The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)/ An employer can monitor employee Messenger communications. Article No. 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (Council of Europe) guarantees the right for all to have their privacy respected including their private communications. According to ECHR jurisprudence this article protects telephone communications occurring at businesses premises, emails sent from personal email accounts, and intranet website searches, once the employee can reasonably expect this activity to be monitored. In this case the judges lifted the provision over Messenger communication since the account set up had been at the request of the employer and was destined for professional use. Furthermore the company’s internal regulations explicitly banned the use of company resources for personal use. Given this background the ECHR deemed that it was not “unreasonable that an employer would want to verify that employees were completing their professional tasks during working hours.”
News update as of 13 January 2016
Summary: protection for the right to a private life and instant messages (ECHR), French workers jailed for detaining bosses during a social conflict, Dutch metals negotiations at a standstill, an on average 0.74% rise in Spanish wages, longer crèche opening hours in Germany, British workers now able to bring legal action against employers who require exclusivity clauses in their zero hours employment contracts, and other very brief notes.
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