The Employee’s Right to Privacy Transformation: Digitalization Challenges

Abstract

The development of digital technologies applied for electronic monitoring of employees, artificial intelligence systems and transition to remote employment have naturally lead to a change in the content of the employee’s right to privacy. The lack of generally binding international labor standards in the mentioned sphere creates prerequisites for the increasing role of local regulation and legitimation of judicial practice. The authors come to the conclusion that at the legislative level, not only the monitoring over the employee’s performance of labor functions, but also the process of dissemination and use of the data obtained in order to make other personnel decisions should be limited. The purpose of this research is to substantiate the assertion that in the context of digitalization it becomes necessary to consider the right of an employee to privacy as one of the fundamental principles of the legal regulation of labor relations.