Security News > 2021 > January > Labour Party urges UK data watchdog to update its Code of Employment Practices to tackle workplace snooping
The UK's Information Commissioner's Office needs to update its Code of Employment Practices to tackle workplace spying by bosses, the Prospect trade union and the Labour Party have said.
The call for more regulation of workplace surveillance comes after recent reports of new gadgets designed to tell bosses whether their toiling underlings are happy or sad. It also echoes previous calls by Prospect for stronger regulation of workplace surveillance tech.
Labour also wants the Information Commissioner's Office to update its employment practices code - a document that hasn't been updated since the GDPR/Data Protection Act 2018 became law.
Among other things, the code advises UK companies on their legal duties when it comes to "Monitoring at work".
Data protection nerds might well be interested in how Britain's workplace data laws, based entirely on EU data protection directives and latterly the General Data Protection Regulation itself, have evolved over time.
The now-repealed Data Protection Act 1998's section 12 gave workers a legal power to ensure they couldn't be fired because of "Processing by automatic means of personal data such as, for example, his performance at work his reliability or conduct." If you were sacked or disciplined by a computer telling humans what to do, you could kick up a legal stink.