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New Zealand Court Orders Facebook Disclosure To Employer
An anonymous reader writes with a story out of New Zealand: "Gina Kensington was sacked by Air New Zealand earlier this year following a dispute over sick leave she took to care for her sister. She said she did not misuse sick leave, and went to the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) seeking reinstatement. Air New Zealand responded by demanding to see her Facebook and bank details. Kensington refused, saying it did not have that information when it dismissed her and that 'it is well accepted in New Zealand there are general and legal privacy expectations about people's personal and financial information.'"
At least in the U.S., Facebook isn't keen on employers getting access to employees' Facebook account details.
WILL be used against you.
What is surprising here us the court is making a summary judgement as to who is guilty until the prove their innocence. The unbelievable stretch in that allowing the airline access to information they didn't have in making their judgement to fire someone, as now somehow being proof of validity for firing them, is shockingly biased towards the airline and against the individual ie. we didn't know that but that's the reason why we sacked them. All that was required and should have been allowed was the companies policy regarding sick leave and the evidence obtained by the company to determine that she broke that policy, no further court ordered investigation should have been allowed.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
... you would want to work for.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
It's sad to see NZ pop up on /. so much lately and for all the wrong reasons.
Even worse to see this person being guilty until proven innocent over something so trivial!
"That's fine. However, I suspect the company has ulterior motives behind this decision; therefore I would like to have all emails by the director and finance departments to go through with a lawyer and an accountant to prove their motives. If they have nothing to hide then they shouldn't object, and it's only fair since you believe handing over passwords and examining *MY* private communications with any party to be fair play. I look forward to receiving the company emails. Regards."
Ha!
If she's seeking reinstatement, I think the burden of proof is on her to show she deserves it. If she doesn't want to give up her privacy, she doesn't have to take legal action against her former employer to try and get her job back. On a side note, would you really want to work a job in which an agency like this forced your employer to keep you on?
I can see how an employee could be sacked if his public FB page showed that he lied to this boss about being injured or sick. But an employer demanding access to private pages is very intrusive, that's what you might expect for extraordinary situations such as when the employee has been accused of a felony. Seems that Air NZ needs to tighten up their protocol for granting sick leave, rather than relying on these heavy handed ad hoc methods.
This is why courts are setup in tiers. This is why there are appeals. Because a stupid judge somewhere can't think hard enough to realize why this is dumb and the implications of the precedent they're setting. Luckily, the appeals courts generally sort this thing out before it goes too far off the rails.
Because I want Facebook to die.
What if... What if ... What if...
In an alternate universe where certain facts are known for certain, then sure there may be a problem. Over here, we can make up whatever stories we want about these alternate universes, but they don't affect us.
If the coworker takes off at a critical time without notice (did that actually happen?), then the job will be poorly done and you should raise the issue to management. Point out that the department was understaffed, and it's management's responsibility to have the right talent in-house at the right time.
Or, you take home extra pay pulling overtime picking up the slack, which costs management more than regular time, so they will eventually notice.
Or, you refuse unpaid overtime or have previous commitments that you cannot break and let your boss know this. If your boss can force you to come in to work even though you've got Laker's tickets, find another job.
You shouldn't particularly care if coworkers take time off or not - care about getting the job done on time, under budget, and at good quality. If you can't do this, care about whether it's your fault. Don't let your boss put unreasonable demands on you - that will only shift the blame to you when you can't pull off a miracle. Let them know about problems as they arise, and don't accept blame for things you can't control.
Holding yourself to a high standard of professionalism will work out better in the long run than putting "staying employed" ahead of everything else in your life. It may cost you in the immediate short-term, but the total returns over time far outweigh the immediate costs.
Someone tipped them off that she wasn't caring for her sister and was using it like a vacation. To what extent we don't know.
An argument of 'I was smart and there's no way you could have known what I was up to, so you can't have fired me for that' is exceptionally child like.idea.
Seriously, why do some businesses still insist on offering sick leaves? Just keep it as comp days and let the employee decide when they want to use it. People will claim they are sick when they are not, just have the policy "if you're really sick, you can tell us the day of before your shift and if you're not sick, give us a day's notice." If they do that, their business will strive like the ones that don't have the sick leave thing.
All your Facebook are belong to us.
You can get a lot more information than is needed for the case from those. In particular, I wonder what they'd want her bank details for? To show she's got work on the side? To show she traveled somewhere?
Facebook I could understand more as people post dumb incriminating things on there all the time. However there's still a trove of information that the employer shouldn't have access to, such as things indicating sexual orientation, political lean, and many others.
This kills the Facebook.
I am betting they DID have the information and that somebody in the person's acquaintance told them about her action/party/whatever, or how she put it in facebook. HR manager don't sack people on leave willy nilly so. I am willing to bet that's why they want the facebook access.
