Sensitive union communications

If an industrial dispute is underway, reps should be vigilant about anything posted online.

A briefing by UNISON Scotland gives advice on how to handle a trade union dispute with an employer when matters may become heated and every point of disagreement is hotly debated:

• in the first instance it asks whether at such times activists and officers should consider if a social networking site is the appropriate place to debate the issues or whether more formal channels should be used;

• the briefing notes that the law protects trade union activities, but it is easier to characterise them as such if they take place within the trade union’s own structures, rather than individual action on a personal site that is not readily seen as linked to the trade union activity involved; and

• union activists and officers should remember that the union may be held liable for any unlawful acts, such as defamation, committed in its name. While honest opinion and fair comment are essential to democratic debate, malicious or slanderous statements present significant financial risk to the union as a whole.