"Beyond the Water Cooler" analyzes the multitude of issues concerning employees' use of social media outside of work and the clash between employers' interests in maintaining effective management control and the employees' interests in free speech. The article makes recommendations about how to interpret the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to protect employee speech that furthers democracy in the workplace, and proposes a new federal statute that protects employee speech that goes beyond the concerted activity protected by the NLRA. "Beyond the Water Cooler" also considers the right of individuals to be protected from illegal harassment at work and the role that employers play in this protection. Finally, the article recognizes employers' interests in maintaining efficiency, good relations among workers and consumer respect for their products.
Professor McGinley currently serves as William S. Boyd Professor of Law at Boyd School of Law. Among dozens of other articles, book chapters, and forthcoming works, Professor McGinley is author of Masculinities and the Law: A Multidimensional Approach (with Frank Rudy Cooper), published by NYU Press in 2012, and Disability Law: Cases, Materials, Problems (with Laura Rothstein), the fifth edition of which was published by LexisNexis in 2010.
At Boyd, Professor McGinley teaches Torts, Employment Discrimination, Employment Law, and Disability Law, and publishes articles on gender, employment discrimination, and employment law.
