Protection of Employees’ Personal Information under Workplace Surveillance

Abstract

By analyzing the civil litigation cases involving workplace video surveillance in China, it is founded that the courts have taken a more lenient altitude to the action of workplace video surveillance, and paid less attention to the personal information rights of employees that may be damaged by this action, resulting a low efficacy of litigation relief. In addition, based on management rights, the “implied consent” rules and excessive surveillance of employers violate the rules of personal information handling. The special protection of employees’ personal information can help maintain the dignity of employees, enhance the interests of the employer, and re-correct employees’ unfavorable positions in the labor relationships. To solve these issues and improve protection of employees’ personal information, this paper proposes two suggestions based on the critical reference to the experience and judgments in overseas similar cases. Specifically, to clarify the principle of handling workplace information, an information processing rule is proposed, which takes the principle of proportionality as the core. Additionally, the public interest litigation should be considered as a way to improve the remedy of employees’ rights, and thereby improve the effectiveness of protection of employees’ personal information.