Workplace Monitoring and Surveillance

1. Is it legal for an employer to listen to employee phone calls at work? Explain your answer.

It is best practice that to ensure the privacy of you wish to have is taking all personal calls made at work to be used your own mobile phone. Otherwise in most occurrences, yes it is legal for an employer to listen into their employee’s calls during work. Especially for companies that rely heavenly on phone discussion such as a cell center whereas it is the main source to connect with their clients. Employers can monitor calls for many reasons with the intent of quality control. Although some state law requires that clients must be informed when any conversation is recorded or monitored by a beep tone on the line or playing a recorded message per California Public Utilities Commission General Order 107-B.

Unfortunately, not every business are proactive with the last and are not aware of this requirement so some calls could still be monitored, but without any warning. Therefore, Federal law now legalizes phone calls with persons outside the state to allow unannounced monitoring for business-related calls.

In the end, when an employee is told or a company policy clearly indicated to not make any personal calls from specified business phone then it’s the employee risking the call to possibly being monitored and for not following procedures.

2. Is office e-mail and voice mail private? Explain your answer.

The Supreme Court of City Ontarop v. Quon allows government employers to look at their workers electronic messages for any reasonable work-related purposes. The privacy issue complicated a government invasion of accessing into personal communications determining whether or not the 4th Amendment applied to the electronic communications of public employees and not for private employer. It is suffice to say, an employer’s policy must specify about monitoring every means