McDonald's worker fired for disparaging blog post

A workplace spat at a McDonald’s in central Sweden spilled over onto the internet last week, prompting an angry reaction from union representatives after the details of a worker’s sacking were detailed on Facebook.

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The chain of events started with a blog post published by a disgruntled employee at a McDonald’s restaurant in Örebro.

The entry didn’t sit well with the woman’s supervisor Andreas Kenson, who fired her last Tuesday and then wrote about the episode on his Facebook page.

“…just fired a girl who blogged really negatively about her workplace…not that smart to make up a bunch of stuff just to give friends a laugh…but now I’m chuckling in any case…=0)),” Kenson wrote in an entry on the popular social networking site.

A representative for the hotel and restaurant workers union lashed out at the public airing of an internal personnel matter, calling it “extremely inappropriate”.

“It shows poor judgment,” Malin Ackholts told the Nerikes Allehanda newspaper.

“As an employer, one has laws and collective agreements that must be followed.”

She emphasized that employers should first take workplace grievances to their employers, rather than publishing on the internet.

According to Ackholt, employee disloyalty can be grounds for dismissal, but she questioned the speed at which the McDonald’s worker lost her job.

“It’s a long process if an employer wants to remove someone from their job,” she told the newspaper.

Magnus Pojen, owner of the four McDonald’s restaurants in Örebro, called the incident “tragic”.

“The woman who was fired was a capable employee, but what she had written about her workplace was totally unacceptable,” he told Nerikes Allehanda.

He added that he plans to ensure managers at his McDonald’s restaurants do a better job of explaining to new employees how they should go about addressing workplace grievances.