Employee Rights in the Workplace
The idea of employee rights involves many complex issues. An employee's right to a workplace free of discrimination and harmful environmental factors is obvious. Yet, other issues surrounding privacy, personal expression, and communication monitoring are not as clear-cut. While employees may feel that they have the right to express their opinions and use business communications while working, not only may they be fooling themselves but they are acting in a way that is unethical. While businesses do not have the right to control employee behaviors outside of the workplace, they do have the right to monitor and control communications and employee actions during paid time. As such, employees have the right to reasonable expectations in terms of communication, yet cannot (within limits) ethically demand a right to privacy, private communication, or personal expression while they are utilizing business property or on business time.Workplace privacy has been a hot issue in the last decade, as more and more workplaces incorporate email and Internet-use into the office environment. Many employees now use email and the Internet daily, not to mention the telephone (Nord, McCubbins, & Nord, 2006). With high volumes of communication
To accommodate these issues, separate, unmonitored telephones should be available in break areas and lunchrooms. Though the casino was acting in a way that many of us would find abhorrent, the idea that regulations and expectations should be available is key to both employee and employer happiness in these areas. For example, an employer should not be able to discriminate or treat employees differently based on information found from monitoring communications. Private areas might be available for Muslim or other religious individuals who wish to pray during the workday in accordance to their faith (Schoff, 2006). Employees are aware of this goal whether they have thought about it or not. It should also be clear to employees what information made available through their communication will become publicly accessible. Break times, lunch hours, and emergency calls from family should all be held to a higher standard than regular incoming or outgoing communications using business property. In doing so, those companies are effectively maintaining quality control and keeping efficiency at the maximum. Time taken for religious observance should also be allowed if employees are able to meet work demands (Schoff, 2006). However, employees who are engaged in personal communication should still be subject to whatever rules exist for such behaviors. As Armor and Appleby (2005) point out, one Atlantic City casino required employees to stay within a certain weight range. Why else would a business pay people to work? Employees, therefore, are part of a larger system with the overall function of making a profit. Additionally, incoming calls of a personal nature should not reflect badly on an employee unless such calls become frequent since the employee is not instigating the communication. For example, sexual conversation on the telephone is definitely communication that is inappropriate between two employees or an employee and a client or business relation. Yet, what about an employee who receives a sexually inappropriate call from someone outside the workplace? If an employee is not at fault and did not instigate the inappropriate communication, they should be warned and only written up if they behavior continues and seems related to their personal life.
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Acceptance Essays
