Electronic Privacy in the New Restatement of Employment Law

The inaugural Restatement of Employment sets out ALI’s carefully considered (and what will likely be extremely influential) views concerning the law of employee privacy.*  There is a lot to unpack here (and the structure of this section of the Restatement is not as clear as it could be), so this post will provide a practical overview.

The basic idea: the new Restatement protects employee electronic privacy interests against “wrongful employer intrusions.” §7.01   Such interests include “…electronic locations, including work locations provided by the employer, in which the employee has a reasonable expectation of privacy.”  § 7.03  In addition, employees have a right to have information of a “personal nature” protected from employer view. § 7.04. Finally, employees also have a right to the “non-disclosure to third parties of the employee’s information of a personal nature disclosed in confidence to the employer.” § 7.05.

Some observations:

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NLRB: Employer Email Systems OK for Union Use

Reversing a longstanding ruling, the NLRB yesterday held in Purple Communications, Inc. v. Communications Workers of America (.pdf) that employees could, under certain conditions, use employer email systems for their Section 7 communications.   This decision, which will likely have significant workplace ramifications, is based upon erroneous reasoning and raises some very important questions.

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Disruptive Technologies in the Workplace

A recent McKinsey report on twelve “disruptive” technologies included four that will fundamentally transform how employers relate to their employees: mobile Internet, automation of knowledge work, the Internet of things and cloud computing. I would add to the list three results of these technologies: big-data, cybercrime and privacy.

Editor’s Note (6/1/15):  McKinsey included Robotics — So why did I leave robotics off the list? Because, as I write in a post on 5/31/15, I am a robot skeptic.

From an employment law perspective, the common element here is data – data that flows to, is stored by, and is used (or misused) by employers, third parties and employees.

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