Let the bloggers beware: Companies' rules may restrict what employees can and can't say

You better watch out. You better not cry (or whine).

You better be good.

I'm telling you why - your company may be listening (or reading), and they may fire you for it.

"A lot of people think they're protected by the First Amendment in cases where they're not," said David Williams, a partner at law firm Morris James LLP in Wilmington, Del., and a past chairman of the employment and labor law section of the Delaware State Bar Association.

Union collective bargaining agreements and individual employment contracts generally say a worker can be fired only for what is known as "just cause."

Yet, 92 percent of private-sector workers aren't covered by collective bargaining, and employment contracts usually are limited to high-level executives.

Even though in Illinois, a company has the right to terminate an employee at will, one local attorney believes that without a policy in place, a worker should not be fired for speaking out on an outside-of-the-workplace issue.

"If there is no agreement, then in my opinion, you can say and do whatever you want," said Al Williams, a Dixon attorney who specializes in workman's compensation cases.

Broad statements on workplace free speech can be hard to make though, according to Williams, because company policies and situations can be so varied.

"It is very case-by-case and deal-by-deal, but an employer has to give a reason for firing you, they can't just do it," Williams said.

In the age of the Internet, a worker's comments, or actions captured in an online video, can spread quickly across the country, if not the world.

"You become a public relations embarrassment, so you get fired," said Matt Finkin, a University of Illinois law professor and author of "Privacy in Employment Law."

Just five states - California, Colorado, Montana, New York and North Dakota - have laws that protect an employee's right to free speech, and there has been no push in Congress for a national law.

Government workers have slightly broader First Amendment protections, said Martin Malin, a professor of law and director of the Institute for Law and the Workplace at Chicago-Kent College of Law. Even there, he said, the law generally protects them only for comments made as a private citizen, not in the course of them performing their job duties.