Privacy in the Workplace

Last month, the Globe and Mail reported that the federal Privacy Commissioner, George Radwanski, recently stated that employees have a fundamental, inherent right to privacy in the workplace, which includes the right to private e-mail.

I don't believe I'm the only one that finds this concept completely incomprehensible.  This kind of thinking is the same hogwash whereby a prominent union claimed in recent years that the workers "owned the work" of their employer.

"Rights" arise two different ways: they are created by statute or they are so obvious that we assume them to be fundamental and inherent rights that do not need any statute to create their existence. While some people may consider the right to be free from racism to be fundamental and inherent, we have created statutes to ensure that the right exists.  On the other hand, we have not created a right whereby you have a right not to be killed by another person.  That is considered to be a fundamental or inherent right.  Fundamental and inherent rights are so basic that they are considered to be global.

Of course, every time a special interest group or person wants to create some controversial right, they start by saying that the right is fundamental and inherent.

The concept that one has a right to private e-mail has ridiculous implications.  Does a man working on the line at General Motors have a fundamental and inherent right to private e-mail at work? If he does, we had better get him a computer so that he can exercise that fundamental right on work time while the cars go by him on the line. If there is a fundamental right to private e-mail, then there must also be fundamental right to have a computer with Internet access.  Of course, that is ridiculous.

Perhaps what the Privacy Commissioner meant is this: If you do offer your employees an e-mail account and Internet access, you must not monitor the e-mail or computer usage and allow them privacy in their e-mail messages and their Internet surfing.  I ask: "Why?"

The privacy Commissioner does not consider that preventing employees from harassing other people via e-mail or downloading pornography or other illegal content on the Internet is a good enough reason to monitor such activity.  Really?

What if your employee was downloading child pornography, which was now being stored on either the employee's computer station or your company's server, or both?  What if the police found out about it? Does the privacy Commissioner assume that the only person who will be charged will be the employee and that the employer will not be charged with possession of child pornography?  You can bet your bottom dollar that the employer will be charged.  Maybe you could ask the Privacy Commissioner to pay the legal fees?

If, as the Privacy Commissioner predicts, legislation does come about which states that an employee has a right to privacy with respect to his or her e-mail account at work and Internet surfing at work, I have an answer for that.  If you are telling me that the employee, whom I am paying to do work on a computer network that I own, accessing the Internet through a service that I pay for, has a right to keep that activity, which is done on my time, to themselves, then I will simply remove the opportunity by taking away the employee's e-mail account and their Internet access.  Then, the employee can have their fundamental right to nothing.

Wouldn't that be a great step backward?