It is not surprising that employers are keen on knowing what their employees are up to. In some cases, they can be a little too keen. In 2015, British Airways was accused of illegally monitoring the phones and emails of its cabin crew during a dispute in 2011 with the union Unite. The airline allegedly overstepped boundaries when it was facing renewed industrial action and accessed the private emails and phone messages of 10 members of its crew, including some that were union officials.
Accusations levied by the press suggest that decisions were made by top level managers to deploy the airline’s in-house investigators, several of them former Scotland Yard and security services personnel to monitor the private communications of a handful of British Airways employees. The airline maintained that since it owned many of the computers and mobile phones used by its staff, it had acted within the law and was entitled to monitor the communications of some members of the crew.
However, the airline also allegedly paid a hefty £1 million to Unite, the union it was in dispute with, to dissuade them from taking legal action against British Airways.
This raises questions as to the extent to which employers should be allowed to monitor their employees, and whether owning the devices should be all the legal justification needed. Some of the details acquired by the airline’s investigators were reportedly highly personal and of little relevance to the union dispute, which explains why British Airways would have chosen to settle the dispute out of court when legal action was threatened by the cabin staff who had been targeted.
British Airways paints just one example of the increasing prevalence of “hypersurveillance”
in the dynamic between employees and employers. Recent figures published by the Trades Union Congress in the UK indicate that around 56 percent of the UK workforce believe that their employers spy on them at the workplace. As technology improves, so too has the proficiency and accuracy with which employers can monitor their employees, such as monitoring fitness wearables of retail employees to assess the amount of time spent inactive or in sales conversations. Such data would feed into the data that managers could use to reward or punish employees, and the existence of such practices reportedly increased feelings of anxiety and stress. For better or for worse, such technology, referred to as “snooptech,” has become a £2.7 billion industry and is increasingly being employed, blurring the lines between employee privacy and employer entitlement.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
18-1. Would you access your personal emails and make personal calls on your workissued mobile device? Why?
18-2. Why would employers be so keen to monitor communications and social media activities of their employees?
18-3. Given the privacy and security concerns, should companies issue mobile devices for employees and allow personal use?
18-4. Do you think companies should be allowed to monitor details as granular as pedometer data or time spent on the phone for measuring performance?