councilor.org
| Source | Steve Zeltzer |
| Date | 99/12/18/10:18 |
| December 16, 1999 New York Times
What Employers Can View at Work By LISA GUERNSEY The increasing pervasiveness of surveillance technology has led many employees to wonder just how much privacy they can expect anywhere in the workplace -- whether on their computers or in their file cabinets. The questions are not always easily answered, but a few guidelines can be drawn, according to people who follow employment law. In many cases, experts say, the details of a particular situation -- such as the presence of locks on drawers -- will determine what is considered an unlawful intrusion. Whether the employer is part of the public sector also matters: Public employers are held to standards set in the Fourth Amendment, which protects people against unreasonable search and seizure by government officials. And policies set by an employer can make all the difference in determining what level of privacy is reasonably expected. The following list may provide a rough idea of which areas of the workplace are typically considered private, and which are not -- according to several lawyers' interpretations of privacy laws and court rulings. PURSES AND BRIEFCASES As a general rule, employers have no right to go through a purse, briefcase or piece of luggage that has been brought into the workplace, according to a 1987 ruling by the United States Supreme Court, O'Connor v. Ortega. DESKS AND FILE CABINETS The drawers of desks and file cabinets are also typically off limits to employers -- as long as employees have not been given notification that their drawers are subject to monitoring and as long as the drawers are locked and not shared by others. This interpretation, too, is based upon the Supreme Court's 1987 ruling. PHONE CONVERSATIONS In most cases, in accordance with federal wiretap laws, employers may not listen to an employee's personal conversations without their knowledge. But many exceptions apply: An employer may listen to the phone conversations of telemarketers, for example. VOICE MAIL Employers may gain access to voice mail messages if they have a business purpose for doing so, and especially if they have told their employees that the messages may be monitored. E-MAIL AND WEB USE Most employees should not consider their office e-mail to be private, nor should they assume that their employers are not looking at logs of the Web sites they have visited. Only a handful of lawsuits regarding workers' e-mail and Web privacy have made their way to court. So far, judges have been ruling overwhelmingly in favor of the employers, especially if employees are told not to use the company networks for anything but work. |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho