Right To Privacy In The Workplace

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Privacy is the ability of an individual to seclude information about themselves, and

should be allowed in the workplace. Today employers are using social media to see what their

current employees do during their time off from work. Employers continue to do back

ground checks on potential employees, and social media being one of the many ways

they make their decision. Why should what people do when they aren’t working affect

an employer? Employers monitor any communication in the workplace, this includes the

use of the internet and monitoring phone calls, hidden cameras in the workplace, and what seems

to be the biggest issue that people have, lifestyle discrimination.

The majority of brick-and-mortar companies have surveillance cameras in their stores. …show more content…
While there are restrictions against

monitoring phone calls, not everyone follows the rules. When it comes to audio surveillance

employers can use various unlawful methods of surveillance. Two of those methods being

wiretapping and microphones. In the article Workplace Surveillance: Balancing the Employee’s

Right to Privacy With the Employer’s Right to Know, it discusses a case were an employer was

found guilty of using an unlawful method of audio surveillance. “In Bowyer v. HI-LAD, Inc.,

609 S.E.2d 895 (W.Va. 2004), the plaintiff, a hotel employee, sued the owner of the hotel,

alleging that the hotel had subjected him to illegal audio surveillance and monitoring in violation

of the West Virginia Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act. The Supreme Court of

Appeals upheld an award of $100,000 in compensatory damages to the plaintiff.” This is one of

the few times that an employer has been caught using an illegal form of surveillance.

Unfortunately though, there are still employers that use these types of surveillance

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