Moved Permanently

The companies cannot fisgar in the computers of the workers to see what is what these in their labor day do. Especially, if they have previously not warned to the employees on the limits that must have the use of this tool of work, and on the controls and the means that are going to apply to verify that their directives are fulfilled. The opposite is an infringement of the right to the privacy of the worker, in agreement with the Constitution, the European Agreement for the protection of the human rights and the Statute of the Workers. This it is the sense of the important sentence of the Supreme Court, of the 26 of September, on the limits of the industralist to control the use that the worker does in center of the work computer. In fact, it is the first sentence in Spain that unifies doctrine on this matter, according to emphasizes Íñigo Sagardoy, partner director of Sagardoy Lawyers. The High Court endorses the qualification of inadmissible dismissal formulated by the Court Superior of Justice of Galicia, and the Courts of Social of A Corunna to the resource of unification of doctrine interposed by the company Coruñesa de Etiquetas the LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY. The 11 of May of 2005, the mentioned company called to a technician for “verifying the failures in a computer” that worker J.A.P.C used. Without the presence of the employee, nor representing some of the workers, the technician detects a computer science virus as a result of “navigation by little safe pages of Internet”. With the presence of the Administrator of the company, the inspection discovers in the folder of temporary files “the existence of old accesses to pornographic pages”. The company stores these archives in a device USB, prints the pages in paper and gives all this to a notary “for its safekeeping”. Once repaired the computer, the same operation becomes, also without the presence of the affected worker, but with the one of two delegates of personnel. The employee resorted his dismissal before the Court of the Social thing that gave the reason him in sentence of the 30 of September of 2005. According to [emphasizes the own Supreme Court is to solve the problem “on the determination of the limits of the enterprise control on a scope the use of the computer in the company] that, although tie to the work, can affect the privacy of the employee”. That is to say, the compatibility between both aspects of the labor world. Labor relations Nevertheless, in its foundations of right, the sentence remembers that the Constitutional Court has established who the right to the privacy “also has to be respected in the labor relations, in which, sometimes, is feasible to accede to information (...) of the worker which they can be harmful for the right to the privacy”. How it is related, then, the vision of pornographic pages with the right to the privacy? The Supreme one remembers that the European Agreement of Human rights includes in the protection to the privacy “the information derived from the pursuit of the personal use of Internet because those archives can incorporate revealing data on the ideology, sexual directions, personal likings, etc”. Nevertheless, and thirdly, it is very important that the Supreme one emphasizes that this protection of the privacy is “compatible” with the right of the company “to previously establish the rules of use of those means - with application of absolute or partial prohibitions and to inform to the workers of the restoration of a control and the measures that go away to apply to guarantee the labor use” of the computer. Therefore, Sagardoy explains that the sentence reinforces the idea that it is necessary to have in the preventive telematics political companies, “since, although it makes flexible the action of the industralist with respect to electronic mail and Internet on the part of his employees, this flexibility is not total”. “The failure will impel the necessity of the companies to start up codes to regulate the use of the telematics means that put at the disposal of the workers”, it points Sagardoy. The technological, habitual conflicts in the courts the judicial conflicts related to the new technologies have increased of parallel form to the expansion of the use of Internet in the companies and the generalization of the movable telephones. In the following lines the three main centers of conflict are transformed. - The ticket office and the hard disk Until the unification of doctrine carried out by the Supreme Court, did not exist a clear frame of the use of the new technologies in the work centers nor a specific regulation. For this reason, the courts of Justice had to look for in the legislation analogous cases. The registry of the hard disk of the computer of a worker has compared with the registries the own worker, his ticket office and its personal effects, regulated in the Statute of the Workers. Nevertheless, to all the experts it does not finish to them convincing this analogy. According to Íñigo Sagardoy, “the PC is today a work instrument that hardly to puedecomparar itself with a personal effect”. - The shipment of e-mails massive and obscene. To read the newspaper first thing in the morning or to visit a page of nonprofessional Internet from time to time cannot be considered like a reason sufficient to dismiss an employee. The labor courts demand that the use of the network with extraproductive aims is abusive to be considered a deceptive activity of the worker with the company. On the other hand, the judges yes have justified the dismissal of a worker to send electronic mails with “humoristic, sexist and even obscene” contents to other employees of the company, like the Court Superior of Justice of Catalonia. -

The moving body, extinguished or in house is not the same to speak with the relatives through moving body that provides the company that through electronic mail. Under certain conditions, the registry of the professional email on the part of the company is authorized, as it demonstrates the recent sentence of the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, to puncture the movable telephone of the employee to know which is the content of its conversation, in no case. The employer only can accede to the registry of the numbers to which their workers call. In the case of the personal moving body, the company can prohibit its use during the labor schedule