The article states about the economic factor in America. It sensitizes on the justice the workers in America should be given. The article talks about how the workers in America are treated with injustice. This is shown well when the article starts by, "If the laws of economics were enforced as strictly as the laws of physics, America would be a workers' paradise." Visit the article in this link: http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/workersrights.htm.
Employee Rights in the Workplace
The idea of employee rights involves many complex issues. An employee’s right to a workplace free of discrimination and harmful environmental factors is obvious. Yet, other issues surrounding privacy, personal expression, and communication monitoring are not
…show more content…
Thus , privacy is not limited to rights but also entails employees
' responsibility to ensure that it is never abused and is not to the determent of the company ( Privacy in the Workplace , 2005
Challenges for Employers
Employers have the right and responsibility to monitor their place of business to protect themselves and their employees from invasion . The irony is that this can only be possible if an employer is able to monitor communications and exchanges . Therefore , for a company to be able to afford the protection that employees need , they must surrender in trust their privacy to the company
As much as a company should not invade the rights of its employees , it has the equal responsibility of ensuring that its privacy and that of its employees are not divulged or used in any personal intent by other employees . According to Nyman (2005 , more companies are being held accountable by employees whose privacy was compromised in the workplace because of what is seen as a lack in its measures to ensure their privacy . Therefore , if employers are being held accountable for such situations , Nyman believes that they should be given enough power to protect themselves from such liabilities
An example given by Nyman is the case between Recording
According to the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, "an employer can monitor their employee to ensure adequate job performance and supervise customer contacts."
Every person has the right to privacy, and this right must be extended to the workplace.
There are many problems with the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, including issues with the workplace. The United State Constitution and its corresponding Fourth Amendment privacy protection provide little guidance in email monitoring situations. At the very least,
The United States federal government should significantly increase protection of privacy in one or more of the following areas: employment, medical records, and consumer information. The question of workplace privacy is a tricky one; in order to come up with a workable solution, one must balance the separate, and often conflicting, needs and expectations of employers and employees. In this essay, three types of workplace privacy issues will be discussed: e-mail and other office communications, employee drug testing, and the use of background checks.
The largest concern in terms of privacy issues arises from instances of employee monitoring or investigation into negative human resource claims. While personal privacy is a right that all employees of G-BioSport East have to the fullest extent, facilitating a diverse workplace atmosphere is one of our utmost concerns. Therefore, in particular cases or rare malfeasants where we believe the facilitation of equality is being hindered, we retain the right to monitor employees and investigate the case to an extent that may cross privacy boundaries. While the intent is by no means to intrude on employee’s private matters, we want to ensure that no cases of discrimination are present and therefore may be limited to breaking privacy standards in order
Privacy in the workplace exists only to a certain extent essentially because the organization has the right to search and seizure their property and the employees which utilize it. Therefore, I believe employees generally are limited to the amount of privacy they have on the job. Generally, much of the equipment, devices, and resources utilized at work are the property of the employer and therefore they have the right to monitor what employees are doing. In essence, employers have every right to invade employee privacy while the employees are utilizing the organization's equipment and resources. Further, employee privacy is limited because essentially employees are trying to safeguard the organization from litigation and the erosion of the organization’s reputation.
As long as there has been employment, employees have been monitored (Nebeker & Tatum, 1993). However as the progress of technology becomes more rapid and equipment for monitoring is available to all, surveillance in the workplace has become a more alarming issue and the boundaries of what is necessary and what is an invasion of privacy are very vague. A case study presented for scrutiny is that of the ‘German supermarket chain Lidl accused of snooping on staff’.
As indicated by some people, the privacy right ought to be extended to workplaces. In the meantime, other individuals feel that this extension would encompass an unnecessary incursion into the managing rights of the management. In a working environment, the right to privacy of employees is a primarily controversial legal topic. This is even more of a concern or of an issue during this age of increased dependence on electronic mail and computers to do business. Because of innovation technology, employers have been enabled to monitor working environment correspondence that happens by means of PCs, for example, messages and Internet utilization. A majority of the employees feel that such observing abuses their privacy rights. Nevertheless, the law does permit it. Some employee activities like private discussions and actual physical spaces at the workplace such as the locked desk drawers are under more privacy protections. Hence, there is a great need for the employers to consider circumstances under which he or she wants to conduct an investigation.
Unless given appropriate authorisation, even employees are defended in opposition to prohibited monitoring by employers through such methods of CCTV cameras or computer, internet and email surveillance and are supported by legislations of such: Workplace Surveillance Act 2005 (NSW); Listening and Surveillance Devices Act 1972 (SA); Listening Devices Act 1991 (Tas); Surveillance Devices (Workplace Privacy) Act 2006 (Vic); Surveillance Devices Act 1998 (WA); Workplace Privacy Act 2011
Technology allows employers to observe a lot of aspects of their staff place of working actions. While workers may feel that such observing is a violation of their confidentiality rights, many types of monitoring are permitted below the law. A preponderance of employers observe their workers. They are provoked by apprehension over proceedings and the rising role that electronic confirmation plays in lawsuits and government organization investigations.
Employers must protect their data but at what cost does such protection derive? There is consumer risk in every environment, even when adequate controls exist to prevent internal loss or identity theft but there is also hope, even with a persistent threat of consumer risk.
Whether employees should be under surveillance or not of their employers will always remain a debatable topic. In my opinion, however, I would support this phenomenon instead of opposing it due to some analytical reasons which I shall be explaining in detail.
Workplace surveillance has become a controversial issue in the workplace environment. The technological surveillance has developed as a necessity, it doesn’t only help in monitoring what the workers’ do, but it also helps to know how they do it. The modern technological development may have helped the employers’ to have an aerial view of the workplace environment, but it has created a controversy between the employees’ and the employer about the employees’ right to privacy being violated. The employees’ believe the act of workplace surveillance to be hateful that violates their right to privacy and liberties. The surveillance at the workplace often effects workers mental health, productivity, future success in their work and their relationship with the employer, despite being a necessity for the employers’ to protect themselves against the liability, many employers’ in the process of achieving efficiency through surveillance mistakenly ruin their relationship with their employees. The workplace surveillance is helpful in improving the performance of workers or it is contributing towards degrading the performance of workers and their work relationships.
* In today’s world of fast-developing technology, in which the click of mouse can dispense a plethora of information, privacy for job seekers and employees is a significant issue. One type of privacy issue in the workplace occurs when a company gathers or circulates private or personal information about employees or candidates for employment.
A rising number of businesses are using technology to monitor their employees ' emails, phone calls, and movements. Your employer may be watching and listening, monitoring employee privacy has become a new controversial issue in the field of business ethics (Mishra and Crampton, 1998). As long as there has been employment, employees have been monitored (Nebeker & Tatum, 1993). In recent years, however, due in part to new technology that makes it easier, there has been an explosion of electronic monitoring and surveillance in the American workplace (Botan, 1996).