I got fired for sharing my salary on TikTok
nypost.com
nypost.com
Utterly nonsensical.
It could happen at any time in the future applies to every single person with access to any private information.
She would have been fired for this sort of thing at most large companies without getting approval first.
If they didn't have an explicit policy before hand though, then firing her over this was definitely a step too far.
She should file a complaint with the NLRB, her state labor board, and hire an employment attorney to seek recourse. It’s the only way companies learn; you must apply economic pain and consequences.
https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-right...
https://www.seattletimes.com/explore/careers/can-you-get-fir...
Typically the company will want to know and be involved if you are acting as their representative.
Two different things going on here.
The NLRB and courts can sort it out, and at least the NLRB hasn’t been too fond of employer shenanigans and bad faith behavior as of late. An attorney quoted in the piece even mentions the person in question should contact an attorney, and she has nothing to lose and everything to gain by pursuing the employer through legal and regulatory mechanisms. What are they going to do, fire her more?
Sharing your salary is one thing.
Saying that you are an employee at X company and make X dollars is giving away both your salary and corporate information.
The key is not involving the company. Share your salary as much as you want, but don't go on social media and say 'I work for X' unless you are actually their representative.
The exception here is executives and maybe in some instances management, where they need to be careful what they say because anything they say may be construed as representing the company. But having on your social media that you work for X and having other posts where you talk about normal social media things? 100% fine as long as your don't say something along the lines of "I work for X and our official policy on Y is..." (i.e. claiming to represent them)
Every company I've ever worked for has had employee guidelines stating "don't comment to the press or mention the company on social media without approval"
Is this not a thing in the USA?
I also think that its debatable if indicating your salary or admiting to the fact you work somewhere, counts as talking to the press or mentioning the company, the way most people interpret that phrase. I mean, i'll admit that its highly debatable, but for example putting your resume on linkedin usually does not count as mentioning the company on social media.
And that is not a new thing in the USA at all.
You do not have to and almost certainly should not sign any paperwork when being fired, laid off, or even leaving voluntarily. The exception here is the company may offer you a severance package to sign some paperwork waiving your right to sue. Even then if you can afford it it's a good idea to run it through a lawyer first. But signing stuff for free? Don't do it, you have nothing to gain.
Even when being fired for cause severance is sometimes possible. All depends on how much they want those papers signed.
A judge isn’t going to buy “we fired her for having a TikTok, which she could have used wrong“. Most of their employees probably do!
*edit: I guess discussing wages is protected(?) (https://www.jacksonlewis.com/resources-publication/colorado-...) - but they didn't pick the reason, so I guess it boils down to how good lawyers are
If its protected to talk about your salary or wages and they fired her for doing so its illegal.
Of course, this is all coming from a NYPost article, so I'm assuming it's leaving out some details.
edit: so maybe, I guess, to defend against the argument that they were fired for salary disclosure?
Exactly, if you fire the only black guy on the team for wearing a blue tie but other people wear them as well it could be argued you lied about the reason.
"She didnt get fired for disclosing her salary. She got fired because her employer feels they can't risk her disclosure of other, more sensitive, information on the future. If her immediate reaction to any exiting news is to shout it out for all the world to hear, what will happen if they are working on a project that they dont want a competitor to know about, or if they get a classified govt contract, or a myriad of other situations I could envision a tech company needing/wanting security. They decided that the risk she posed wasn't worth it."
Telling others your salary is allowed and should be encouraged, it is not a security concern at all nor does it imply you are going to release any actual confidential information.
Salaries are only secret if the person receiving it wants it to be. People should be able to say how much they earn without retribution. There is literally nothing wrong with it and it doesn't mean that they are going to broadcast actual company secrets.
If its a big deal for the employer then they should have put it in their contract/NDA and made that clear prior to employing them (but as I understand it that is illegal in a lot of places for good reason).
this is such utter bs. no trust— typical shitty capitalist trash
You can fire someone for no reason at all in much of the US. It's employment-at-will.
