<\/p>\n
When Florida-based Chetu hired a telemarketer in the Netherlands, the company demanded the employee turn on his webcam. The employee wasn\u2019t happy with being monitored \u201cfor 9 hours per day,\u201d in a program that included screen-sharing and streaming his webcam. When he refused, he was fired, according to public court documents (in Dutch), for what the company stated was \u2018refusal to work\u2019 and \u2018insubordination.\u2019 The Dutch court didn\u2019t agree, however, and ruled that \u201cinstructions to keep the webcam turned on is in conflict with the respect for the privacy of the workers\u2019. In its verdict, the court goes so far as to suggest that demanding webcam surveillance is a human rights violation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t 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. That is the reason why my camera is not on,\u201d the court document quotes the anonymous employee\u2019s communication to Chetu. The employee suggests that the company was already monitoring him, \u201cYou can already monitor all activities on my laptop and I am sharing my screen.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the court documents, the company\u2019s response to that message was to fire the employee. That might have worked in an at-will state such as Chetu\u2019s home state Florida, but it turns out that labor laws work a little differently in other parts of the world. The employee took Chetu to court for unfair dismissal, and the court found in his favor, which includes paying for the employee\u2019s court costs, back wages, a fine of $50,000, and an order to remove the employee\u2019s non-compete clause. The court ruled that the company needs to pay the employee\u2019s wages, unused vacation days, and a number of other costs as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cTracking via camera for 8 hours per day is disproportionate and not permitted in the Netherlands,\u201d the court found in its verdict, and further rams home the point that this monitoring is against the employee\u2019s human rights, quoting from the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms; \u201c(\u2026) video surveillance of an employee in the workplace, be it covert or not, must be considered as a considerable intrusion into the employee\u2019s private life (\u2026), and hence [the court] considers that it constitutes an interference within the meaning of Article 8 [Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms].\u201d<\/p>\n
Chetu, in turn, was apparently a no-show for the court case.<\/p>\n
Via NL Times.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Florida-based Chetu hired a telemarketer in the Netherlands, the company demanded the employee turn on his webcam. The employee wasn\u2019t happy with being monitored \u201cfor 9 hours per day,\u201d in a program that included screen-sharing and streaming his webcam. When he refused, he was fired, according to public court documents (in Dutch), for what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1219873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1219871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrity-gossip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1219871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1219871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1219871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1219871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}