Tecnologies de la informació i intimitat dels treballadors: introducció
Mark Jeffery

Professor dels Estudis de Dret i Ciència Política (UOC)
mjeffery@uoc.edu


Resum:

L'ús generalitzat de les tecnologies de la informació comporta que la vigilància sobre els treballadors i el tractament de les seves dades personals siguin actualment molt més eficients –i també més propensos a la intrusió– que mai. Aquesta introducció estableix les bases per a una sèrie de documents que exploren aquest tema (alguns dels documents descriuen les lleis d'un país determinat, altres estudien un tema concret de llei comparada). S'hi argumenta que, per bé que un cert grau de vigilància i de tractament de dades és un component normal i perfectament legítim de la major part de relacions laborals, l'ús de tecnologies informàtiques ha comportat alguns canvis significatius en la naturalesa d'ambdues coses i que, per tant, cal reconsiderar el paper de la llei per a establir un equilibri entre els drets i els interessos dels treballadors i els empresaris en aquest àmbit. A vegades, aquesta qüestió es planteja com un enfrontament entre les noves i urgents necessitats de les empreses (moltes de les quals sorgeixen a partir de l'ús de les noves tecnologies) i el concepte, en certa mesura imprecís, del dret a la intimitat dels treballadors. Aquest context de debat s'hauria de considerar molt acuradament. Encara que és un concepte difícil de definir, la intimitat es considera un dret fonamental a tots els països inclosos en aquest estudi. I molts dels arguments que defensen la utilització dels mitjans de vigilància i tractament de dades que hi ha disponibles actualment –cada cop més eficients i també més propensos a la intrusió– sembla que s'identifiquen menys amb les necessitats ineludibles dels empresaris i més amb la conveniència dels empresaris per a aprofitar aquestes noves oportunitats, sense tenir en compte les conseqüències que això comporta per a la intimitat dels empleats. No hi ha una solució senzilla a aquestes qüestions i, a l'hora d'establir un equilibri entre drets i interessos contraposats, les lleis nacionals hauran de basar-se, sens dubte, en les tradicions particulars de cada país. Tanmateix, atès que altres sistemes legals també s'han de plantejar aquestes qüestions difícils, s'espera que l'anàlisi i la comparació dels diferents sistemes aplicats seran útils i interessants.

