On-Line Rights for Employees in the Information Society:Use and Monitoring of E-Mail and Internet at Work (Bulletin of Comparative Labour Relations)

A number of practices in today's `wired' workplace threaten several fundamental rights. More and more, employees are expected to curtail their right to communicate and their right to access to information. Their right to privacy may also be breached by monitoring of their e-mail and Internet activity. Although employers have legitimate reasons for such restrictive or invasive measures and clearly have their own right to supervise the use of company property it can no longer be denied that the legal and even moral issues that arise from the new reality of work in the information society demand serious and detailed consideration if labour law's role as a vital component of the employment relationship is to survive. In this very significant book, crucial questions arising in the context of the new world of work are explored by a distinguished gathering of academics, civil servants, trade union representatives, managers, employees and students from sixteen countries. The Conference, held in Brussels in November 2000, was co-sponsored by the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts, Union Network International, UNI-Europa, and the Euro-Japan Institute for Law and Business. Participants analyzed trends and the ever-increasing possibilities and opportunities to communicate, monitoring included, in order to clarify such issues as the following: `on-line rights' and the form they should take in the workplace; employer liability for damage to third parties caused by e-mail or Internet activity; sexual harassment via e-mail or Internet activity; protection against hackers and other security measures; safeguarding confidentiality, both employer's and employee's; and the right to personal use of the company's communications technology. These and other aspects of the growing conflict between managerial prerogative and the right to privacy in the workplace are here given a fuller and more provocative treatment than is available in any other single source.