Employee Privacy Rights in the Workplace - Essay Example

New technologies allow employers to monitor many aspects of their employees’ activities on employer-provided computer systems. However, such monitoring of employee computer terminals, stored data, and electronic mail is largely unregulated, although pending court cases are considering employees’ rights to privacy regarding such electronic data. Employers contend that unless written company policy provides otherwise, an employer may read and recover data from any computer or network provided by the employer.

Employee advocates maintain that an employee has a reasonable expectation of privacy over such information unless specially or properly advised in writing through an employment contract, manual, or other adequate means of written notification.On the one hand, employers want to ensure employees' right to privacy for moral, ethical, and legal reasons. On the other, they must also protect against the actions of employees who download pornography or copyrighted music, send harassing e-mail, reveal company secrets, disclose personal information, sell drugs or even slack off on their job because of the time they spend surfing the Internet.

Observers say the first step in this process is to develop a policy that clearly establishes employers' right to access e-mail, voice mail, desks, and any other company property. In practice, though, employers generally avoid taking any action unless a pattern of misbehavior becomes evident or if any other reason to be suspicious arises say, observers. Employee privacy encompasses a wide range of issues, including drug testing and the confidentiality of medical records, as well as technical issues such as voice mail, e-mail, and Web surfing (Muhl, 2003).

There have been a number of court cases that focused on employee monitoring and how far it should go. Courts have affirmed that employees have a limited right to be protected from unreasonable intrusion into their private affairs.