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Opening
an Employee's Mail and "My" Report(Alaska Version)
by Dr. Lynne
Curry
Question:
Our receptionist routinely opens and routes the managers' mail.
Few of our other employees get much mail but yesterday a letter
came for an accounting clerk. The receptionist followed the same
procedure she did with other mail and sliced the envelope open.
When she realized the contents were personal, she routed the envelope
directly to the clerk with a note that said, "Sorry, didn't
read this, seemed personal."
Well the accounting clerk went ballistic. Apparently, she subscribes
to a singles service and uses the office address for this mail,
as she didn't want her teenage children to notice the return address.
She stormed into the reception area, called the receptionist snoopy
and perverted and scared the heck out of her. The clerk then told
our general manager she was going to cite our company for violating
federal law by having an employee open and read a co-worker's mail.
Our
receptionist now refuses to open anyone's mail and everyone in the
office is talking about this incident. So we need to know, can employers
routinely open employees' mail?
Answer:
When I asked two business attorneys about this issue, both stated
that employers can open mail delivered to employees. According to
them, although anyone who obstructs the delivery of mail faces criminal
penalties under federal law, the U.S. Postal Service takes the position
that mail is delivered when it reaches an employer's address. Thus,
according to these attorneys and the "Legal Trends" section
of HR Magazine's February 2002 issue, employers can read personal
mail sent to employees at work without violating federal law. Further,
in a quick telephone survey, I learned that eighteen of twenty employers
ask front office employees to open all incoming company mail not
marked "personal" or "confidential".
Unfortunately,
while many employers consider this practice commonplace, employees
like yours may react poorly if they discover a co-worker reads correspondence
they consider private. So, save your reception staff future headaches.
Let your employees know you task one employee with screening mail
to save everyone's time and save the company embarrassment by promptly
re-routing time-sensitive mail arriving for employees on vacation.
Ask that they reroute any mail they consider personal to their home
address.
Next,
you supervise an employee who verbally attacked a co-worker. You
owe it to your receptionist to apologize to her for not clarifying
a procedure that one of her co-workers misunderstood. Then, meet
with the employee who made a "federal case" out of what
appears to be a routine business occurrence. Let her know while
you regret her discomfort at having personal mail opened, you want
to make sure she delivers any future complaints to the person responsible
for fixing things - you.
Question:
Six months ago, we received a series of anonymous letters from employees
telling us a manager was bullying them. We hired a consultant to
come in and investigate the situation, but we asked him to keep
the situation confidential so we wouldn't damage anyone's reputation.
The consultant found out plenty. Among other things, she told us
several people in our office, including the manager, had a definite
bulldog style and recommended we do communication skills training
for everyone. We did and it seemed to fix the problem. Not only
did everyone start getting along better, but the anonymous letters
stopped.
Then,
this morning, the "bulldog" manager came into my office
and asked me pointblank if he was why we had the investigation.
When I said "yes," he demanded to see the consultant's
report. He claims that if we hired someone who asked questions about
him without advising him he was the subject of an investigation;
we'd violated his right to privacy. Does he have a right to that
report?
Answer:
He possibly has a right to the report. Laws in Alaska and many states
give employees the right to any information that names them. However,
if your consultant correctly prepared the report, it doesn't name
the manager, it names the problems. This means that while your concerns
about this manager led you to investigate, you investigated the
work environment and not him. If so, you can keep your report confidential.
In a similar case, when the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service investigated complaints that an INS investigator used abusive
tactics, the investigator sued. He alleged the INS violated the
Privacy Act by interviewing third-party complainants without first
notifying him. He lost his case when the Court ruled that the employer
didn't violate the Privacy Act because it would have been impractical
to advise the investigator before interviewing those with complaints.
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