Privacy in the Workplace Essay -- Employee Privacy Monitoring Workplac

Privacy. at that place seems to be no legal cut off today that cuts so wide a swath through and through conflicts confronting Ameri give the axe society from AIDS tests to wiretaps, polygraph test to computerized data bases, the common denominator has been whether the right to cover outweighs other concerns of society This quote from Robert Ellis Smith explains, in one sentence, the dictatorial neediness to ensure cover in the workplace. One of the most interesting, even controversial, field of operationss concerning public personnel is employee hiding. What limits ar there to employers intrusions into, and control over, employees behaviors and personal properties? There are five major empyreans which trigger privacy matters in the area of public sector employment background checks, cognizance of off responsibleness conduct and life styles, drug testing, workplace searches, and monitoring of workplace activity. Of these five, the fifth area of privacy, monitoring of work place activity, is the most controversial. The reason for this is the advance of technology. These conflicts open anew the basic questions as to what is private, what is propriety, what legal rights an employee possesses, and what an employees obligations and responsibilities are within the orbital cavity of public employment. Privacy has been defined as the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to regard for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others. The privacy claims of employees can vary in terms of the privacy interest involved and the conception of a need for privacy. In terms of background checks, the issue of autonomy is presented. Autonomy involves ones stimulate personal and individual liberties. Autonomy embraces areas of central life choice and lifestyle that are important in terms of individual expression, but contrasted to an employer and of no public concern. It has been associated with marital and other inti mate relationships, home and family life, and familiarity and reproductive choices. Employees lose raised issues of employer intrusion into this area where the employer makes employment decisions on the basis of something in an employees personal history, or conditions employment on appropriate responses to inquires about personal activities which are not job-related. An employer may have interests which permit some limited intrusion into this area, if the behavior involves m... ...duals from fear, abuse and hurting when it upheld the constitutionality of 47 U.S.C. 233, which makes the communication of obscene or harassive phone calls a federal official crime. Employers have no less a responsibility. The responsibility is reinforced through anti-discrimination statutes like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which has been interpreted to repeal direct harassment and creation of hostile environments in the workplace. The U.S. Constitution gives hard protection to privac y in the home, but not where Americans make a living. To make up for federal inadequacy, some advances have enacted their own privacy statues. Federal law takes precedence, but where state laws provide greater protection, employers are usually subject to both. Several states have banned various activities, including the paper-and-pencil honestness test, which have not been scientifically validated. No state gives strong privacy protection to workers using e-mail, voice mail or telephone, nor does any state prohibit intrusive psychological testing. Unless or until national workplace laws can be passed, state laws will continue tp provide only mismatched overall support for worker privacy.