Abstract The issue of employers’ and employees’ rights has always brought controversy in most companies. Some rights are expressly known like the right of employees to get paid after working for the agreed period of time among others. However, there are those things done by the employers that most employees feel are too private. Employees feel that some things done by the employers are an intrusion to their privacy. This paper will discuss issues on whether the employer has a right to review the employees’ email. It will look at both the employers and the employees’ perspective and what the law says about the issue. Introduction Employees and employers have reciprocated obligations towards each other. These duties are usually expressed …show more content…
The law supports the claim that employees have a right to access employees’ emails, although most employees are of the opinion that their employers should not access their emails. The courts have not found any reasonable expectation for the employees to have privacy in the same and therefore, they have always granted permission to the employers to keep an eye on the employees’ activities as well as reviewing it. In a case of Smith v. Pillsbury Co., the plaintiff had sued the employer on the ground that he had wrongfully discharged him after the employer intercepted an email message he considered inappropriate (Jennings, 2005). Smith being an at-will kind of employee, his suit centered on whether by being discharged, it went against Pennsylvania’s public policy thereby falling into the exemption under the general rule which indicate that employees who are employed on the at-will basis can have their employment terminated any time. The defendant was given motion from dismissal of the case since it failed to state a claim. The employer was therefore found not guilty of either invading the employees’ privacy or violating public policy when he terminated smith (Wolkinson & Block, 1996). The employer had created email communication system but had told the employees that it was privileged and confidential. The employer also informed the workforce that their emails would not be intercepted
Did you know that 58% of employers have fired workers for Internet and email misuse? And 48% justify employee video monitoring as an effort to “counter theft and violence?” According to the “2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey” of which 304 U.S. companies participated in, computer-monitoring results have led to the highest cause of employee termination. These companies used several tactics to eavesdrop on employees while claiming to be managing productivity or for security purposes. Some argue that surveillance is absolutely necessary to help protect and grow a business; others argue that employee and customer rights come first. However, companies that use such tactics often violate the privacy of individuals, exploit their private information and even punish those that do not conform to their standards.
* In today’s world of fast-developing technology, in which the click of mouse can dispense a plethora of information, privacy for job seekers and employees is a significant issue. One type of privacy issue in the workplace occurs when a company gathers or circulates private or personal information about employees or candidates for employment.
This view is upheld in many courts. One such case is the McLoren v. Microsoft, and Smyth v. Pillsbury. Nord, McCubbins, and J. Nord, explain, in the case of McLoren v. Microsoft, McLoren was part of a harassment investigation, and Microsoft broke into McLoren’s password protected personal e-mail folder to gather evidence. McLoren claimed, the password protected folder was like a personal locker, for personal items. The court rejected the argument, stating the e-mail was first received in the inbox of the e-mail provided by Microsoft and moving it to a personal folder is no exception (Nord, McCubbins, and J. Nord, 2006). In Smyth v. Pillsbury Company, Nord, McCubbins, and J. Nord, explain, Smyth sent unprofessional comments in an e-mail, from home to his supervisor. Pillsbury fired Smyth. The courts upheld this action, because the e-mail was retrieved from storage at the company owned servers (Nord, McCubbins, and J. Nord, 2006). With these examples of employees misusing company communication equipment, employers must monitor employees to avoid legal liability.
Selected Answer: fails to protect employees in most situations involving e-mail monitoring by public and private employers.
