Business forbidden to watch over Facebook employees – Business Journal – Portugal

Companies can not question the messages posted on social networks of workers or job applicants. The recommendation is the Council of Europe and may be invoked in Portugal.

Employers may not ask an employee or job applicant on the information you share on social networks , according to a recommendation of the Council of Europe, reported this Friday, April 24 at Daily News.

“Employers should not question or ask an employer or a job applicant the access to information that he or she share with outroas people online, especially through social networks “, can be read in the document approved on April 1, which is being released by the Directorate-General for Justice Policy.

The paper explains that this recommendation is not automatically binding on Portugal, but should be heeded by the various Member States. However, Portuguese legislation will have to adapt to reflect these recommendations. In addition, an employee who feels aggrieved can immediately invoke this recommendation in court.

The decision, which replaces the text on the processing of personal data also reinforces the privacy safeguards in emails. Where an employee leaves the company, the electronic address must be immediately extinguished. An employer may access the emails read by authorized and in the presence of the target.

There are already court convictions

As stated by the newspaper, the question is not merely theoretical. Two judgments of the courts of Lisbon and Porto relationship confirmed in September the dismissal of workers who published offensive messages considered for companies or supervisors.

In the case of Porto, was under consideration the situation of a worker Esegur company in late 2012 put several “posts” in “group of workers Esegur”, with 140 members who ran where complained of the alleged non-payment of holidays is 100%, which called for participation in the strike, and where called “parasites” who “gets benefits through work and struggle of others.”

Convinced that his subsequent dismissal could be illegal, advanced to court, claiming that the Constitution provides that “all are null evidence obtained by wrongful interference in the private sphere. “

The company, in turn, argued that the publications made in a group with 140 members were” likely “to come to be known and shared by others.

In its judgment, the Court reasoned that if the emails are, according to current law, a content of the “private sphere”, so would not necessarily when talking about social networks.

In this specific scenario, however, the court held that the worker could not expect that the content of posts published in a group were not released by their “friends.”

So, the Court validated the evidence. The underlying attitude to some of the “posts” analyzed was considered “objectively offensive”. And having given as proven these facts, while considered other episodes of disobedience, the Court concluded that there was just cause for dismissal.

Media Companies Want condition of journalists content

In the media sector, debate is now a parallel but related question: should journalists freely express their opinions on social networks, even that deal with the issues that the journalist accompanies or on the sources with which it interacts professionally?

According to the advanced information in late March by Express newspaper, several media organs want to advance with rules on the presence of journalists in social networks. The definition of codes of conduct is already standard practice in international media.