As more jobs stray from the traditional 9 to 5 office scenario, employee discussions over lunch in the break room are becoming a thing of the past.  Email has in many ways filled that gap, enabling employees to communicate about issues of common interest. 

But at Uloop, a social networking site aimed at college students, workers were fired 20 minutes after they first discussed forming a union on the company’s online message boards. 

The employees filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming that their termination was illegal because their communication was protected by labor law.  This charge will likely be a test of the precedent-setting Register-Guard case, where the Labor Board denied protections for employees who email each other about union-related issues, failing to recognize technological advancements in workplace communication.