Employers stepping up efforts to spy on workers, says labor union

Employers are increasingly spying on their workers, trade union CNV said after surveying 2,600 of its members. Almost a quarter said that the monitoring of their activities has increased in recent years, and 40 percent said their employers know more about them through digital means than five years ago.

Almost 20 percent of workers said their employers use software to monitor whether they are working. For 16 percent, their employers track where they are through GPS. Thirteen percent said their boss keeps track of which websites they visit. And a third said there are cameras in their workplace.

“The employers' drive to control is increasing rapidly,” CNV chairman Piet Fortuin said. According to him, employers increasingly discard privacy to “eagerly” monitor their employees through digital means.

“From a legal point of view, monitoring is only allowed in exceptional cases, for example, if there is a serious suspicion of misuse. But given the number of people monitored by their employers, employers seem to be breaking that law en masse,” Fortuin said.”

According to Fortuin, employer-employee relationships must be built on trust. “And monitoring is detrimental to mutual relationships, productivity, and the working atmosphere. And that at a time when mental health absenteeism is already very high.”

Ten percent of employees said their employers had confronted them with the information they obtained through digital monitoring, and 25 percent worry that this will happen in the future. Forty percent called it a problem that their employer has more and more possibilities to monitor them, and 71 percent said they don’t want their employer knowing everything about them.”

“This creates a working atmosphere of distrust and insecurity,” Fortuin said. “It is great that employees are increasingly able to work in a hybrid way, but if this is replaced by more digital monitoring and control, that is not a gain, but a major decline in employees’ freedom.”