Five of the court’s 11 magistrates present a dissenting opinion, stating that the ruling leaves “the protection of workers’ right to data protection” unattended
The Constitutional Court upheld the amparo appeal filed by the company Saltoki Araba against the ruling of the Supreme Court of the Basque Country and the order of the Supreme Court that considered unlawful evidence from a company security camera to fire an employee for ” supplying products owned by the company to a third party who pays him in cash that he appropriates, without issuing a delivery note or receipt”.
As evidence, the company provided the inclusion of a video surveillance camera placed in the work center within the company’s general security system, which was announced through a poster placed outside the center that contained a “video surveillance area”. The manager of the company looked at the recorded images because he suspected an irregular situation the previous day.
The Social Chamber of the TSJ of the Basque Country considered that the use of images for the control of employees “requires prior, clear and concise information” about the existence of the camera and the possibility to exercise rights over the images. Since the company had already used the same system in 2014 to fire another employee, the Chamber sees “it is difficult to understand that in five years it has not regularized the situation of surveillance by cameras, by the employees adequately informing about the use of video surveillance also for your activity. By excluding the validity of the proof of the recording, “all subsequent acts also suffer from illegality”, and it nullifies the dismissal because “failure to prove the conduct of the employee but for that recorded activity, any acknowledgment he may have made of the facts is ineffective.”
The company appealed to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court did not concede on the understanding that “there is an inspection of the labor surveillance cameras by the employers, (…) there is information about the existence of said security cameras, although not the possibility to use the recordings for disciplinary purposes” and although the law allows the use of said recordings in the “coincidental finding”, this exception cannot be considered because the employer should have regularized in the five years that have elapsed since the previous layoff the use of cameras with information relevant to employees.
In the current ruling, the Constitutional Court upholds Saltoki Araba’s appeal for protection, which found that his right to effective judicial protection had been violated by failing to admit the admission to demonstrate the reason for dismissal. Appellant points out that this type of workplace evidence is valid as long as the employees were aware of the existence of workplace cameras. And that the measure was proportionate and appropriate to the aim pursued, as there was “undoubtedly” suspicion of a flagrant crime in the discovery the day before the dismissal “a bag of company assets in the workplace without appearing in the system and that later it was subject to appropriation”. The company states that the obligation to inform employees “in advance, expressly, accurately and unequivocally, is excluded in the event of a suspicion of a flagrant crime”.
This is also how the Constitutional Court sees it, which in its ruling finds that there has been no violation of the protection of the employee’s personal data, as the processing of data from video surveillance systems for labor control purposes “does not require the express consent of the employee because it is implicitly understood by the mere contractual relationship.However, the TC warns that the employer’s obligation to provide information continues to exist, as an inescapable guarantee of the above-mentioned fundamental right. “This obligation must in principle be fulfilled in advance, expressly, clearly and succinctly”, the court continues, but the rule allows that in unlawful conduct that information obligation is deemed to be fulfilled by the information to exist in a visible place of the video surveillance system, and he adds that the fact that the cameras were used for the same purpose in 2014 have been used “cannot be valued to the detriment of the company” rd as the Social Chamber of the TSJPV does.” “The employee, with seniority in the company since 2007, knew and was aware of the existence of the cameras and their possible use for disciplinary employment purposes,” the ruling states. validate the recording test.
The establishment of control systems fulfills a legitimate purpose in the context of industrial relations, the Constitution explains, albeit with the limit of respect for the dignity of the employee and his right to privacy. The judgment concludes that in this case the measure was justified because there were sufficient indirect suspicions of irregular behavior on the part of the employee that had to be verified; it was appropriate to establish the unlawfulness of the conduct; it was necessary because any other measure would have warned the worker; and it was proportional because the cameras were visible and used to verify erratic behavior detected the day before.
Magistrates Juan Antonio Xiol, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, María Luisa Balaguer, Inmaculada Montalbán and Ramón Sáez, all with progressive sensibility, are taking a private vote on this ruling, as the company’s appeal should not have been allowed. The magistrates point out that the legislature wanted the workers “to be informed in a specific and differentiated manner from that of the general public about the existence of a videographic monitoring system and possible disciplinary purposes (…) to identify possible situations of abuse. to which this control system by the employer can lead. For this reason, “the exceptional possibility that flagrante suffice as a guarantee (…) is very limited in nature.” And they conclude that the law “prevents the legitimate understanding of capturing and using images of blatant illegal acts by employees in the mere fulfillment of the general duty to install posters warning of the existence of a video surveillance system.” In addition, “the reasoning that a reasonable suspicion of serious misconduct can be a strong justification for modulating the disclosure obligation, can lead to private investigations, and be used as justification in an unacceptably high number of cases,” they point out to caution that “a standard has been configured which practically cancels this guarantee because of the excessive extension given to the exceptional possibilities of its modulation in case of flagrant delicto”. In the opinion of the dissenting magistrates, the constitutional ruling “has failed to respond to the historical circumstances in which the development of the right to the protection of personal data finds itself in the face of the challenge of the dizzying evolution of control technologies and the abandonment of the protection of the right to the protection of personal data in a particularly sensitive area such as industrial relations.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
