Monitoring Employees

Problem:

Should employers be allowed to spy on their employees through social media? Should the employee be disciplined for any negative things the employer may find?

Claim:

For both questions, I say no. Employers should not be allowed to spy on their employees at all, let alone through social media.  This is an invasion of privacy and a lack of trust on the employers’ part.

Reason:

With freedom of speech, people should be allowed to say whatever they want, where ever they want to say it. If I want to complain about my job through a post on Facebook/twitter, or a blog, I should be allowed to do so. If one of my employers discovers the post or if a coworker brings it to their attention, I should not be punished for sharing what I feel.  If my work for the job does not change, meaning: if I don’t slack on the job or start coming in late or missing days, then why should my opinion of the job matter? Every day, people complain about their job, saying how much they hate it, but they still come in to work because they need to make money.

Principle:

It’s not morally right to base a persons’ work ethics on their opinion of the job. Trying to do so can backfire if you try to take legal actions against the employee. In a case I found:  Pietrylo v. Hillstone Restaurant Group, one of the workers started a Myspace group in which people that work there can all talk about the job, their likes and dislikes, etc. It was a closed group and authorization from the admin was required to join. One of the managers that was in a relationship with one of the employees discovered the page and used their partners account to view the page and all its discussions. The manager tried to sue the admin of the page, but in the end, lost due to violating the stored communications act and had to pay $13,000 in damages.

http://www.lumlaw.com/Monitoring-Employee-Communications.pdf