Question Number 1.
Taking the reference of the Michel A. Smyth v. The Pillsbury Company (US Dist. Ct 1996) Jodi can issue each employee their own company e-mail account, and then regularly check the messages sent to and from each account to ensure that no one is being critical or her and the company.
Jody, as an employers have many legitimate reasons for desiring to monitor their employees' e-mail usage, such as: Preventing and discouraging sexual or other illegal workplace harassment; Preventing "cyber stalking" by employees; Preventing possible defamation liability; Preventing employee disclosure of trade secrets and other confidential information; and Avoiding copyright and other intellectual property infringement from employees illegally down avoiding software, etc. These business justifications are compelling, but so are the reasons for protecting an individual's privacy. However, Jody should consider the breakeven point at which her company's monitoring program achieves necessary business objectives while also adequately protecting employee privacy, by applying right types of computer programs or software to monitor her employees' e-mail.
Question Number 2.
Electronic surveillance refers to the overhearing or seeing of individuals and employing electronic or electrical devices to do so. The use of electronic or electric methods to keep watch over persons or organizations, termed “physical surveillance”, has obvious advantages for law enforcement. It is a means to prevent detection so as to be able to observe suspected individuals in normal, uninhibited states to gather possibly useful datum. The techniques and methods of electronic eavesdropping, offer the possibility of gathering evidence which would otherwise be unobtainable. Therefore, it makes sense to block certain sites outright for example, pornography sites are an obvious example, but companies may also consider gambling and game sites as utterly unrelated to work, potentially time-wasting and block them as well.
Question Number 3
Taking the reference of case “State of New York v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.” in page 80 in our text book, Judy cannot fire the employees who caught looking at FoxNews.com because it falls within the definition of “legal recreational activities”. As in the case, “State of New York v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc” NY Statute forbids employers discrimination against employees because of their participation in “legal recreational activities”. As an attorney I would suggest Jodi that she can install the “Bad Employee Tracker” software on her employee’s home computers but she cannot restrict her employees to involved in the activities which is defined as legal recreational activities by the law. For example, Colorado law makes it "a discriminatory or unfair employment practice for an employer to terminate the employment of any employee due to that employee's engaging in any lawful activity off the premises of the employer during nonworking hours"
Question Number 4
While, if Jodi is a die-hard vegan, then that doesn’t mean she can fire her employees for eating meat. If any act of an employees fall within the statutory definition of "recreational activities" which includes any lawful, leisure-time activity, for which the employee receives no compensation but it is done for recreational purposes, like sports, games, hobbies, exercise, reading and the viewing of television, movies, news and similar material then employers cannot fire them otherwise it would be a wrongful termination. Eating meat is not illegal act or offensive act. Therefore, as an attorney, I would convince Jody that it is not a legitimate to restrict employees to eat meat. In addition to this, taking reference of the case “KARRAKER v. RENT-A-CENTER, INC.” it is not legitimate to test the employees for whether they have eaten meat or not.
References
Halbert, J.D., Terry, Ingulli, ESQ., Elaine, (2006). Law And Ethics In The Business Environment : South Western Cengage Learning.
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