If she accessed it at work would it be visible in the cache in plain text? I'm not going to go looking through the cache at my workplace to confirm it since I don't use Facebook and it's legally dubious (OK maybe downright illegal) to see if other people's private Facebook stuff is there, so does anyone already have the answer?
Personally I think the airline are being pricks, especially in asking for bank records, but I am curious to know if it is that easy for a workplace to grab people's "private" information from Facebook since I don't know if Facebook have got their shit together enough to use encryption.
Just give a day's notice? And you are old enough to be in the workforce? You've never even seen or thought of an accident?
Sometimes this place amazes me.
We hear this all the time. "You don't want to work for this company!" An entire judgement against a massive company as the result of one news article. Often these one news articles are the result of one stupid HR person in one small part of a small office and in an attempt to save face they took their actions to the extreme.
Funny how we pass judgement based on the experience of 0.01% of the employees of the company.
Funny how we pass judgement when we've heard only an article which covers one side of the story (I'm sure a company doesn't routinely fire all employees who take leave without some thought that it was improper).
Funny how a post like yours always somehow is deemed insightful.
The only thing really certain here is that this IS a company that this person wants to work for, or she wouldn't have taken them to the tribunal to get re-instated.
if it doesn't exist... i think Facebook should disclose more until people l2 understand this. Or not, I'll still get mine.
The question is, does the employer have the right to invade the employee's privacy for any reason.
When that employee has chosen to take them to court and the information they request could be extremely relevant to their defence then yes, that employer does have a right to the information. It is the company being sued here and whether they behaved well or not they have a right to the information they need to defend themselves. If she did not want to reveal this information then she should not have sued them or, in fact, but it on a public website like Facebook.
...You need to be on my friends' list to see most of what I post, and you need a FB account to even see my main profile at all.
People who aren't on my list will know that I have a couple radio shows...that's pretty much it.
There's more you don't get. The person you commented on doesn't post a "real" private life on the internet, but a fake one. If anyone were to look him up, they'd find something plausible, non shocking boring information. Probably enough to leave him alone and not bother looking any further. That's the trick, not having a life that isn't worth hiding, but hiding behind a fake life.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Sure. When a judge orders you to disclose information supply it in Braille. Or Swahili. Or kindergarten handwriting. Then say, in a whiny nasal voice, "You didn't say what language or format, you pompous gimmer. Ner na ner na nerr nerrrr!"
He'll be so busy chuckling at how an internet gobshite like you outwitted a highly educated professional like him that he'll totally forget to slap you for contempt.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
English, bra
My former boss and many of my co-workers are in my friends list. It's an extension of "if you don't want someone to see it, don't put it online". It's difficult to post in a public forum and then try to control who sees it. That's what "public" means.
I've caught a company rep in a lie based on information from the public linkedin profies of two of their employees, and called them on it. See "public"...
(Note that private communication to individuals is an entirely different thing.)
That said, if a company demanded to see my facebook profile, I'd decline on general principles.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
There was no information in that article about how NZ Airline determined she wasn't looking after her sister. What if management was approached by a friend or colleague that was friends with her on Facebook and showed them evidence through their login?
If that employee refused to testify, would it still be unjust to request access to her Facebook?
Although I must admit requesting access to her bank account in my opinion is much *worse* as that information is private as opposed to Facebook's pseudo-private nature.
For NOT having a fb account that the government can control. Mine will be pages of death threats against imaginary government officials.
I am sure that the employer already knows what the employee was up to and they probably have the screenshots of her facebook pages or some other proof.
I believe that the employer is giving her a chance to withdraw her case by requesting her to release these not-so-private information rather than handing it over to the court themselves. By the way, IMHO, nothing you post publicly on facebook can be private. I think we should give employer a credit where the credit is due.
oh man. i had a stiffy the whole last night for apparently no reason. now i know why!
seems all these years of grudgingly (and jealously) avoiding facebook
are starting to pay oFF!
brown yellow pink red
This is not an employer demanding access to the entire facebook account without good reason (which would be slapped down quite hard by a NZ court and a lawyer suggesting it would probably face sanctions)
This is a specific case in employment court where the employer is accusing the employee of "bunking off" during sick leave and the court agreeing that obtaining FB posts for the 2 days in question will help resolve the dispute quickly.
The same logic applies to the demand for bank records for those 2 days - New Zealanders use debit cards a _lot_ and the records for those 2 days will show her approximate location via retail purchases made.
Given that Facebook entries can be deleted, the only reason I can imagine for her resistance up to this point is to ensure the court gets untainted evidence, or that she's been so stressed by their activities that she's naturally uncooperative (this is common in cases of constructive dismissal). Not that it'd help. I use quiet periods in bed when stuck home with flu to update my FB feed as a f'instance.
The alternate (reasonable) explanation is that the employer demanded all records (excessive) and the court has agreed she only needs to provide for the 2 days in question. TFA doesn't give enough detail to explain the background of the order.
Is there a law that says everyone must have a Facebook account? Is it a fact that all Facebook users use their real names? I thought not.