Labour & employment law column by Robert Smithson

It seems, more and more often, the subject of my articles is related to the impact of technology on the workplace. One aspect that has triggered an ongoing battle – on the privacy front – is technology allowing the employer to track the whereabouts of employees.

People haven’t really embraced the concept that their employer may be able to track their location during the workday. They seem to consider their whereabouts to be personal information and the employer’s use of technology such as a GPS as an invasion of privacy.

The CBC has reported a Winnipeg waitress named Stephanie Lozinski alleges she was fired from her job as a result of shaving her head. It went on to state that the Manitoba Human Rights Commission has turned down Ms. Lozinski’s resulting human rights complaint.

The CBC’s story contains Ms. Lozinski’s allegations that she was employed as a server at a St. Boniface-area restaurant. She was reported as having, on New Year’s Eve, shaved her head in support of an uncle dying from cancer.

January is a great time of year for employers to focus on the basics of the employment relationship. A cornerstone of that relationship is a properly implemented, written employment contract.

One of the key rules about employment contracts is that (to use the legal term) there must be “consideration” flowing to the employee in exchange for accepting the employer’s terms. This consideration must exist in order for the employment contract to be binding on the employee. Typically, the consideration flowing to a new employee is the offer of employment itself.

The advent of personal information legislation across Canada has provided employees with a mechanism to challenge their employer’s monitoring of their activities. In at least one context, however, employers’ use of monitoring technology has been upheld. Employers operating fleets of vehicles surely appreciated the development of global positioning systems (GPS) and mobile data terminals (MDTs). The effective use of such monitoring systems has allowed employers to hone the efficiency of their mobile fleets.