Why I won't be officially reprimanded for my social media use

I have been dragged into the office and unofficially reprimanded for my social media use. The first question was after a number of print-outs of my blog posts were held up asking if this was me, naturally I replied yes.

Firstly, Observations in an Undemocratic World is my blog, secondly there is a picture of me on the page and thirdly I stand by what I write. I was never going to deny writing this.

Now let me explain for the record, I do not dislike this particular director, he is undoubtedly an usual fellow by virtue of his communication methodology, but I don't think he is necessarily a bad person.

I fully expect he is under pressure from others higher in the organisation to get this sorted and then hampered by not allowing him the latitude to make the decisions to make this go away.

The union representative speaks well of him and his attempts to do the right thing by the union members instead being burnt by higher management. Based on his personal experiences, he now only pursues causes he believes he can win.

Despite our professional differences - I hold no personal animosity towards him.

A number of weeks before I was questioned over my social media use, a colleague contacted the Minister of Training and Workforce Development over workplace issues.

He was reprimanded for his social media use giving me the impetus to write about the issue. It was pretty easy to trace it to him as he used his personal account to write directly on the Minister's Twitter account.

So I decided to write a post titled Twittergate and the perils of social media in relation to his social media use and his misguided attempt to ensure better outcomes for the students in his care. Let's not forget, this is all about student outcomes and his intentions were purely for his students.

But my case is different, firstly I took the organisation (who will forever remain nameless) to the Industrial Magistrate's Court over intentional breaches of of a certified agreement ratified in the Industrial Relations Commission.

Despite their attempts by the state solicitor to get the case thrown out of court, the magistrate declined the motion allowing me to refile.

This was due to my poor wording of the submission as it was never expected to be tabled in the court but he felt the case had merit. The points raised in the submission were directed at the internal audience of my employer and not for legal dissection in the Industrial Relations Court.

Probably had they handled the issue better it wouldn't have made it that far and the issue would have been dealt with in a positive manner.

I believed the actual threat of legal action would be enough for them to back down as they were acutely aware that they were wrong. They held a different point of view; they thought if they could apply enough pressure I would wilt.

What they didn't know was that certain managers and people in positions of authority had over-stepped the mark and scope of their authority.

I had kept all written communication and the verbal threats and intimidation contained certain information that was not in the public domain. Whilst I can't verify verbal threats as it is illegal for me to record such conversations without personal consent, only certain people in positions of authority were in the know to the details of such threats.

This is confidential information and somehow I seem to now know some limited details of the corruption enquiry when they questioned me in an attempt to flush out the anonymous reporter in breach of legal protections. 

We then went back to mediation where they admitted they were wrong and I dropped the case based on a handshake. Needless to say, they then denied parts of the meeting and backed down on their word.

So here we go again, they thought that once I dropped the legal action I had lost my leverage; what they didn't know was that I was in possession of information that would support my legal action and take it to a whole new level.

So when they came across my social media accounts, they were not going to officially reprimand me because I had not posted on the Minister's Twitter account.

I hadn't named the organisation where I am employed so it wouldn't be unreasonable to conclude their were stalking me on social media based on my actions in the Industrial Magistrate's Court.

It would be difficult to explain how they actually came in across Observations in An Undemocratic World including my Facebook account and other social media accounts.

Finally there is the use of the State Solicitor and the costs involved in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat me in the Industrial Relation's Court when they later admitted wrongdoing in return for me to drop legal action.