Workplace privacy is related with various ways of accessing, controlling, and monitoring employees' information in a working environment.
[4] The state's function in Workplace Privacy is adjudicating conflicts between the employers and employees through the legal system.
№2002/58 which amends 97/66/EC refers to the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector.
[5] There is no federal law in the US that requires employers to notify staff on being monitored and practically no expectation of privacy for an employee using the company's devices, but the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 provides some privacy protections for employees.
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act extends protections to include email messages, cell phones and other electronic communications, however the act outlines important exceptions, such as the expressed intent of "legitimate business purposes."
A 2005 survey of more than 500 U.S. companies found that over half of employers had disciplined employees and about one in four had terminated (fired) an employee for "inappropriate" use of the internet, such as sending an inappropriate email message to a client or supervisor, neglecting work while chatting with friends, or viewing pornography during work hours.
In R v Cole,[8] the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Computers that are reasonably used for personal purposes — whether found in the workplace or the home — contain information that is meaningful, intimate, and touching on the user’s biographical core.
Notably, the monitoring should be during working hours, and no personal information should be collected to avoid legal misunderstandings.
According to the Coase Theorem, an employer and an employee never agree to a contractual arrangement that would reduce the total surplus generated by the two parties together.
Schmitz (2005) has shown that in the presence of asymmetric information (leading to a moral hazard problem), the total surplus generated by an employer and an employee can be increased if workplace surveillance is prohibited by law.