Employee Rights Essays

Employee Rights Essays Employee Rights Essay Employee Rights Essay 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 before or when they are signing the employment contract. It is always vital for both the employers and the employees to know their obligations and rights so that they can avoid breaching the contract and other collisions. The law on employment covers all the obligations and rights related to the relationship between employees and employers (Weckert, 2005). These apply to the job applicants, former and current employers or employees. Since the employment relationships are very complex, the laws of employment cover legal issues like workplace safety, taxation, wages, wrongful termination and various ways of discrimination. Most of the stated issues are dealt with by the application of State and federal laws. If the employment relationship has its base on a contract between the employee and the employer, the duties and the rights of the parties are dictated by the state contact law (Repa, 2007). Employees and employers rights Both the employers and the employees have rights at the workplace. Employees’ rights include the right to have freedom against discrimination which includes discrimination based on religion, national origin, race, gender, color and age, fair compensation, right to privacy which applies to the personal possessions of the employee which include briefcases, storage lockers that should only be accessed by the employees and private mails that have been addressed to the employee. When it comes to the issue of e-mails, the employees’ rights are restricted especially if the computer system that he employees are using belong to the employer (Wolkinson Block, 1996). On the other hand, the employers have the following rights and obligations; not to discriminate the employees on any ground, keep records containing the information about employees, pay all employees the rightful wage and write statements on them, keep time and wages records on employees, provision of healthy and saf e working place and meet all the minimum employment conditions among others (Jennings, 2005). Views on employers to access employees’ emails Some people propose that the employer should access the employees’ emails. They give reasons like; it prevents the employees from abusing the computer systems that they have been allowed to use by the employers. At times, the employees take advantage of the computer systems that they have been given by their employers to do their own things that might interfere with the duties of the employee. Such should be monitored through the employers accessing the employees’ electronic communication for the welfare of the company (Marsh, 2009). The proponents of the issue feel that personal emailing hinders employee productivity. Research has been done to support this view. Some employees spend much time on the internet doing their personal stuff at the expense of their jobs. The companies that do not have work targets and the government offices where laxity is a common thing are likely to suffer from this. When the employees spend workplace time to do their own things, the job does not get done (Wolkinson Block, 1996). This creates inconveniences to the people who are waiting to be served in such offices. This kind of inefficiency makes companies lose clients to the companies that meet their needs. In this case, employees’ activities should be monitored to ensure that they do the right things at the right time (Repa, 2007). 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 (Steinberger, 2009). When smith communicated with his supervisor via emails a message was intercepted that contained death threats on the sale personnel. The employer immediately terminated the plaintiff. Though Smith claimed that the employer had violated their rights by viewing their email messages, the court ruled against him (Jennings, 2005). The proponents feel that through interception of email communication among the employees, acts that could harm the company are prevented. They therefore strongly support the issue. It is proposed that the company’s and the employees’ safety is more important than the employees privacy as far as personal emailing in the workplace is concerned (Repa, 2007). An employer should access the employee’s electronic communication as a way of decreasing his liability for workforce abuse of the technology provided by the company. There are various ways through which an employee may misuse the company’s technology. Firstly, the employee might distribute text messages or emails that are violent, pornographic, discriminatory, sexually harassing or the ones that generally cause a work environment that is hostile. An employee might as well practice illegal activities like illegal down loading of films and music and illegal gambling. These activities may make the employer to be held liable for infringing copyright laws. If on the other hand the employer had intercepted such practices, his liability would have reduced (Wolkinson Block, 1996). There are however people who feel that when the employers check the employees’ mails, they are intruding to their privacy. According to studies done on employer-employees’ views on the use of emails and internet during the working hours, 87% of the employees felt that it is okay to spend some few minutes of the working hours on the internet. Among them, 55% felt that is appropriate for an employee to spend about 20 or so minutes to deal with personal communication via e-mail on a daily basis. 84% of the participants of the survey admitted to spend sometime sending e-mails that are not related to work everyday. 