Legal regulation of employee privacy in the United States of America

Abstract

Current labour legislation does not contain prescriptions that would guarantee employees the right to privacy, but such legal regulation has long existed abroad, which can be valuable for Ukraine in order to accumulate the best global experience in ensuring the protection of employee privacy.
 In the US, employee privacy encompasses two aspects: first, the employee's right not to disclose personal information to his employer, and second, the employee's right to personal autonomy, or so to speak, sovereignty in certain life decisions. In many important aspects, these two forms of privacy are quite different from each other, but within the scope of labour law, the right not to disclose certain personal information and the right to personal autonomy is still conceptually united by the obligation to ensure the employee's privacy at the workplace. In other words, such autonomy implies that the employer must know about its employees and control what the employees do, but only within the framework of the employment relationship, and only that information that characterizes them as professionals. When the employer tries to use its authority outside the employment relationship by asking about the employee's private life or trying to control this private life, we have a violation of the principle of the employee's sphere of autonomy and, therefore, an unacceptable abuse of the employer's authority.
 In this age of email and social media, more and more of an employee's personal life is online. However, when dealing with an employer-employee relationship, it is not considered acceptable to ask an employer to provide personal mail or other private information from current or prospective employees.
 Under state laws, employees can widely share personal information online while keeping it safe from their employers having access to that information. An employee's life can remain private, that is, confidential to the employer while being public to others if the employee wishes to disclose certain personal information.
 US law allows employees to keep their personal information from employers confidential, including information shared on social networks. In addition, a number of US regulations allow employees to protect their online activity from employers as confidential information, as well as the privacy of employees' financial information.