Case Study #8:Tammy Faye

Tammy Faye, pro-union employee, anonymously wrote harsh and possibly threatening statements on several union newsletters left in an employeebreakroomin an attempt to encourage fellow employees to support the union in an upcoming decertification election. The employer Jones Manufacturing conducted an investigation over the authorship of the newsletter postings. They approached Tammy Faye and interrogated her extensively. They instructed her not to talk to anyone about the investigation, especially other employees.The company asked Tammy for access to herFacebookpageand other social media postings to see if her comments were also found on those sites.

In the interrogation Tammy Faye denied authoring the postings from the newsletter.She also argued that the postings were not as 'threatening' as the company believes.For example.. on the newsletter was the sentence: "If you fail to support the union bad things.. no... horrid things will happen to you and your family."Tammy argued that some of these bad/horrid things would be loss of representation, loss of job security, possibly losing a job, being mistreated without representation etc.She argued that losing a union would be horrid to everyone.The interpretation that physical harm would come to employees was a mis-interpretation of the posting.

Several other employees reported to the company that she had written the comments.The employees were Janice Simpson, Trevor Jones andFengChi.All of these employees were public opponents of the union efforts and were accused by many employees of working closely with management to plan an appearance that 'many' employees opposed the union.

The company, after a week, decided to suspend then terminate Tammy Faye.The company told Tammy Faye that if she revealed the names of other employees who were pro-union they would give her a severance payment of $500.She refused.

Questions:

1)Does the employer have the right to conduct an investigation?

2)Does the employer have the right to fire Tammy Faye for the postings?

3)Does the employer have the right to fire Tammy Faye for telling a lie about her authorship?

4)Based on this short case where did the company possiblygo wrong?