Workplace Privacy

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses workplace privacy. It looks at the new and increasingly controversial ways in which employers can impinge upon an employee's privacy, such as drug testing, genetic testing and electronic surveillance. It then discusses, in detail, the legal and ethical ramifications of employers using these tools and how they can impact on the workplace.

From the Paper:

"From the utilitarian standpoint, it is certainly imaginable that genetic testing, drug testing, and electronic surveillance might contribute to the overall good by increasing the output of various businesses. However, it is also imaginable that the negative aspects associated with these measures might detract from the total happiness of society: increased surveillance and the inability to use certain drugs might decrease employee contentedness; meanwhile, genetic testing might leave major subsets of society out of the economy and impoverished. Deontologically, people might take a stand for personal physical privacy as an innate moral good; yet, precisely what each deontologist might define privacy to be may vary. Consequently, some deontologists might think that workplace surveillance and drug tests are morally acceptable, while genetic tests are not. Others might organize their beliefs differently--all measures may be seen as morally unacceptable, for instance. Essentially, attesting to be either a utilitarian or a deontologist gives little indication of which way an individual might lean with respect to physical privacy in the workplace."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Anonymous. (1999 ). "Improvements in Workplace Safety--United States." Morbidity and Morality Weekly Report, vol. 48, iss. 22.
• Duke, L. (2002 ). "Genetic Testing in the Workplace: the Employer's Coin Toss." Health and Biotechnology, September 5.
• Gilbert, Jacqueline A. et al. (1999 ). "Diversity Management: A New Organizational Paradigm." Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 21, iss. 1.
• Nusraty, Tim and John Pascua. (2006 ). "E-Mail Privacy in the Workplace." Georgia State University. Available: http://gsulaw.gsu.edu/lawand/papers/fa99/nusraty_pascua/.
• Persson, Anders J. and Sven Ove Hansson. (2003 ). "Privacy at Work Ethical Criteria." Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 42, iss. 1.

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