Your boss can read your private chat now

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Private messages at work can be read by employers, says court

Employees in the EU better watch out from now on. Their bosses can snoop into their online communications, a human rights court has ruled. The whole case started with a scandal in 2007 where a Romanian engineer was fired after his boss had found out he was using Yahoo Messenger to chat not only for professional but also personal purposes. And the company's policy forbade that. The guy filed a lawsuit, arguing that his right of privacy had been violated. But the EU human rights court rejected his complaint, saying it was acceptable that an employer would want to make sure their employees are doing their professional tasks during worktime.

The court also absolved the company of any guilt, as it decided they had assumed they'd only find professional communications when looking into the guy's chat. The conclusion was that the company had achieved a balance between respecting personal space and upholding the interests of the employer. As we know, all EU human rights court decisions are valid for all member states that have ratified the European human rights convention, which means this precedent will send ripples throughout most of the continent now.

As you might've expected, I've been hearing two opposing views on this matter. One argues that when you're at work, you're supposed to work. That's what you get paid for. And that all those people complaining are probably spending a lot of time at work FB-ing and private-messaging, which is essentially stealing paid time from the employer. In the days before the Internet, if you were caught napping, chatting and wasting time, you could end up losing your job - unless you worked for the municipality council or some other state administration, where none of this seemed to matter.

There's also the rebel hipster sort of view, which argues that Europe is gradually turning into an American-type corporatocracy, and the EU court has clearly discredited itself by sucking up to the corporate interests of big business at the expense of the human rights that it's supposed to be upholding. The argument here is that constitutional rights, particularly the right of privacy, count for nothing these days. And while it's true that people shouldn't be doing anything related to their private life during paid work time (and certainly not using equipment that their employer provides), this case enters into a murky world where employers expect employees to use their own phones and computers for work, or issue zero or open hours contracts, and expect free overtime - and they clearly can't have it both ways.

So where do you stand on this issue? It's a fine line to tread between personal freedoms and professional obligations, granted. So I'd like to hear some opinions.

Comments

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

Hey employers, put a firewall blocking unwanted applications and web domains. Problem solved.

I'm more with the hipster-rebel type on this one. If that's how people to whom personal privacy still counts for something are called now.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I work at a private company. We spend 9 hours at the office. We never fill 9*60 minutes with work. That's not realistic. When there's work, we work. When there isn't work, we just do some leisure around the Webz. You can't expect us to spend every single second of every single minute of our work time... well, working. We'd burn off in less than a year if we do that. Then they'd have to replace us with someone else, and waste time training them in what we do, which is far less profitable than just allowing us to mix work with leisure. There's a balance to be sought there.

[wuvvumsoc.livejournal.com]

Pretty much this. I get two paid breaks that are 15 minutes a day. I usually check facebook.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

My employees and I actually use Skype for communicating between ourselves. We send documents, we arrange meetings, and we make conference chats both for work and for fun.

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

It's a stupid move by the Romanian company. First of all it's not so easy to find good qualified personnel, and the cost of recruiting and training new people is rising. Second, the engineer didn't do anything wrong so why invoke personal usage of a messenger service as the pretext? If they have some real beef, they should spit it out rather than hiding behind the pretense that they can own people 100% of the time. And looking at someone's chat is the kind of douchebag move that just reeks of arrogant stupidity. Third, I know the Romanian companies generally pay crap so they probably did him a favour by forcing him to look for much better work conditions elsewhere.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

I'd tend to agree on all points. Maybe there was a different and maybe valid reason for firing this person, if so, the company should have used that. Right now, they look like a terrible place to work who will only be able to hire the people who can't find jobs elsewhere.