Employers right to view emails

J

jim Bob

Guest
A friend of mine has been presented with a document to sign by her employer.

Amongst other things, it states that the employer has the right the "review" all emails sent through company email.

Is this legal?

I would have thought it was a grey area.

Anyone got any reference to case law or EU legislation?
 
It is fairly standard at most large companies these days that employers would reserve the right to view emails and/or monitor internet traffic. Given that employers have been sued in the past in cases where employees sent inappropriate materials by company email, it is only sensible/fair that the employer would have the right to monitor the system also.

I heard that a Govt department recently cut off internet access to the major online shopping sites (Superquinn, Tesco, Amazon) resulting in a drop in internet traffic by 37%.
 
..

To the best of my knowledge it's legal so long as the employer makes staff aware of his/her intention to review e-mails.

Employers have a duty of care to all their employees and there have been instances where e-mails have caused offence to some employees (e.g. rumour-mongering, pornographic images, etc,). The provisions of the Data Protection Act, through which people have a right to view information being held about them, may also be a factor. A prudent employer will seek to minimise exposure to accusations his/her duty in this regard has been neglected.

It's also worth noting that most e-mails contain a footer which shows the source of the e-mail and it's reasonable for an employer to ensure that the company is not associated with inappropriate messages.
 
Re: ..

This link might be of interest:
 
Re: his server

It's not a simple as that. In a recent case a person who was dismissed from his job for using the email/IT system to disseminate/view "unacceptable" material (porn as far as I know) won his case for damages (but not reinstatement) on the grounds that the company did not have a clearly stated IT/internet acceptable usage policy. Employers must also abide by the rules outlined in the document I linked above.
 
Re: his server

Extend the idea to phone calls - your employer provides the phone infrastructure and outward connections, would you accept that they have the right to listen to your phone calls ?

z
 
Phone

I stand to be corrected, but I believe the employer has the right to monitor listen to any internal call, but cannot listen to external calls. The only exception(I'd say there is a few) is at call centre type operations where some phone calls are taped 'Training Purposes'
 
Re: Phone

Under EU Human Rights legislation everyone has a right to privacy. However this often clashes with an employers requirement to protect his/her business and employees from problems caused by people abusing Internet and email systems, e.g. diseemination of racist, pornographic, illegal and non-business related material.

In order to ensure that there is a safe working place and that the Internet infrastructure is not being abused, employers need to be able to monitor/controll employee access to these systems.

In order to do so and to ensure that there are no legal ramification employers have to get each employee to sign a document stating that they will use the email and internet systems for business use only and that they agree that their usage can be monitored from time to time.

This whole area is one where employers need to understand the implications of allowing employees access to the Internet or to external email.

C
 
e mail rights

What about the employees right to search for a new job, do up their cv, send it to recruitment agencies and other employers during office or even after hours...?

If you think of the e mail and internet infratructure as a tool of the business, same as say a fork lift in a warehouse is to a warehouse manager or forklift driver, and ask yourself if you think its ok for him / her to use the forklift for their own purposes, it puts a new angle to it.
 
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