34% disclosed that they send 5-10 e-mail messages daily (Repa, 2007). The study also showed that 57% of the employees felt that their employers were not monitoring their internet use while 20% admitted have been caught at least once by the employer surfing during the working hours (Jennings, 2005). This issue on the employer having no right to access the employees e-mail can be supported by the Strangent v. Loving cars Agency case in New Jersey. The appellate division of the Supreme Court of New Jersey used this case to clarify the ways in which employers should make clarity on policies to make sure that the workforces fully understand that the employers have some right to gain access to the employee emails if the employee is using the company’s technology. Even if the employees have a right to their privacy, as far as emails are concerned, these rights are limited (Wolkinson Block, 1996). The case was ruled out that the previous employer did not have the right to plaintiff’s e-mails because the company policy on the same had just indicated that the employer has a right to disclose, access, intercept, audit and review all affairs on the media systems of the company but it had not stated the scope of the policy (Gordon, Savage Mazer, 2009). In this case, the plaintiff communicated with her attorney about a sexual harassment case using the employer’s laptop but the employer had access to the emails. After thoroughly examination of the policies regarding employers’ electronic communication, the court realized that the policy was ambiguously defined as it makes the employee feel that the allowance on personal use of electronic communication should not be checked by the employer (Gordon, Savage Mazer, 2009). This case gives guidelines that the employees should understand that even if they use passwords on the emails, their employers still reserves the rights to access their emails. However, the employer was not supposed to intercept the messages sent between the plaintiff and her attorney as this is viewed to be an attorney-client communication which was confidential. The employer’s action was therefore not justified and the court declared that at times, employers can’t depend on the policy on electronic resources in order to validate reviewing workforce’s personal email content which is stored on the boss’s electronic resources. In New Jersey, this decision is binding and it has contributed to change of policy regarding the same in most companies there (Repa, 2007). Federal law is against any unauthorized access, retrieval and interception of electronic or wire communication. This includes the stored communication, the like of emails. The people who violate these face a variety of criminal and civil penalties. However, when one downloads such communication into the computers of the company, they may be controlled by the employer (Gordon, Savage Mazer, 2009). On the other hand, most employers feel that it is appropriate for the employees to spend between 15 and 30 minutes daily to send personal e-mails. They said that it helps the employees to regain concentration in their work. As one works from morning, the concentration first goes up but as time goes by, it starts declining. This is when most employees are tempted to do things that are not work related. Some employees have admitted that after surfing for about 15 minutes or so, they become recharged to continue with their work (Wolkinson Block, 1996). However, they say that there is a high temptation to continue surfing for hours on end since there are more interesting things on the internet than on the job. If disciplined, an employee’s productivity can be increased through taking short breaks whether it’s through surfing or not (Steingold, 2009). In conclusion, companies must take a further step to put and enforce policies on electronic communication in order to end this controversy. Such policies should be written clearly so as to avoid ambiguity. This should apply to all the company systems whether they are used at work, during business trips or at the premises of the employees. It should include an express waiver by workforce to the right to privacy in information that is in the computer of the company. The policy should as well have a detached language that gets rid of any expectations that communication on the computers of the company is private. Employers should also play it safe by restricting their access to the employees’ computers to business activities not unless there is sensible suspicion of misconduct by the workforce (Wolkinson Block, 1996). The policy should further indicate that all the computers are company property and should therefore be treated as so. The companies that allow minimum use of the computer for personal purposes should clearly state to the employees that such use should adhere to the company policies, lack confidentiality, ownership, inspection and access. To ensure that this is followed, employers should reserve the right to retain all the employees’ passwords (Repa, 2007). Reference: Repa, B. K, (2007). Your Rights in the Workplace, Edition 8. ISBN 1413306438: Nolo. Wolkinson, B. W. , Block, R. N. , (1996). Employment law: the workplace rights of employees and employers. ISBN 1557868328: Wiley-Blackwell. Gordon, P. L. , Savage, E. A. Mazer, P. H. , (2009). Employer’s Electronic Communications Policy Did Not Allow Company to Review Employee’s E-mail Exchange with Her Attorney: Retrieved on 13th November, 2009 from http://209. 85. 229. 132/search? q=cache:foGTl79U5acJ:www. littler. om/PressPublications/Documents/2009_07_ASAP_Employer_ElectricCommunicationsPolicy_EmployeeE mailExchangeAttorney. pdf+Should+employers+have+the+right+to+review+employees+email%3Fcd=3hl=enct=clnkgl=keclient=firefox-a Jennings, M. M. , (2005), Business: its legal, ethical, and global environment, Edition 7. ISBN 0324204884: Cengage Learn ing, Weckert, J. (2005). Electronic monitoring in the workplace: controversies and solutions. ISBN 1591404568: Idea Group Inc (IGI). Marsh, M. C. , (2009). Employers Employee E-mail and Text Messages Are Private, Absent an Employee Policy to the Contrary: Retrieved on 13th November, 2009 from ourlegalcorner. com/articles. asp? id=70cat=empttl=Employee+E-mail+and+Text+Message+Policies. Steingold, F. S. , (2009). The Employers Legal Handbook, Edition 9. ISBN 1413310230: Nolo. Steinberger, Jeffrey (2009), Your Right to Employee: Retrieved on 13th November, 2009 from E-Mailhttp://209. 85. 229. 132/search? q=cache:5-6aZCe_2ZwJ:smallbusiness. yahoo. com/r-article-a-112541-m-5-sc-51-your_right_to_employee_emaili+Should+employers+have+the+right+to+review+employees+email%3Fcd=4hl=enct=clnkgl=keclient=firefox-a