Discuss the below:
In order to earn full credit, you should read the article andcreate an original posting of approximately 4-8 sentences, ONE REPLY to any other student in the class, be respectful when disagreeing or bringing up additional points, and you must use correct punctuation, grammar, spelling, and capitalization.
1. I think that the ability to record conversations must remain an open two-way street. It is necessary on both sides to be able to defend and protect yourself. If you have sexual harassment happening to you should be able to document that and if you are a supervisor and are afraid of a suit coming up you should be able to document your innocence. There are plenty of cases of people lying in a sexual harassment suit to try to gain some financial reward or get ahead somehow and it is unfortunate for the people they take action against and it is not true because a judge and jury and even company are always going to side with the "victim" unless hard evidence is produced to the contrary.
2. I do not like the fact that employers can be secretly recording its employee conversations. I think it should only be permitted if it protects the employee or helps the company control its ethical behavior. Secret recordings that are used against an employee can be taken out of context and many times the employee will not be able to defend statements. If a company wants to record employee conversations, they should have a written policy that requires employees to acknowledge this policy. Companies are allowed to track business emails and other computer related activity, but conversation is too sensitive to record. Many people are expressing their minds and do not mean what they have said. If this is used in the workplace, it is hard to have employee engagement to the
company.
EMPLOYMENT LAW
Expect More Secret Recordings in Wake of Carlson Settlement By Allen Smith, J.D.Sep 9, 2016
Gretchen Carlson's widely publicized $20 million settlement with 21st Century Fox likely will lead to more secret recordings of harassing conversations, legal experts predict.
Former Fox News anchor Carlson reportedly taped the network's CEO and President Roger Ailes for more than a year on her iPhone, secretly recording him making sexually harassing comments.
Carlson's strategy is likely to be followed by other employees in similar situations and, in most states, one-party-consent recordings are perfectly legal, said Tom Spiggle, an attorney with plaintiff-side Spiggle Law Firm in Arlington, Va.
Christine Walters, J.D., SHRM-SCP, an HR consultant with FiveL Co. in Westminster, Md., said all-party consent is required only in 12 states: California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. Some sources leave Nevada out because Nevada has an exception where prior consent and exigent circumstances exist, she noted.
"A lot of these cases come down to he said/she said," Spiggle remarked. Sometimes, e-mail can provide solid evidence of harassment. But if the harassed individual "can get a recording of the wrongdoer's voice, it's hard to deny that."
Even if an employer can win a harassment case when the main evidence against it is a recording in an all-party-consent state, the employer should consider taking action against someone who sounds like a harasser on recordings, Spiggle said. "If it smells bad, someone needs to be disciplined or fired. There should be intolerance" for sexual harassment, even if an employer can prevail in a lawsuit on a technicality, he stated.
Managers Recording Employees
Walters said she was concerned about "managers who start recording conversations with employees thinking they are trying to keep themselves safe from false allegations."
Even if the employer's policy permits recordings or is silent about it, "remember the golden rule," Walters said. "Would you want to be surreptitiously recorded? How would you feel about the level of trust a co-worker, manager and direct report had in you if they were secretly recording you? If one employee, manager or supervisor has an issue about trust with any other employee, let's find a path back to trust rather than resorting to secretly tape-recording one another."
Policy?
Employers "would be well-advised to have a handbook provision or policy prohibiting recording of conversations," said Michael Volpe, an attorney with Venable in New York City. "Employers need to announce and disseminate such policies and then enforce them in a nondiscriminatory manner."
Though, the National Labor Relations Board has found that a blanket ban on workplace recordings without a supervisor's consent would violate the National Labor Relations Act, noted Daniel Kaufman and Ben Johnson, attorneys with Michael Best & Friedrich in Chicago, in an e-mail. To be lawful, the policy would have to be "narrowly drawn and tied to business justifications," they wrote, noting that the case is on appeal in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Carlson settlement "shows that failing to address a harassment situation at its earliest stages can result in severe legal and other consequences, including a large settlement and substantial damage to an employer's reputation," Kaufman and Johnson wrote.
In a statement, 21st Century Fox said, "We sincerely regret and apologize for the fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect and dignity that she and all of our colleagues deserve."