On Tuesday 5 September, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) described the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) as “a very important step” towards establishing appropriate conditions for monitoring communications from employees in the workplace. According to the ETUC this will help “to better protect worker’s privacy".
Esther Lynch, ETUC Confederal Secretary, explained in a press release that, “Although it does not prohibit monitoring it sets high thresholds for its justification, the judgment means that even if the national courts have established that the worker has used employer’s electronic devices for personal purposes and even if the employer had prohibited such communication, this is not in itself a sufficient justification for monitoring the content of the communication or dismissing the worker”.
In 2007, a Romanian engineer was sacked for having used a professional account to exchange private messages. The employer had been monitoring workplace communications unbeknown to company employees and had used the intercepted messages to prove that the Romanian engineer had not respected the company’s internal rules.
The ECHR does not prohibit employers monitoring workplace Internet connection use as part of disciplinary procedures but argues that employees should be informed of these kinds of initiatives. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)