Absolute false analogy.
After all, if her immediate reaction to exciting news, such as getting a job, is to tell evetyone about it, how can you trust what she would do with more serious information.
This sounds absurd. How could a company punish an employee when the employee didn’t do anything wrong, just because they believe the employee might do something wrong? I’d love to hear an official response from that company.
IANAL, but at-will employment means you can be fired for any reason (minus a narrow set of protected reasons). In this specific case it will not go well for the employer if it goes to court, since federal law protects employees disclosing their salary, but a company could conceivably have a policy of "you can't use tiktok".
How does this apply here? In this case the employee has been informed that they haven’t broken any policies (“I asked, ‘Have I broken any policies? Have I posted anything on TikTok that is a security concern?’ And they said not at this time I have not”).
Not everyone scans the internet every day
> ...disclosing her salary is federally protected by law under the National Labor Relations Act
To quote that great philosopher Shoresy: “So dumb”
Also some people are vein and enjoy bragging.
You say that like its a bad thing. Emotions exist for a reason. Ignorance may be bliss, but it is also slavery.
> your organization doesn’t have the same opinion of John Smith’s value to the organization than you do.
In which case there is two possibilities. Either:
They are right, in which case this gives you the insight to look into yourself and fix it or emulate john smith.
Or b) they are wrong, in which case you can probably go somewhere else to get more money. Or you could figure out why they are misestimating your value and fix it.
No matter the situation,more information always gives you an advantage.
While I don’t have to manage people any more (PTL), I am pretty sure if I had an employee come to me demanding more comp because of a colleague makes more, I’d ask them why they weren’t arguing from their own merits and capabilities instead of from a colleague’s weaknesses.
We live in a capitalist society, and employment is a business arrangement. There is nothing wrong with trying to maximize what you get out of employment (whether monantary or otherwise). Why would you sell yourself, if not to get paid? Part of effective negotiation is knowing how much comparable people make. Your ecconomic value is not what you bring to the company. It is primarily how expensive it would be to replace you with someone who could bring something equivalent. Knowing that cost gives you the upper hand in negotiations.
After all, if you were doing it for the love of coding, you would just be working on open source projects, not working for a company.
> While I don’t have to manage people any more (PTL), I am pretty sure if I had an employee come to me demanding more comp because of a colleague makes more, I’d ask them why they weren’t arguing from their own merits and capabilities instead of from a colleague’s weaknesses.
When it comes right down to it, if you are a manager you have a budget. If you are on that side of the table, your job is to keep expenses down. One way of doing that is to manipulate people into thinking their ecconomic value is less than it is. A great way to do that is to steer the conversation away from objective measures like, the going rate is $x, and towards subjective things like, i do the job really well, which dont have an objective price tag attached. It's easy to argue the fair value of a job well done to whatever you want it to be. There is no wiggle room for: the going rate is $x.
I mean, if you really do truly think this way, do you do this in your other business dealings. If you were buying a car, the other car lot had an equivalent car for 10% less, and you wanted to try to negotiate down, but the car salesman said something like "why aren't you arguing from your own merits as a potential future car owner, instead of from the weakness of other car salesmens?", would you think that is a reasonable thing to say?
Sure, managers have budgets and want to keep costs down, but in a career that spanned a couple of decades+ in tech leadership, I always had the flexibility from my employers to assemble the best team I could within my budget. I never had to manipulate people like you are describing. Frankly if you are working for a company where you perceive that happening…you should probably exit asap. That’s toxic.
There might be some amount of clout-chasing and humblebragging to this, but it also fits the spirit of the trend towards pay transparency as expressed by tech and/or young workers online.
Let me introduce you to linkedin...
I'd imagine defending the argument "because you have a LinkedIn account" would be pretty tough as upwards of 90% of employees including senior management works likely have one. And it's often crucial in the process of getting a job. Probably this company also has a box where you can apply and import your LinkedIn details when applying. That would make such a dismissal indefensible.