Are employees entitled to privacy at work?

Sunday, 06 September 2009 01:13 Atty. Conrado Joe Sayas

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THE United States and California Constitutions guarantee the right to privacy. The right to privacy presumably imposes limitations on an employer’s right to install surveillance camera at work and monitor the phone calls, emails, and computer activities of its employees while in the workplace.

However, employers have argued that employees lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in the workplace and employers have legitimate objectives in the surveillance and monitoring of the work premises. Such objectives would include concerns about violence in the workplace, crime prevention, lost productivity, malicious software invasions, dissemination of proprietary information, and employer liability for inappropriate Internet and computer usage.

The following are some of the areas in which employers may encroach upon an employee’s privacy rights at work:

Workplace video surveillance

Employers may install electronic surveillance on its work premises. However, effective January 1, 1999, the Labor Code prohibits employers from making audio or video recordings of employees in specific work areas considered to be private. Such areas include restrooms, locker rooms, or rooms designated by an employer for changing clothes. An employer may monitor these areas by video or audio only if authorized by court order. Should any recording be obtained in violation of the statute, such recording cannot be used for any purpose. The statute applies to all private and public employers, except for the federal government.

While the law recognizes an employer’s right to protect its business against crimes by using video or other electronic surveillance, such use must respect the employees’ rights to privacy. Some video surveillance in the workplace may be considered an unreasonable intrusion by the employer into their employees’ privacy. In the event of such conflict between the right of the employer to protect its business and the right of the employee to privacy, the courts will balance these competing rights.

Telephone calls

An employer may listen to an employee’s phone calls at work. For example, employers may monitor calls with clients or customers for reasons of quality control. However, when the parties to the call are all in California, state law requires that they be informed that the conversation is recorded or monitored by either putting a beep tone on the line or playing a recorded message. When employees are told not to make personal calls from specified business phones, the employee then takes the risk that calls on those phones may be monitored.

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