"Proceedings before an industrial tribunal are likely to commence once the official letter of dismissal arrives"

This company's policy allows two stages of appeal (basically to your boss's boss and then his/her boss). I imagine most unions would advise ad least the first of these before taking formal legal action.

"If Waterstones win such proceedings, they'll have effectively established that employers can exercise prior restraint on anything their employees care to publish outside of their job"

No, they'll have established that they have a defence (gross misconduct and thus dismissal) against their employees bringing them into disrepute.

This is less than a free speech issue than one of unreasonable (probably careless as much as malicious) employment practice.

"they'll have established that some of their management is willing enough to contrive baseless allegations in order to sack employees"

No- the allegations are exaggerated and the punishment unreasonable, but the former isn't baseless as JG accepts.

"However,from a legal perspective what you have posted is utter rubbish"

Do explain why?

"I'd be totally in support of Waterstones and wouldn't shed a single tear for this guy - if they'd had a blog policy in the employment contract"

They might introduce one under media pressure- but to do so would contradict the staff handbook which is defined as non-contractual (ie most terms are implicit- o, if you prefer, vague...)

Won't Waterstone's HQ be pleased when come this August a few thousand SF fans show up in Glasgow but cause no appreciable change in sales for those days? As the fen fan out from the SECC into the neighborhood (1)- including Sauchiehall St- and walk right by the Waterstones?

Not that most WorldCon book buying doesn't happen in the dealers' room, but its usually quite hard to just walk by a bookstore (even a chain) while touristing. But because its a chain the behavior of management in one store gets associated with the name, not just the specific branch.

(1)http://www.interaction.worldcon.org.uk/images/birdseye.gif

Stephen: the legal side of things is less than relevant. Bluntly, Joe's blog provided an excuse to sack him: I strongly suspect that it was discovered via Google search. This is a blog that, prior to the whole affair blowing up, had roughly twenty regular readers (according to the guy who hosts it). Bear in mind that HMV and the current manager of Waterstones' Edinburgh east-end branch have been running the shop for less than a year. Bear in mind also that a lot of the stuff they dredged up is more than two years old, and therefore cannot possibly be construed as referring to current management.

By saying "If Waterstones win such proceedings, they'll have effectively established that employers can exercise prior restraint on anything their employees care to publish outside of their job" I was not talking about matters of legal precedent in this specific case, but the practical effect on employee behaviour, which is: write something outside of work without their explicit permission and your employers may use it against you if they want to fire you.

I'm not a lawyer; I'm a writer, with writerly concerns. This particular one -- how to square being a writer with having a day job -- used to be a major one for me. Many managers see having any outside interests at all (hobbies, even) as a kind of threat: that is, they view them as a drain on the employees' enthusiasm for their job. This has implications far beyond "blogger fired for being rude about employers".

Charlie: "Bluntly, Joe's blog provided an excuse to sack him", I agree with this. From the quoted comments in the Guardian article, it looks to me like a boss with a grudge, and the skipping of at least two disciplinary steps is out of order, whether or not Waterstones have a case for any action (which they might). I think that Joe has a case for unfair dismissal on those grounds (IANAL; see how we are all being more careful of what we say online already?).

"... write something outside of work without their explicit permission and your employers may use it against you if they want to fire you."

Here's where it gets interesting, in two ways. The first is that some companies, especially US ones, have always taken an industrial-feudal outlook on the actions of their employees. The cliche of a '50s company man was that he at all times fit the company image, and so did his wife and kids. In return for this loyalty, he and his family would be taken care of from cradle to grave. In recent years, the attitude seems to have become that the company demands total loyalty from the employee but feels no obligation in return, as in the cases where employees have been fired for making moves to find a new job. I myself have been shaft^w downsized in the past, and the hypocrisy of the company, in particular the HR staff, stung severely. Maybe a response in the future will be for workers to form support groups to help themselves, not just as trade unions, but in a form such as labour companies. A return to guilds would serve corporations right.

The other thing is - how public a forum is a blog? the defamation laws are very wide-ranging, and this article holds that they act to limit free speech. Even an overheard conversation in the pub might be cause for action (slander in this case). Newspapers have to be careful about libel, as do authors, but the letter columns of newspapers are held to be the opinions of the writers, not the editors, so maybe weblogs should have the same automatic status? Or comments online should have some other kind of relevance limitation, so that less regard may be paid to them in law. Maybe there should also be another form of defamation; "malicious (mis)quoting", a sub-category of libel, to protect bloggers and usenetters from having their opinions used against them.

As it stands, Big Brother Google makes just about everything online into a public forum with a historical record so that ill-considered, wrathful or even just drunken words years afterwards can come back and haunt you. How do we respond to that, then? Maybe changes in manners so that one doesn't make a statement unless one really means it? Doesn't work on Usenet, I know that. Doesn't Speakers' Corner have some kind of customary protection?

how public a forum is a blog?

Another datum point. I heard yesterday from the guy who hosts Joe's blog. (Full disclosure: I know him, but as he's only tangentially involved I'm not going to drag him into this.) Until this affair blew up, Joe's journal was getting roughly 20 distinct visitors per day (presumably the same small circle of friends). Which his dismissal this shot up to 400-500 a day. By Tuesday, when the shit had hit the fan and the newspapers were beginning to notice, he was up to 5000 visitors/day.

I'd therefore suggest that prior to his sacking, his blog was a non-problem for Waterstones (in terms of adverse publicity), but the way they've handled it has boosted his readership by two or more orders of magnitude. That's not insignificant, and it holds lessons for anyone who wants to play whack-a-mole with publicly expressed opinion on the internet.

I agree that the defamation laws in the UK are dangerous and chilling. I believe Sottish law is rather different (no libel or slander, but a separate civil offense of defamation, which is defined rather more narrowly), but as the English courts lately ruled that something on the internet is automatically subject to the English libel law if it is possible that someone in England might be able to read it that's not much help.

The only workable defensive response to Big Brother Google is to not say anything, in any electronic medium (even private files on your hard disk!) that you would mind having dragged up in front of a judge by a hostile barrister. But it's already too late for most of us to do that -- and, I submit, it is not desirable.

This is all starting to boil down to the subject of the topic - pure corporate stupidity. It's almost a repeat of the 70's - the sector and the tools have changed; the miners went on strike and the whole country shut down.

What happens when say, the IT sector go on strike for unfair corporate policing of information?

In fact I'd have to say this is a warning to anybody who's not self-employed, period. Subject yourself to a feudal authority, and you get what they paid for: your fealty.

Not that, as a sole proprietor, I am biased. Or anything.

Defense against England's libel law is a different question entirely. I usually just go la-la-la and hope the world will resolve such insanity on its own without my help.

Kathryn wrote:

> Not that most WorldCon book buying doesn't happen
> in the dealers' room, but its usually quite hard
> to just walk by a bookstore (even a chain) while
> touristing. But because its a chain the behavior
> of management in one store gets associated with
> the name, not just the specific branch.

I would imagine that the end result of this incident will be that Waterstones cannot economically stock ANY science fiction.

I spend upwards of UK£500 each year on books. None of that will be spent at Waterstones. I'll actively discourage my friends from shopping there.

I pass a Waterstones at lunchtime each day. I'll let their shoppers know about this incident. In the queues for the tills.

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