Engineer fired for chatting online at work
Would you want your boss to have access to your chats?
A EUROPEAN court has ruled that a man who used Yahoo Messenger for work and chatting to his fiancée was rightfully dismissed.
Romanian engineer Bogdan Barbulescu was fired in 2007 after his employer monitored his chats for several days and confronted him with 45 pages of printed message transcripts between him and his soon to be wife.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that his employer was within their right to do so, even if they had instructed him to download the app to communicate with clients.
According to online news reports, Barbulescu was asked to create the Yahoo account in order to answer clients’ queries but approached him ‘citing the company policy that the service should have been used for work purposes only.’
The ruling stated that it was ‘not unreasonable that an employer would want to verify that employees were completing their professional tasks during working hours.’
The judge also dismissed Barbulecu’s claim that his right to privacy had been invaded by his employer.
Despite the fact that this won’t affect SA just yet, how do you feel about some of the messages you send during working hours? Would you want your boss to have access to your chats?
