New Zealand Court Orders Facebook Disclosure To Employer 243
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.
Anything you say online... (Score:5, Insightful)
WILL be used against you.
Guilty Until Proven Innocent. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
These are NOT companies ... (Score:3, Insightful)
... you would want to work for.
Counterargument (Score:5, Insightful)
Ha!
Re:Guilty Until Proven Innocent. (Score:1, Insightful)
What if? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Anything you say online... (Score:5, Insightful)
WILL be used against you.
So maybe it would be a good idea to not post every detail about your life on the Internet.
Maybe it would be any even better idea to not post ANY info about your personal life.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Guilty Until Proven Innocent. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Anything you say online... (Score:1, Insightful)
Which apparently includes all financial transactions as well
They're just asking for proof. She is the one filing a complaint.
http://www.howtolaw.co.nz/bring-a-wrongful-dismissal-claim-against-your-employer-xidp392272.html
http://www.era.govt.nz/
These are interesting, ERA apparently is not a court, but is a government run arbitration system. Sounds like a good thing, otherwise like in a US wrongful termination suit, she'd be the plaintiff and the company innocent until proven guilty. In this system she still has to prove the company unfairly dismissed her, but it seems like that's a lower bar.
following a dispute over sick leave she took to care for her sister
Can I read that as she was warned?
Re:Guilty Until Proven Innocent. (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not odd at all. It's called the cream rising till it sours.
Don't fight the food chain. If your boss is incompetent, then leave and work somewhere else. If you can't, then it sucks to be you and you need to shut up and work.
Beggars can't be choosers.
Re:Anything you say online... (Score:5, Insightful)
She is the one filing a complaint.
http://www.howtolaw.co.nz/bring-a-wrongful-dismissal-claim-against-your-employer-xidp392272.html
http://www.era.govt.nz/ [era.govt.nz]
Are you serious?
She is just seeking reinstatement. They sacked her from her job claiming she has abused sick leave. The proof is on the employer and it should not require the person's privacy to be ruined for that.
Re:Guilty Until Proven Innocent. (Score:4, Insightful)
What a complete load of pointless conjecture, I really don't see why your post was modded up.
Re:Its obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The argument of "You have no right to invade my privacy" is not a childlike idea.
The importance here isn't whether this particular individual has actually taken care of her sister or gone on vacation. The question is, does the employer have the right to invade the employee's privacy for any reason.
Re:Anything you say online... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, there's plenty of details of my personal life online. My charity work. My breakthroughs in security research. The various projects of my spare time.
Sounds similar to me. OK, I don't work in security and I'd be hesitant to call anything I did a breakthrough, but the principle's the same. I do have a public facing webpage. It has details about large amounts of work I've done in the past (I used to be academia), source code (local ang github) to various projects both professional and personal. A mini CV, places I've worked, people I've worked with and been boss of and so on.
Huh? No, they have very little to do with reality. And should a recruiter ever ask whether they are, I will answer truthfully. But to ask that, they'd first of all have to admit that they were trying to snoop on me with online means, which they never will.
Here's what I don't get. There's a difference between splattering your private life all over the internet and letting people who you are doing.
Recruiting is all about who you are. I'd expect people coming to me with work to want to know more about me, examine my professional history and see that I am indeed capable of doing the job. Having them look is hardly snooping: would you just go into a very expensive transaction completely blind? Many people in my general line of work do curate some sort of public facing presence, though almost all of them never put quite as much effort into it as they feel they should (too busy etc).
I'm not going to salt the information out there with junk because I expect for people to be able to find out about me. How else would then? But I'm not going to share with potential customers/employers or what my faviourite episode of My Little Pony is or whatever. It's easy not to post your private life online.
Re:Anything you say online... (Score:4, Insightful)
I never claim in any interview that this person was me. I never actually make any connection of that person with me. And if you hire me based on what you read online instead of what you get from the CV I send you, sorry, but you trust the internet more than the person you plan to hire? I guess you get what you deserve.
Re:Anything you say online... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes I doubt the honesty of HR employees, and for that matter given the IRS debacle about non-profit orgs recently, I don't doubt that discriminatory orders come from higher up the chain in many cases.
Most of the people working in human resources (HR) roles should not be allowed to touch a computer much less work unsupervised at any time. These people are typically stupid mindless drone functionaries. They are the single most destructive factor keeping good candidates from ever getting an interview as their fascination with buzzword bingo makes them idiopathic.
Re:Guilty Until Proven Innocent. (Score:5, Insightful)
"So you would be perfectly okay with a coworker taking off at a critical time and without notice on sick leave"
Of course yes; live is above work.
"while actually going on a trip somewhere to play at the beach?"
No, I wouldn't like that. But if that coworker says it's a sick leave, then it's a sick leave unless proven otherwise.
"What if you found out about this but had no proof?"
If you have no proof then, by definition, it's not proven so he was on sick leave and I'm perfectly OK with that.
"What if you had proof but were not legally allowed to reveal it?"
The only way I can think not to be able to reveal it is if I gathered the information ilegally so, on one hand, I still didn't proved anything, so it's still a sick leave; on the other hand, would you want to work with somebody that uses ilegal means to track you? In this case, the problem is you, not the sick leave of your coworker.
"except that you could see the proof right there on Facebook, taunting you."
If you can see on Facebook, it's because you already have access to that info which means you already can make use of it, so this case doesn't fit in any of your situations above.
Re:Anything you say online... (Score:5, Insightful)
So she goes whining to daddy government.
Yes, clearly 'daddy government' should only serve and protect the interests of their real masters, the employers. It would be an outrageous attack on liberty for them to protect the legal rights of lowly serf-workers.
Re:Anything you say online... (Score:5, Insightful)
So it sounds like there is more to the story than what we're told. Perhaps she had a cushy job doing nothing, and getting paid a very good amount? People will fight to keep that. But companies will fight against it, because it's wastage.
Or maybe her boss made sexual advances to her, which she refused? But companies will fight against it, because it's not sexy
Or she considers it incredibly unfair that she was dismissed from a job she enjoyed, and is not willing to simply walk away and let them get away with it. Companies will fight against it, because it costs them money.
Or she's an undercover MI6 advisor, and being in that company is a critical part of her cover? Or she left a box of Tic Tacs in her office desk, and wanted to go back to get them? Companies will fight against it, because Bond rarely does his job without something getting blown to pieces.
Be honest. Don't go down the "perhaps there's more to this..." route to add some semblance of legitimacy to your patently self-serving speculation. It'd be less disingenuous if you simply came out and said that you feel she is doing this because of x. I agree, there may be more to this, so what will I do? I'll research it, and maybe I'll find some additional background for this story. What I won't do is to pull stuff out of my arse.