Vés al document:   Versió en anglès





Note1:
Throughout our discussions, and in this collection of papers, we have stuck as far as possible to the terminology established in Article 2 of European Union Directive 95/46/EC. Thus, the "processing" of personal data is taken to include their collection, storage and retrieval, as well as their manipulation. "Personal data" themselves are any information relating to a natural person who is identified by those data, or who may be identified by using them (possibly in conjunction with other data). It thus includes both direct identification (such as a name) and indirect identification (such as a phone number or personal code which may be checked against other lists in order to reveal the identity of the individual).
Note2:
See the comments in the introduction to the ILO report (1993) 12,1 Conditions of Work Digest: "Workers' Privacy Part II: Monitoring and Surveillance in the Workplace", ILO, Geneva.
Note3:
See the discussion (on which the following categorization is based) in (1991) 10,2 Conditions of Work Digest: "Workers' Privacy Part I: Protection of Personal Data", ILO, Geneva.
Note4:
Leonel de Rezende Alvim & Roberto Fragale Filho, "Information Technology and Workers' Privacy: Old and New Paradigms", (2002) Comp. Lab. L. & Pol'y J. 23.
Note5:
For an interesting and detailed discussion of this idea, see Lawrence Lessig: Code and other laws of cyberspace, Basic Books, New York, 1999. Lessig argues that computer technologies, in removing physical or "natural" barriers to behaviour, change the effectiveness of the law, and that law-makers may therefore have to reconsider the nature of their policy aims in the areas so affected.
Note6:
A European company specialising in data recovery advertises the fact that a court of first instance in the UK recently convicted a man of offences relating to child pornography, basing its decision entirely on the evidence of reconstructed HTML files. See Vogon International Press Releases, at www.vogon.co.uk.
Note7:
It might be argued that a distinction should be made between having the information and using it: after all, even though they are factors that prospective employers may be prohibited from taking into account, the sex and approximate age of a job candidate will usually be obvious the instant he or she appears at an interview. Nonetheless, the best way of ensuring that illicit information is not used is surely to prevent it from being put in temptation's way—hence the debate about whether a candidate should have a "right to lie" when asked an inappropriate question.
Note8:
Conditions of Work Digest, (1991), ILO, op. cit.
Note9:
For a more detailed discussion of these points, see Javier Thibault: El Teletrabajo, CES, Madrid, 2000.
Note10:
This point is developed by L. Lessig 1999, op. cit.
Note11:
There are also several specific concerns, amongst which are: the degree to which continuous and intensive surveillance increases stress and undermines trust between employees and employers; how the interception or blocking of communications may affect the ability of employees to protest against their employer's decisions, and indeed may affect worker representation and trade unionism in general; and how the processing of certain personal data may undermine anti-discrimination laws and laws on the social reinsertion of people with criminal convictions.
Note12:
For an interesting development of this point, see D Yamada "Voices From the Cubicle: Protecting and Encouraging Private Employee Speech in the Post-Industrial Workplace", (1998) 19 Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law 1.
Note13:
For a concise discussion of this idea, see F Hendrickx "Privacy and Employment Law: General Principles and Application to Electronic Monitoring", in R Blanpain (ed) On-line Rights for Employees in the Information Society, Bulletin of Comparative Labour Relations 40 - 2002.
Note14:
Matthew W Finkin, "Menschenbild: the conception of the employee as a person in Western law", (2002) Comp. Lab. L. & Pol'y J. 23.
Note15:
Even in the countries where this approach is perhaps at its most extreme—such as the USA—it seems unlikely that the law will accept every possible intrusion of privacy; however, the point where the limits are set might cause some surprise in other countries: in our group discussions on this point, one European jokingly suggested we consider the installation of any sort of monitoring equipment in the staff toilets. A quite impossible extreme. Or maybe not: see "Did Workers Wash? High-tech Gizmo Checks", cited in Matthew W Finkin, "Information technology and employee privacy: the US law", (2002) Comp. Lab. L. & Pol'y J. 23.
Note16:
An interesting contrast that illustrates this point is made by the decision of the French Cour de cassation in the Nikon case of 2001, and the decision of the Spanish Tribunal Superior de Justícia de Catalunya in case AS/3452 of 2000. On very similar facts, the French court decided that an employee's right to privacy extended to the right to protection for his private files stored on the company's computer system, and the Spanish court decided that employers have the right to read all the information stored on their computer system.
Note17:
Hans-Joachim Reinhard, "Information Technology and Workers' Privacy: Enforcement", (2002) Comp. Lab. L. & Pol'y J. 23.
Note18:
Christophe Vigneau, "Information Technology and Workers' Privacy: The Regulatory Techniques", (2002) Comp. Lab. L. & Pol'y J. 23.
Note19:
