American Pilot Antics
- Thread starter kiowa
- Start date
goingboeing
Veteran
- Jan 30, 2004
- 584
- 1
Hopeful said:
Amen and besides Rule 32 is a bunch of B.S. anyway.
AA wants its employees to be a bunch of mindless robots who are afraid to interact with each other.
Garfield1966
Veteran
I disagree. My guess is that the "rule 32" is in response to all the sexual discrimination suits that are in the courts. AA does not want to be slapped with one and have no defense.
It amazes me how conspiracy theories just pop up like weeds in this place. Must be fun being as paranoid as some of you seem to be.
It amazes me how conspiracy theories just pop up like weeds in this place. Must be fun being as paranoid as some of you seem to be.
eolesen
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- Jul 23, 2003
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Hopeful said:
It isn't. But don't kid yourself into thinking that your responsibilities as an employee begin and end at the timeclock. If you burn a cross on a fellow employee's lawn, slash their tires off property, or stalk a fellow employee off property, it has always been fair game for the company to take action. Rule 32 simply clarified that beyond a reasonable doubt, and also added zero tolerance for hate related behavior.
Your online behavior is no different. There are already cases where online services were subpoenaed to release internal records and logfiles because an employee was threatened or otherwise harassed by another employee on a web forum.
And don't kid yourself into thinking that an anonymous screen name protects you. From my time moderating another forum, I can tell you without a doubt that it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to track down a regular poster on a web board, even when they're hiding behind multiple anonymous email addresses. Web servers and email servers are very good at providing audit trails....
Former ModerAAtor said:
Well you would have a hard time firing someone, and making it stick for making comments about a news article on a public forum on their own time. There is no real link here between work and the article.
In order to get the subpoena you would have to show a Judge that a law was broken, not just some company rule.
Just because this person is an employee it doesnt mean that people cant express their opinion on it. What difference does it make whether the person works at AA or IBM when there is no real connection between work and what was said and the article was in the news? If someone expressed their feelings about this behavior based solely upon what appeared in the paper, and did it here, not at work, what would be the basis for applying rule 32?
Lets not forget that the company can make any rule they like, however in order to enforce such a rule and terminate someone the rule must be reasonable. The fact is that we do have a "just cause" clause in our contract. Its moot because you would not get the subpeona anyway, if anything it could be turned over to the police, and only if there was the threat of violence.
Bob Owens said:
Not unless you're a twu officer and the union is firing you based on hearsay and what some officer believed you meant or what you meant to say but didn't say it because they'll just assume you would have said it if you had the chance. And of course under oath, blame the other guy.
Wretched Wrench
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- Apr 21, 2003
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Bob Owens said:
Was a law broken when AA subpoenaed The Mechanic's hard drive?
Wretched Wrench
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- Apr 21, 2003
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Former ModerAAtor said:
The NW thing was with regard to flight attendant sick call issues.
"Consider the recent case of Northwest Airlines. It all began on a message board hosted by veteran flight attendant Kevin Griffin on his personal Web site. Just before Christmas last year, several anonymous employees urged co-workers to stage sickouts, which are outlawed by federal labor laws. The goal was to force Northwest to cancel profitable flights during last Christmas season. It worked: After a flood of sick calls forced the cancellation of 317 Northwest flights from Dec. 30 to Jan. 2, Northwest sued the flight attendants' union and several others for staging an illegal strike. Nothing surprising so far.
But Northwest was able to win permission from a Minneapolis federal judge to search the personal hard drives of 22 flight attendants -- hard-drives in computers in the employees' homes and in union offices -- to find the identity of the perpetrators. Northwest says it investigated only messages having to do with the sickout and had no desire to infringe on free speech or invade the privacy of people who, it felt, weren't breaking the law. "
this from: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflas...00/nf00511j.htm
eolesen
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- Jul 23, 2003
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mjk said:
Not really. However it does underscore the point that you shouldn't believe that whatever is said on an "anonymous" website is free of scrutiny...
Well, it appears that AMFA thought a law was broken That's why they filed a lawsuit against AA, right?
So, if it was worthy of a lawsuit, then the response discovery for email logs and web posting logs was fair game. The hard drive wasn't specifically requested -- it was simply listed as an alternative in the event the original documents had already been destroyed.
Wretched Wrench
Veteran
- Apr 21, 2003
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mjk said:
Not hijacking. It is called thread drift. It happens on all forums.
I was moderator of another forum, and started out inclined to be the thread drift police. Not only did I learn that it was inevitable and irrepressible, but it added to the quality and variety of the discussion.
Live with it. Enjoy it. Learn from it.
