Comment by witheld
3 years ago
This is a pretty open and shut case right? No one can really say she was fired for anything but revealing her pay.
A judge isn’t going to buy “we fired her for having a TikTok, which she could have used wrong“. Most of their employees probably do!
It's bad optics (and I personally think the company can piss off), but I don't think they technically broke the letter of the law. Colorado doesn't have good faith exemptions to at-will so as long as it wasn't a protected class thing, I think they can do whatever they want, AFAICT
*edit: I guess discussing wages is protected(?) (https://www.jacksonlewis.com/resources-publication/colorado-...) - but they didn't pick the reason, so I guess it boils down to how good lawyers are
Discussing wages is protected both by executive order and by federal law with the National Labor Relations Act
https://jacksonspencerlaw.com/salary-discussions/
I'm not a lawyer but does at will mean anything in cases where you are dismissed for an illegal reason? Basically your company can fire you at any time but if they fire you because your black it doesn't matter if in theory they could have fired you because you wore red on Tuesday if in fact they actually fired for being black.
If its protected to talk about your salary or wages and they fired her for doing so its illegal.
Yeah, there's breakdowns where events are tied close enough that they could be seen as de facto firing for race/salary, etc.
Of course, this is all coming from a NYPost article, so I'm assuming it's leaving out some details.
Why does it matter what they or any employee was doing in personal time anyway? So what, they have social media presence. A claim by the company that the employee was fired for _having_ a TikTok is still over the line. It's not their goddamn business.
The difference is it legal to fire someone for using TikTok. It’s just not believable, which makes it clear that the firing was illegal (discussing wages is one of the few things you can’t be fired for).
I have heard about cases where uneven application of policy is seen as discrimination. I wonder if they now have to fire anyone else they learn has a TikTok account.
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