According to a report in Fortune magazine, a Dutch court has ordered a US corporation to pay a fired employee $72,700 in damages after the individual was fired for turning off the camera while working from home.
The employee was fired by Florida-based telemarketing firm Chetu because he objected to being watched “for nine hours per day” by a program that demanded screen sharing and webcam streaming.
The news report said that a Dutch court found that “requiring remote personnel to have their webcam on constituted a human rights violation” in a ruling against a US software business.”
“Florida-based Chetu must now pay $72,700 to a former remote staffer based in the Netherlands after the company fired him for refusing to keep his webcam on for “eight hours per day.”
Additionally, the court cited the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: “Video surveillance of an employee in the workplace, be it covert or not, must be considered as a considerable intrusion into the employee’s private life.”
The Dutch employee said he was uncomfortable and felt it was an invasion of his privacy by the company to monitor him at all times via his webcam during a virtual training program. The monitoring also required the employee to share his laptop screen, said the Fortune, adding that the company promptly fired him, citing “insubordination” and “refusal to work” as the reasons.
The company said it fired the worker for “refusal to work” and “insubordination,” The Verge reported.
According to a survey by Digital.com, monitoring software is used by 60% of businesses with remote workers to keep tabs on their productivity and job activity. 53% of employees whose behavior is being tracked do non-work-related activities for three or more hours every day.
