Employee Workplace Privacy Rights
Posted in Employee Rights
The employee rights law in the United States holds that employees are entitled to workplace privacy. This means that your employer is prohibited to monitor your Internet activities such as reading Web pages, sending e-mail messages, Internet chatting, blogging, and posting in forums.
Are you reading this article at work? Well, it might get you into serious trouble. Chances are your employer is reading it, too. According to a number of workplace privacy studies, it is very likely your employer is spying on you.
The omnipresent "Big Brother"
According to the 2007 Electronic Monitoring and Surveillance Survey conducted by The ePolicy Institute and the American Management Association (AMA), majority of the employers who took part in the study said that they spied on their employees. For example, 73% of the respondents tracked e-mail messages, 66% monitored Internet surfing, 45% monitored keyboard time and keystrokes, and 43% employers monitored computer files.
Also, think carefully before you badmouth your employer, superiors, or coworkers on blogsites. The study shows that 12% of the employers monitored the blogosphere, while 10% monitored the social networks.
Employees in the private sector are most unfortunate as workplace privacy rights are almost nonexistent in private companies. According to estimates, about 92% of employers in the private sector conduct electronic surveillance on their people. Many employers do so even without the knowledge or consent of their employees.
Modes of surveillance
Your employer might subject you to electronic surveillance in different ways, shapes, or forms. For example: reading all incoming and outgoing e-mail messages, recording all your phone conversations done in the office, monitoring your office computer keystrokes, and videotaping all your actions throughout the office. Your employer may also search through your computer files in the office and even track your location using your company badge or cell phone, or both.
Weak privacy laws
Employers can get away with the illegal surveillance in the workplace, in part because employers own the building in which employees roam, the computer on which they work, and phone on which they talk. But the few workplace privacy rights laws and their weak implementations are also to blame.
Only few states have workplace privacy rights laws. These include California, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, and Rhode Island. But the workplace privacy laws in these states have no "teeth". They only require employers to let their employees know they are being electronically monitored. Also, these laws prohibit employers to perform surveillance while the employees are changing their clothes.
Challenging the lack of workplace privacy rights
Employees may challenge the invasion of their privacy in the workplace through lawsuits. Despite the few and weak privacy rights laws, your employers don't have the right to breach basic American privacy values.
