[Gllug] OT Freedom

[Jason Clifford]

On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, George F. Saxby wrote:

>   I was attending a meeting @ lunch time where a union rep stated that he was 
> not allowed to use e-mail as part of his union activity within his employers 
> intranet.  For instance he had to hand out a leaflet to make people aware of 
> the meeting we were in as he could not bulk e-mail his fellow member within 
> his own firm. Also that when he did try his mail was filtered or bounced.
> 	To my mind unless he signed an agreement on terms and conditions of use with 
> regard to IT equipment ( he states he did not ) this kind of 
> censorship,scanning etc is an invasion of privacy & therefor illegal.

Under the RIP act his employers should specifically state that they have a 
policy of scanning communcations.

There is no actual requirement, AFAIK, that they post a specific 
authorised use policy as employees should take the view that unless 
specifically authorised to use a facility of the employers they should not 
do so.

His situation sounds a little more complicated in that he may be 
authorised to use email within the company.

My next question would be whether the company permits private emails for 
other employees. If so it would seem to be a specific attempt to interfere 
with union activities which is illegal under employment protection 
legislation.

While employers should have a clear AUP and make this known to all 
employees that is not a legal requirement - just good business sense as 
you cannot fire an employee for misuse without first making them aware of 
what the boundaries of acceptable use are.

I dealt with this issue some years ago for a large insurance company. At 
first the board resisted the need to create a specific company wide policy 
(some company politics nonsense) however when we discovered an employee 
had been using company equipment and Internet access to view illegal porn 
(think barnyard) and they were advised that they might not have grounds 
for immediate dismissal they changed their minds.

RIP does not mandate such policies - only that a specific notice be made 
of potential invasion of privacy.

Your friend may find that the easiest way around this is to set up an 
external webmail account and send the messages from that via a SSL web 
connection. If the company is then filtering out such messages on the 
basis of them being about union activities that would definitely be a 
breach of employment protection laws. Should that be the case the union 
executive will probably be willing to take the matter up with the 
employer.

Jason Clifford
-- 
UKFSN.ORG		Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net
http://www.ukfsn.org/			Sign Up Now


-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug