Landmark HR Ruling: Worker whose boss read messages had 'privacy breached'

In a landmark ruling, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that employers can monitor the emails and messages of their staff – so long as they inform them beforehand. The filing has come after a Romanian employee was fired for sending private messages on his professional Yahoo messaging account – City AM reports.

In the landmark case, it was laid out that Bogdan Bărbulescu was fired 10 years ago - with his company using print outs of his messages as evidence at court.

Bărbulescu was employed in sales and was asked to launch a Yahoo account to answer client emails. Three years later, his employer told him his account had been monitored. Bărbulescu had also used the account to email his brother and fiancé – some of the exchanged messages reportedly related to sexual health – The Guardian reports.

After being fired, Bărbulescu then took the case to Strasbourg, claiming that his privacy should have been protected under the convention of human rights. The ECHR grand chamber judgment said that an employer “cannot reduce private social life in the workplace to zero. Respect for private life and for the privacy of correspondence continues to exist, even if these may be restricted in so far as necessary.”