DATA PROTECTION
Court of Rome: legitimacy of the recourse to a private investigator to monitor employees.
The Court of Rome - Section Labour - addressed the issue of the conditions of legitimacy of defensive checks, carried out by means of a private investigator, as part of disciplinary proceedings that ended with the dismissal of the employee.
The Court of Rome ruled on the legitimacy of the disciplinary dismissal imposed following the detection, through the intervention of a private investigator, of disciplinary offenses committed by the employee.
According to constant jurisprudence, controls (including technological ones) implemented by the employer aimed at avoiding unlawful conduct are permitted, in the presence of a well-founded suspicion about the actual commission of the offence, provided that a proper balance is ensured between business needs and the protection of the employee's dignity and confidentiality, as long as the control concerns data acquired after the suspicion arose. Where these conditions do not apply, the verification of the usability for disciplinary purposes of the data collected by the employer should be conducted in the manner of Article 4 of the Workers' Statute.
In line with this approach, the use of investigative agencies is considered legitimate, as long as the relevant investigation is not aimed at checking whether or not the employee's contractual obligation has been fulfilled, the non-fulfillment itself, like the fulfillment, being attributable to the work activity, which is removed from the aforementioned supervision. Such control must, therefore, be limited to the worker's wrongful acts that cannot be traced back to mere non-performance of the obligation.
(Source: Wolters Kluwert Legal Daily - Author: Ilaria Giovannelli - Ownership of contents: Wolters Kluwert)
The Court of Rome ruled on the legitimacy of the disciplinary dismissal imposed following the detection, through the intervention of a private investigator, of disciplinary offenses committed by the employee.
According to constant jurisprudence, controls (including technological ones) implemented by the employer aimed at avoiding unlawful conduct are permitted, in the presence of a well-founded suspicion about the actual commission of the offence, provided that a proper balance is ensured between business needs and the protection of the employee's dignity and confidentiality, as long as the control concerns data acquired after the suspicion arose. Where these conditions do not apply, the verification of the usability for disciplinary purposes of the data collected by the employer should be conducted in the manner of Article 4 of the Workers' Statute.
In line with this approach, the use of investigative agencies is considered legitimate, as long as the relevant investigation is not aimed at checking whether or not the employee's contractual obligation has been fulfilled, the non-fulfillment itself, like the fulfillment, being attributable to the work activity, which is removed from the aforementioned supervision. Such control must, therefore, be limited to the worker's wrongful acts that cannot be traced back to mere non-performance of the obligation.
(Source: Wolters Kluwert Legal Daily - Author: Ilaria Giovannelli - Ownership of contents: Wolters Kluwert)
