The year 2000 is rapidly approaching and with increasing technology being applied in the work place, some of it is being applied in ways of which many employees are not entirely aware. An employee can be monitored or under surveillance throughout a large part of the work day without their every knowing it. By means of the telephone, computer or e-mail, your employer may be able to monitor you while you work. Even your credit report may be made available to a curious prospective employer. Sounds like Big Brother, right? But what can you, a simple peon in the face of The System, do about it? Aside from feeling helpless, that is.

Well, Big Brother may be coming but he’s not yet taken over the corporate chair. There are things to be aware of in the work place, that is true. But, the key to protecting yourself is knowing your rights as an employee and using a little bit of common sense.

To protect themselves and the company interest, employers have been allowed a good deal of leeway when it comes to monitoring employees. The question the public finds itself grappling with over and over is how much is too much? Just how far does a supervisors right to supervise go?

According to the latest court rulings, pretty far. Over the past years, a number of important decisions have been handed down by the courts giving employers a wide variety of rights to monitor their employees and the use of their equipment. A company may read employee e-mail, listen to messages left on work place telephones, and may even listen in on conversations done on company equipment on company time. In addition, a company may utilize a variety of other methods of supervision in order to curb problem employee behavior such as employee theft, discrimination, and sexual harassment. What’s important to know is just how far your company is allowed to go in monitoring an employee and what you need to be aware of to protect your own privacy.

What do you need to know? Well, you need to know that employers are being given a good deal of latitude when it comes to their rights to monitor employee behavior on company time. This is because an employer can potentially be held responsible for sexually harassing or discriminatory e-mail that is being sent through or from the office. Pornography being brought in on-line can lead to charges of a threatening environment by an employee. The main theme that seems to be coming from the courts is that of the company’s responsibility to create a consistent policy and make sure that the employees are made aware of it. This policy is generally to be found within the Employee Manual. Of course, it is generally considered to be the employee’s responsibility to read this manual. Granted, you’d probably rather sit through a root canal than have to sit and read that overwhelming and tedious mass of policies and small print, but try it. You may learn something, and protect your job to boot.

E-mail is not the only form of electronic monitoring that is allowed and that goes on in the work place. An employer may have the right to have access to your company-owned voice mail. In addition to voice mail, a company can even go through your computer and see where you’ve been, so to speak. The true computer nut can somehow go into your computer and recreate every web-site you’ve ever visited, every e-mail you’ve ever sent, and every game of solitaire you’ve ever played. ‘Unfair!’ You may cry and unfair it may seem. However, an employer does have a strong vested interest in making sure that their equipment is being used properly and that an employee is working in the best interests of the company. This interest is so strong, in fact, that even in the absence of an explicit written company policy, it has been very difficult for an employee to establish, in court, a privacy interest in e-mail that was created or received at work.

There are other questions of privacy one has in the work place. Why do I have to carry a see-through purse at work? Can my boss pull up my credit report without my knowing about it? Can they really make me whiz in that little jar whenever they feel like it? Once again, check your employee manual. That will be the first place to look once you’re employed by a company. The general rule of thumb is that, if you’re informed about it when you’re hired (usually through that pesky handbook again), then it’s legal. And if you’re not informed, but there’s a really good reason for it, than that’s probably legal, too. There are often a number of questions one has going into an interview. Are they going to want my criminal or credit history? How about driving records? These things are indeed sometimes requested, depending on the position. It would be all too obvious to say that an employer may run your drivers’ license if you’re being hired to operate some sort of motor vehicle transportation. This is not only legal but in some instances required by the state before procuring the job. A credit check, too, is allowed if an employer can provide a valid reason for requiring one. A social security number is required to run such a report and the candidate must give permission to run the check before it is performed. In the case of a credit check, if an applicant is not hired because of the results of the credit check, the applicant must be notified in writing under the terms of the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. In addition to this, the refusal to hire due to credit history can be considered discriminatory if it is in the case of a minority applicant. Generally, with any background check, the employer will generally inform the applicant of the procedure and procure their permission prior to making the investigation.

In this state, an employer may choose to run a criminal background check as well. Running a background check is a tricky situation for many employers. On the one hand, an employer must be careful not to dig into one’s background too deeply and risk violating one’s constitutional right to privacy. On the other hand, not checking thoroughly enough and hiring a person who has a violent history and who then commits a violent crime, can put an employer at risk for a lawsuit. There is a fine line that an employer must identify between privacy and safety. Most companies are choosing to play it safe and consult legal experts, creating a written policy based on the information they receive.

So, what’s the bottom line on your privacy rights at work? The most important thing is to use your head. If it’s company property and/or company time, you have the responsibility as an employee to respect your job and your employer. Consult your employee manual or your human resources department for a complete explanation, if you’d like.

If your company is small enough that it doesn’t have those trappings, simply ask your boss. Most employers value a good employee and will do what they can to work with you and create an environment that you can both live with. If you’re one of those folks that have an impossible supervisor or company, consult your local labor board or ACLU and they can tell you if a policy is really gone out in left field.

It’s a tough market out there. Both for the worker and the one who must manage. Between rising costs and increasing competition on all sides, the solutions we settle on will need to benefit both parties. So, next time you decide to surf the net at work or send the latest dirty joke to your pals, put yourself in your boss’s wingtips for a moment. If you were the boss, would you let you do it?