“It’s been two years since the NLRB determined that section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act protected an employee’s profanity laced Facebook rant simply because he ended it with a pro union message. I held out hope that the court of appeals would see the folly in the decision and send a clear message to employees and employers that such misconduct remains a terminable offense. NLRB v. Pier Sixty (2nd Cir. 4/21/17) dashed that hope.” [Jon Hyman] More: Nixon Peabody, Eric Goldman.
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Employers, you need thicker skin.
It does seem like this case could be distinguished easily from pretty much any other situation besides one two days before a contested union election and where there’s no indication any employee in the firm had ever been sanctioned for profanity before. It’s an extreme case and I fully see the absurdity, especially insofar as the message extended to the boss’s family, but it’s hard to see how that particular set of facts will apply to most cases of an employee cursing out their boss.