Warning: This Is a Rights-Free Workplace

The article states about the economic factor in America. It sensitizes on the justice the workers in America should be given. The article talks about how the workers in America are treated with injustice. This is shown well when the article starts by, â€Å"If the laws of economics were enforced as strictly as the laws of physics, America would be a workers' paradise. † Visit the article in this link: http://www. barbaraehrenreich. com/workersrights. htm. Employee Rights in the Workplace The idea of employee rights involves many complex issues.An employee’s right to a workplace free of discrimination and harmful environmental factors is obvious. Yet, other issues surrounding privacy, personal expression, and communication monitoring are not as clear-cut. While employees may feel that they have the right to express their opinions and use business communications while working, not only may they be fooling themselves but they are acting in a way that is unethical. While bu sinesses do not have the right to control employee behaviors outside of the workplace, they do have the right to monitor and control communications and employee actions during paid time.As such, employees have the right to reasonable expectations in terms of communication, yet cannot (within limits) ethically demand a right to privacy, private communication, or personal expression while they are utilizing business property or on business time. Workplace privacy has been a hot issue in the last decade, as more and more workplaces incorporate email and Internet-use into the office environment. Many employees now use email and the Internet daily, not to mention the telephone (Nord, McCubbins, & Nord, 2006).With high volumes of communicatio employee privacy rights in the workplace Introduction Often the issues regarding privacy rights in the workplace focuses on employee rights to privacy in the workplace . Most advocacies support employee rights and criticize the efforts of companies t o monitor employees . However , despite the importance to protect every employee ‘s privacy , there should be a realization that Whether or not privacy is protected by law or contract , fostering a workplace culture where privacy is valued and espected contributes to morale and mutual trust and makes good business sense . Thus , privacy is not limited to rights but also entails employees ‘ responsibility to ensure that it is never abused and is not to the determent of the company ( Privacy in the Workplace , 2005 Challenges for Employers Employers have the right and responsibility to monitor their place of business to protect themselves and their employees from invasion . The irony is that this can only be possible if an employer is able to monitor communications and exchanges .Therefore , for a company to be able to afford the protection that employees need , they must surrender in trust their privacy to the company As much as a company should not invade the rights of i ts employees , it has the equal responsibility of ensuring that its privacy and that of its employees are not divulged or used in any personal intent by other employees . According to Nyman (2005 , more companies are being held accountable by employees whose privacy was compromised in the workplace because of what is seen as a lack in its measures to ensure their privacy .Therefore , if employers are being held accountable for such situations , Nyman believes that they should be given enough power to protect themselves from such liabilities An example given by Nyman is the case between Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA ) and Integrated Information Systems (IIS The allegation was that the latter allowed its employees to infringe the copyrights of MP3 s that the employees shared over the company ‘s networks . The settlement of the suit with RIAA cost IIS a million dollars .Aside from the settlement , the company also faced a public relations issue regarding the all eged sharing : IIS main service is electronic transmission of copyrighted material It would be safe to assume that the employees were aware of the issues regarding sharing and despite the IIS did not allow for the behavior , the fact that it did occur cast liability over the company The issue is not so much as an issue of whether the company was responsible for the sharing of the s but rather that it happened over its network Security RealitiesTechnology has afforded the transfer of a significant amount of information over the wires and with that has increased the risk that not just sensitive data or even whole databases and programs can easily be transferred in that manner . At the same time , other technologies in imaging have also increased the channels by which a person ‘s privacy can be compromised . From the perspective of employees , this has allowed for†¦If the laws of economics were enforced as strictly as the laws of physics, America would be a workers' paradise . The supply of most kinds of labor is low, relative to the demand, so each worker should be treated as a cherished asset, right? But there have been only grudging gains in wages over the last few years, and in the realm of dignity and autonomy, a palpable decline.What we need is nothing less than a new civil rights movement — this time, for American workers. Who will provide the leadership remains to be seen, but clearly the stakes go way beyond â€Å"labor issues,† as these are conventionally defined. We can hardly call ourselves the world's pre-eminent democracy if large numbers of citizens spend half of their waking hours in what amounts, in plain terms, to a dictatorship.