Employees can’t expect any privacy on the job

So, where exactly are you reading this column?

At home, over morning coffee? On the bus or the Sounder? Perhaps you saved it for your morning break in the employee’s lounge.

Heaven help you if you’re sneaking a peak at work, using the company computer, its high-speed Internet access and maybe even its printer to take a copy home.

While not exactly on the level of downloading porn or conducting eBay sales during working hours, there’s a reasonable certainly that your employer may be monitoring your every computer click. It may have a tiny video camera – there – right above your cubicle.

That e-mail you just sent to you buddy in Portland complaining about Husky football and the Mariners may well be ready for viewing by the HR department upstairs.

And, depending on the level of your transgression, dismissal could be the possible result.

Recent studies show 7 in 10 companies monitor employee Internet use and e-mail, while half listen in on telephone conversations. A quarter of surveyed companies said they fired employees for improper Internet surfing. Separately, 25 percent said they dismissed employees for improper e-mail use and 6 percent for inappropriate telephone use.

If you work for a private company, you should have every expectation that you’re being watched in all areas at work, and could be fired for unauthorized use of company property such as “your” computer or “your” desk telephone.

Though it’s debatable how broad its protection, Americans have some expectation of privacy within the walls of their own home or when visiting another person’s home.

At work, it gets fuzzy. Although there is some question to how far federal and state governments can monitor employees, private employers have no such limitations “because their employees have no reasonable right of privacy,” said Jonathan Segal, an attorney with the Philadelphia firm of Wolf, Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen.

He added this caveat: The employer must adequately inform employees that they are subject to video and electronic monitoring, searches, substance-abuse screening and any other reasonable protection against property loss and improper storage or release of company trade secrets.

“You can tell them you love them dearly, but you simply don’t have the right to privacy.” While an aggrieved employee might try to argue otherwise, “their expectation would not be considered reasonable” by most courts, he said.

If they inform their employees, companies can place cameras or electronic surveillance equipment in every nook and cranny of the workplace (excepting bathrooms and locker rooms where most employees and jurors would agree there exists a certain right of privacy) without fear of successful lawsuit.

But without the disclaimer, an employer could be in legal hot water. But it’s surprising how many employers don’t issue such warnings. At a seminar on the subject at this summer’s Society for Human Resource Management, assembled HR directors split 50-50 on whether their companies had warned employees of potential monitoring.

“It (the warning) should be short and sweet,” Jennifer Shaw, an employment lawyer and partner at Jackson Lewis in Sacramento, Calif., told CXO Media, a high-tech news service.

“A lot of employers go crazy being superdetailed when they don’t need to be,” she said. Write the policy into the employee handbook and make sure employees have signed off on its contents, acknowledging that they have read and understood it, she advises clients.

Even so, monitoring can be rife with complexities given today’s burgeoning technological advances, Segal said. For instance, an employee might not even enjoy an expectation of privacy at home.

Suspecting an employee might be storing company secrets on her personal laptop at home, the machine could be subject to a company search if it has been used to transmit and download files with the company server, Segal said. A random search of an employee’s personally owned BlackBerry might be legally justified if used to check company e-mail.

Of course, Segal warned, over-using a company’s search authority or even conducting random searches could heighten distrust between employees and employer, causing an unintended loss of talented and skilled staff.

One solution is for a company to issue a broad monitoring and search policy, but only use it when it suspects specific employee wrongdoing, Segal said.

One thing is clear, employees: When it comes to monitoring your behaviors at work, and you have been duly warned, crying “they had no right” won’t be much of a legal defense.

Write Eric Zoeckler c/o The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, WA 98206, or e-mail mrscribe@aol.com.