For any fellow space geeks out there, the last few week have been a very exciting NASA adventure, with Curiosity landing on Mars and transmitting amazing photos back to earth. Videos and photos of the NASA employees erupting with joy after the 7 minutes of silence during the landing were very moving. I love such
Are Blog Posts “Workplace Conduct”?
Last week, the Human Rights Tribunal released a very interesting decision in which discriminatory comments made by a union president on the union’s blog raised the issue of competing human rights – namely the right to be free from discrimination in the workplace vs the right to freedom of expression and association: Taylor-Baptiste v. Ontario
Social Media in Your Business
Over the last few months, I have been working with a colleague from our IP practice group (Stephanie Vaccari) and from our Competition & Technology practice group (Arlan Gates) to develop a cross-disciplinary social media team at my office. Together, we have been able to tackle social media issues from all
Terms of Service and Employee Social Media Passwords
Over the last couple of months, there has been an interesting debate in Canada and the US about whether an employer can ask for a social media password. For some of the highlights of the conversation in Ontario, see:
- Toronto Star article on March 20, 2012;
- Dan Michaluk at All About Information;
- Andrew Langille’s
The Natural Connection Between Social Media Legal Issues & Employment Law
Businesses do not experience the impact of social media in fragmented departmental silos. Rather, social media is an inherently cross-department, internal and external experience for most organizations. Employees, clients, third party providers, experts, consumers, journalists and competitors all participate in social media about your organization, whether or not invited to do so. And regardless of
@Phonedog_Noah: Who owns your Employee’s Twitter Followers?
If you have encouraged your employees to set up a Twitter account to tweet information about the company’s business, who owns the followers if they leave? This is the question in Phonedog v Noah Kavitz, a California case that will no doubt have an impact in Canada.
Phonedog Noah
In that case, Phonedog encouraged
Clawbie 2011 Nominations
Here are my last minute Clawbie nominations. This year, there are way too many excellent Canadian legal blogs to choose from, so here is my unscientific and utterly biased criteria:
- Must focus on employment and labour law (because frankly, I rarely have time to read other blogs and wouldn’t have a clue anyway).
- Must be
Top 25 Blogs of 2011 Nomination
I have recently had the honour of being nominated for the LexisNexis Top 25 Labor and Employment Law Blogs of 2011. Despite even LexisNexis spelling “labour” incorrectly, I feel quite humbled and privileged to be included on the list.
My Shameless Plug
Now for my shameless plug – LexisNexis is inviting readers to visit
Summer Reading
For all you poor souls at a beautiful cottage this hot, sunny summer with nothing better to do but read about employment and human rights law, here’s a brief list of good reads to consider (and with everyone now using some sort of tablet, you can download the info before heading up to the lake):
Social Checks on Potential Candidates
Good employers always conduct a reference check to determine whether to hire a candidate. With the world of online communications, however, how far should an employer go when researching the background of a potential candidate? At what point does that legitimate research become inappropriate snooping into a person’s private life?