It is not every day we get to report about courts protecting people’s privacy, but when that happens – we’re glad to use our megaphone to spread the good news.
This time that good news comes from the Netherlands, where a court sided with a remote employee who was required to leave his webcam on for the entire workday. He worked for Florida, U.S.-based software company Chetu and was fired after refusing to comply with the nasty, privacy-invading rule.
The Dutch court awarded him with about €75,000 for wrongful termination, citing human rights violations as a reason behind the decision. Specifically, the court referenced a 2017 European Court of Human Rights decision which states, “video surveillance of an employee in the workplace, be it covert or not, must be considered as a considerable intrusion into the employee’s private life… and hence [the court] considered that it constitutes an interference within the meaning of Article 8 [Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms]. Any interference can only be justified under Article 8…if it is in accordance with the law, pursues one or more of the legitimate aims to which that provision refers and is necessary in a democratic society in order to achieve any such aim.”
The employee was ordered to take part in a period of virtual training called a “Corrective Action Program,” and that’s when he was told he would have to keep his webcam on for the entire workday. Like that’s not enough, he was also required to have screen sharing turned on.
As noted, the employee refused to comply with this, saying, “I don’t feel comfortable being monitored for 9 hours a day by a camera. This is an invasion of my privacy and makes me feel really uncomfortable… You can already monitor all activities on my laptop and I am sharing my screen.” A couple of days later, he was fired for “refusal to work” and “insubordination.”
The Dutch court sided with the employee, noting that the instruction to leave the camera on is “contrary to the employee’s right to respect for his private life.”
Chetu, on its end, claimed that the webcam monitoring was no different from if the employee had been physically present in an office, the argument that wasn’t enough to sway the judge. And so, the court requested that the company offer the fired employee fair compensation that would cover damages, unemployment, court fees, lost wages, and a payout of his unused vacation time.
We can’t but applaud the Dutch court for pulling this off, but we are afraid something like this won’t fly in other parts of the world, the United States included. For instance, in its home turf of Florida, Chetu is able to fire employees for any reason, as long as it’s not unlawful discrimination.
Now we can only hope that the definition of “unlawful discrimination” would, at some point, be expanded to include privacy violations. We can hope, can’t we?