number of different things.
Have a read: it is about the way in which employees behave in their workplace – and the way in which it can affect the attitudes of those who utilise the employee’s services.
You may sympathise with the story (although I hope not so directly).
There is a saying that blood is thicker than water – and probably no more so than in an employment context.
The Business Journal (a publication from Ohio in the US) ran a story this week about a case involving use of confidential information – and an enormous verdict which was awarded as a consequence.
The kicker? The information was sourced by the son of an employee – and then used against the father’s company.
This sort of case arises from time to time in New Zealand – and usually raises issues about an employee’s adherence to rules of security and disclosure of information. In this case, for example, the father could probably expect to be criticised by his employer for failing to secure the company’s confidential information - and possibly dismissed for allowing the son to access this data.
An interesting read.
“I Fought the Law” is a much-covered song reflecting the angst – and futility – of fighting authority.
Through the years, the song – and its lyrics – have taken on different meanings, and have been applied to different political and social contexts.
When the Dead Kennedys covered the piece in the late 1970s it was intended as a comment on Dan White’s murder of George Moscone and Harvey Milk (an event which was recently documented in the Oscar-nominated film “Milk”).
In 1989 the US Army played the Clash’s version of the song when attempting to flush out the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.
The song might also provide an appropriate soundtrack in a workplace setting – where an employee is charged by the Police with an act of criminal wrongdoing.
Here’s a really interesting question for both HR professionals and lawyers to ponder. To document, or not to document?
The Ohio employer’s law blog has a post this week entitled “How to avoid employee lawsuits”. There are three tips, the last of which is “Document, document, document”.
In essence, the advice is that well kept records – particularly minutes of events giving rise to a potential claim, are a sensible way to allow an employer to insulate itself from a potential claim.
I am personally divided in my views on this issue.
On one hand, it is, of course, sensible to have an accurate documentary record of events which can be relied upon in the event of litigation. Often, a timely filenote is a silver bullet against the scuttlebutt of future claims.
On the other hand, however, I have been involved in a number of cases where a conversation intended to be retained within the management hierarchy of an organisation finds itself recorded, and discovered, by a claimant many months later, giving fuel to an employee action.
I suppose that the appropriate advice – taking this into account – should be “Document, document, document – but use your discretion”.
A couple of weeks ago I posted a story about an American clothing company which had used the image of President Obama (without his knowledge or consent) in its advertising campaign. One of the comments that I made at the time was about how the same issue can arise in the context of a workplace – where an employer uses the image of an employee to promote its goods.
Spookily enough, an issue on exactly these facts has come to light over the last couple of weeks.
A woman employed as a waitress by a beer manufacturer at a festival last year has complained about her image being used – on a world-wide basis – to promote her employer’s product. The woman says that she gave her permission for her picture to be used for a one-off restaurant promotion – but subsequently found her image on six packs, posters and computer screen savers as far and wide as New York and China.
The article is worth a read.
An interesting issue that occasionally arises in employment arrangements relates to the use, by an employer, of an employee’s image to endorse or promote the employer’s products or services.
To the best of my knowledge, the law in New Zealand in this area has never been tested – but the best prediction about where a decision might go probably starts with a presumption that an employee should, in concept, own his or her image rights, and that some specific agreement about use of this property should be required (rather than simply implied) before the employer can use the employee’s image in this way.
Precisely this issue has arisen over the last week in relation to the leader of the free world himself.
During a recent trip to China, President Obama chose to wear a jacket manufactured by a company called Weatherproof. The company found a picture of the President walking the Great Wall, which it turned into a billboard replete with the slogan “A leader in style”.
The White House did not like the idea of the billboard, and asked Weatherproof to take it down. The material question, of course, was whether the company had suggested some form of endorsement by the President of its product – or, alternatively, whether it was entitled to exploit a public image of Mr Obama wearing its product.
Regrettably, the issue won’t be litigated in this case – the company has pulled the billboard. But, as this article in the Wall Street Journal observes, hardly anyone had heard of Weatherproof before – and now it seems that the legal community is abuzz with it!