This section of the employee handbook is provided as a guideline for employees to understand the company policy and procedures regarding privacy in the workplace. While this section cannot address every possible scenario that may occur, the general policy will serve as a basis of understanding the key workplace issues and employee privacy. This section addresses privacy issues related to personal background information, off-work activities, and the corporate policy on the use of electronic monitoring. These privacy policies are designed to both provide a clear guideline for employees on the difference between job related and personal privacy. The policies are designed to create a standard set of
Employers are discovering that employee emails and telephone uses are starting to have an impact on its business. Therefore, employers are trying to protect the company's investment, by monitoring employees email without being invasive. Employers can use, computer software, which gives the employer the ability to record how much time the employees' spend on his or, her email account, without having to read the employees email
This technique must be in accordance with the guidelines and regulation of AFL-CIO. For establishments’ email policies, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) published significant and governing policies. Communication Workers of America and Purple Communications, which is AFL-CIO, the National Labor Relation Board depicted that the establishment’s email access which is granted to the workforces, the workforces can utilize this access of system for non-business purposes; however, within the depicted reach. As per this regulation of NLRB the proprietors must assess their existing policies and manufacture the forthcoming policies accordingly. Businesses must position assessments which the subordinate must provide the access to and to what degree. To be consistent with the guidelines of Purple Communication which is AFL-CIO the proprietors must examine their existing technology and mailing system and the monitoring polices additionally. If any proprietor aspires to limit the access it must be followed by the appropriate explanations and rationales. (Katz. M. and Austen, J.,
The idea of employee rights involves many complex issues. An employee’s right to a workplace free of discrimination and harmful environmental factors is obvious. Yet, other issues surrounding privacy, personal expression, and communication monitoring are not
Our world of technological advances is growing day by day. So much so, in fact, that new laws are created to help determine the legal responsibilities and actions to be taken if an incident occurs. The advantages and disadvantages of monitoring and being monitored will be discussed. Some of the laws that represent the employer and employee as well as why an employer would want to monitor an employee will also are discussed. Although employee monitoring is beneficial to an employer for a variety of reasons, it is better for an employer to leave an employees’ private life away from the workplace private.
These two articles discuss the violation of workers rights in the United Kingdom by both the government and labor unions themselves. The first article discusses laws enacted by the British government that allowed employers to coerce employees to leave the union and the cases brought to the UCHR while the second article discusses the infringement of workers right by the unions themselves through the process of blacklisting workers. Both these examples, and the long duration of time these cases happened, surprised me given the longstanding history of workers rights in Britain and my American idea of modern British fairness and left leaning ideals.
Workplace surveillance has become a controversial issue in the workplace environment. The technological surveillance has developed as a necessity, it doesn’t only help in monitoring what the workers’ do, but it also helps to know how they do it. The modern technological development may have helped the employers’ to have an aerial view of the workplace environment, but it has created a controversy between the employees’ and the employer about the employees’ right to privacy being violated. The employees’ believe the act of workplace surveillance to be hateful that violates their right to privacy and liberties. The surveillance at the workplace often effects workers mental health, productivity, future success in their work and their relationship with the employer, despite being a necessity for the employers’ to protect themselves against the liability, many employers’ in the process of achieving efficiency through surveillance mistakenly ruin their relationship with their employees. The workplace surveillance is helpful in improving the performance of workers or it is contributing towards degrading the performance of workers and their work relationships.
The main purpose of this research paper is to define that the conflicts between employees and employers doesn’t have any solution. Therefore, Marxism is one of the theories that emphises on this conflicts. Firstly i need to define that in Marxism , employers and employees are considered as capitalist class and wage slave class. Therefore, conflicts between Employers and Employees are considered to be conflicts between owners and working class. From the past to now the employees were struggling in order to attain a higher form of human society. In Marxism, it is defined that goods and things are produced mainly for people’s needs.It is obvious that each society has to do this. However, not in each society employers accepting their workers as those who are working not only for the salary but also for the need of society. Marx describe the situation of conflicts between Employer and Employee in competitive capitalism in ways that are similar in fundamental analytic respects. (Rueschemeyer, 1987) From my viewpoint the conflicts between employees and employers occur firstly because employees are exploited under capitalism. This means that, employees are working for their employers,and employers has the power over their workers. This power is not always considerd in a right way.
It is a common practice especially in industries that have a large number of employees whom they cannot monitor in person. The research will examine computer monitoring as one of the methods which the management uses to monitor employee activity at the workplace. The researcher will examine the advantages of computer monitoring at the workplace in detail in relation to the legal realm, public perception and criticism. Firms store most of their data in the computer database. In fact, many companies rely on computer networks to communicate with its employees, stakeholders and clients.
But what are the firm's main reasons for such a supervision of emails and internet ? In fact, main concerns are the following :
Generally, employers are concerned about the various issues that could transpire in the workplace such as poor performance, viewing of inappropriate and derogatory things on the organization's equipment, lower productivity, and injuries on the job (“Managing Workplace Monitoring”, 2016). Therefore, “employers also have a duty to their employees to protect the privacy and confidentiality of the personal information gathered and maintained in the course of employment (“Managing Workplace Monitoring”, 2016, para. 1). Moreover, the main reason for monitoring employees is solely tied into limiting the amount of litigation the organization can potentially be subjected to. Therefore, to minimize exposure and risk to