Recital 10 of Directive 95/46/EC states: "Whereas the object of the national laws on the processing of personal data is to protect fundamental rights and freedoms, notably the right to privacy, which is recognized both in Article 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and in the general principles of Community law; whereas, for that reason, the approximation of those laws [which is the aim of the Directive] must not result in any lessening of the protection they afford but must, on the contrary, seek to ensure a high level of protection in the Community…". See also Recitals 2 and 7.
Note20:
The OECD's Recommendation of the Council concerning Guidelines governing the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data was adopted in September 1980. This was soon followed by the Council of Europe's Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to the Automatic Processing of Personal Data, which was opened for signature (accession exceptionally being open to non-member states) in January 1981; this was followed by Recommendation No. R(89)2 of the Committee of Ministers to Member States on the Protection of Personal Data used for Employment Purposes, which was adopted in January 1989. The United Nations' Guidelines Concerning Computerized Data Files was adopted by the General Assembly in December 1990; and the International Labour Office's Code of Practice on the Protection of Workers' Personal Data was approved in November 1996. Copies of many of these documents, and their corresponding amendments, may be found on the Data Protection web pages of the European Union, currently at: <http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/dataprot/index.htm>. As for the European Communities, the European Parliament was actively pressing for a data protection directive from the mid-1970s (see for example its Resolutions in OJ No.C 60/48 (13.3.75); OJ No.C 100/27 (3.5.76) and OJ No.C 140/34 (5.6.79)). The project that led to the actual Directive began towards the end of the 1980s. The national studies in this collection give an idea of the present diversity within the Member States: some German regions and France passed data protection laws in the 1970s; the United Kingdom and (much later) Spain created legislation as a result of the adoption of the Council of Europe's Convention in 1981; Italy did not pass any specific legislation on data protection until obliged to do so by Directive 95/46/EC; and as of 2002, France has still to honour its obligation to update its law in line with the Directive, which it should have done by 1998.
Note21:
For a general discussion of the development and contents of Directive 95/46/EC, see S Simitis "From the General Rules on Data Protecion to a Specific Regulation of the Use of Employee Data: Policies and constraints of the European Union", (1998) 19 Comp Lab L & Pol'y J 351; U Wuermerling "Harmonisation of European Union Privacy Law", (1996) XIV John Marshall Journal of Computer and Information Law 411; and G Pearce & N Platten "Achieving Personal Data Protection in the European Union", (1998) 36,4 Journal of Common Market Studies 529.
Note22:
Articles 2(a) and 2(b). On the applicability of the Directive to surveillance, see also Recital 14.
Note23:
Article 29 Data Protection Working Group, "Opinion 8/2001 on the processing of personal data in the employment context", EU document No. 5062/01/En/final, WP48 (13th September 2001); see also the subsequent "Working document on the surveillance of electronic communications in the workplace", EU Document No. 5401/01/EN/final, WP55 (29th May 2002).
Note24:
Claudia Faleri, "Information Technology and Workers' Privacy: Public and Private Regulations", (2002) Comp. Lab. L. & Pol'y J. 23.
Note25:
See especially the national studies in this collection; and also ILO 1993, op. cit.; and J Kesan "A 'First Principles' Examination of Electronic Privacy in the Workplace", in Blanpain (ed) 2002, op. cit.
Note26:
It has also been suggested that this may be a gender issue: given that it is women who tend to be responsible for family care, a prohibition on the private use of communications facilities—which makes it difficult to combine employment with care activities—will affect a woman's ability to take and hold certain jobs much more than it will a man's. See O Ward "Is Big Browser Watching You?", (1st October 2000) Vol. 150, No. 6953 New Law Journal.
Note27:
Newspapers in some countries have shown a particular interest in stories about the dismissal of workers for the possession of pornographic pictures downloaded from the Internet via the employer's server.
Note28:
Y Akdeniz, N Taylor & C Walker, "Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (1): BigBrother.gov.uk: State surveillance in the age of information and rights", (February 2001) Criminal Law Review 73.
Note29:
Roberto Fragale Filho and Mark Jeffery, "Information Technology and Workers' Privacy: Notice and Consent", (2002) Comp. Lab. L. & Pol'y J. 23.
Note30:
This point was already made some time age in relation to employment and data protection principles: see S Simitis "Reviewing Privacy in an Information Society", (1987) 135 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 707.
Note31:
In the oft-cited words of the Chief Executive Officer of Sun Microsystems: "You have zero privacy anyway… Get over it" (quoted in a Wired.com news report, 26th January 1999).
Note32:
Javier Thibault Aranda, "Information Technology and Workers' Privacy: The Role of Worker Representatives", (2002) Comp. Lab. L. & Pol'y J. 23.