The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor City of Flin Flon employees will want to think twice before venting any job-related frustrations on Facebook. City council has implemented a policy restricting what municipal workers may say on Facebook, blogs and in other modern and more traditional forms of media. 'I think that large parts of it are really a summary of what the...expectations would have been anyway,' says Municipal Administrator Mark Kolt. 'So I'm not sure that it would represent a big, massive departure in terms of what common sense and propriety would have required before that, but this helps explain to people a little better what the expectations are.' The five-paragraph policy, passed by council on July 17, applies to city employees as well as those fulfilling representative of administrative functions for the municipality. It says they 'are responsible to use restraint and good judgment in making statements online or to other media that are either generally available to the public, or are to be shared with a wide enough private network so as to be public in effect.' 'Matters related to the workplace which are confidential in nature must never be referred to online or in media open to the general public,' it reads. The policy states that harassment or bullying done online will garner the same consequences as if done in person, and may be considered worse because of its public dissemination. It further notes that 'while an outright ban on communication with the media would not be consistent with allowing all individuals to exercise their right of participation in the political process,' such communication 'should be balanced and respectful in tone.' Individuals covered by the policy 'may be called to account, and in appropriate situations disciplined, for comments which amount to harassment, bullying, or which are inconsistent with a healthy working environment or maintaining an employment relationship.' 'We are all ambassadors for The City of Flin Flon, and have a role to play in communicating a positive, respectful message to the public and to our fellow employees,' the policy concludes. The policy came about after a workshop involving the city included information on a government employee in Alberta who insulted coworkers on blogs. The woman unsuccessfully appealed her dismissal. 'There are a lot of ways of communicating now and...in some cases it's easy to forget just how widely comments posted on Facebook and that sort of thing might go,' Kolt says. The policy will be enforced in the same manner as other rules for city workers. The context of any violation will be key, and progressive discipline will be meted out. 'The intention is not to gag everyone in every circumstance, but there are ways of discussing issues of interest to the public in a responsible way,' Kolt says. Now a worldwide phenomenon, Facebook includes hundreds of users in the Flin Flon area. Rants against all sorts of institutions are common on the website, which offers an unfiltered environment in which to communicate. A July 2011 Reminder editorial touched on a dark side of Facebook. It relayed how in 2010, one posting implicated a local resident, by name, in an unsolved home invasion _ without any evidence or input from police. 'It used to be that in order to implicate someone in a crime, you had to be a police officer or Crown prosecutor,' read the editorial. 'You had to put in hours of research and hard work, and arrive at your conclusions with the utmost of care, lest an innocent person's name be sullied. 'Now all you have to do is think of someone you don't like, put fingers to keyboard and then vaguely link them to a random act of illegality. You don't even have to leave your house.'
