I got in trouble with my facebook page group at work. Can they do that?

[Brandon H]

I created a group for facebook all about my gym that I work at. There are 15 other locations within the same company throughout California. My boss gets contacted by the Corporate offices about this group page, demanding that it is unauthorized and that I must take it down at once.

This page said nothing bad about it and when I made it, there was no other group for this company. A lot of people joined and it was booming until this phone call from the marketing team in Corporate. Can they tell me to do this? Do I have any rights at all? I may work for them but I can't brag about my job with out "authorization"???

[john]

I would look at Facebook's privacy policy/Terms of Use. A similar thing happened to people around me.

[Phantombreakfast954]

Yes, they can. It's their company. I'd make a case for yourself, it could work in your favor if you present yourself right.

[korgrue]

Check your employee manual. Often employees are not allowed to engage in the creation of online employee groups because it can lead to the dissemination of private company information and pose a threat to privacy rights of employees.

If you however just great a group not directly related to your Company (ie. not using their name) and just reinvite everyone, they really do not have ground to do anything about it.

[Core]

They're within legal right to do so. It's business - the company must protect their brand name and its usage or it loses all sense of belonging to them. If it's not authorized they are in the right to force you to take it down - whether it be through a phone call or the court system.

[Colinc]

Without their authorisation you should not be writing about your company at all. It actually breaches any employee confidentiality, and could also come under the data protection act as you are publicly giving information about the company. I think most companies I support would consider this grounds for instant dismissal, and you are definitely liable to prosecution if you do not comply.

[Arden]

Copyright infringement is a problem when it comes to the facebook side of things, but if people can legally say "I love coca cola" on facebook, you can legally say "I love [insert gym brand name here]" too. As long as you don't advertise or use the logo on the site, Facebook has no problem with fan groups.
On the other hand, Colinc is right. Employee confidentiality is a possible issue, as well as the privacy of other employees and the company itself.
Legally I don't think you're in trouble, as long as you can prove you never infringed copyrights or disclosed sensitive information about the company, it's affiliates or any of its employees. If they have an issue with the groups creation, they should submit a copyright infringement report, or for other concerns, use the standard "report this group" link provided on all Facebook group pages. They shouldn't have come to you.

If you feel like creating a page about the company you can always Wikipedia search it, and add to the article that exists there, or create it if there isn't one. I did it for my old school, now there's a few pages of info and a bunch of pictures.

Good Luck!