US Company Fined For Firing Employee Who Refused To Turn On Webcam At Home

A Dutch court has ordered a US company to compensate a sacked employee for $72,700 after the employee was fired for turning the webcam off while working from home, according to a report in Fortune magazine. Chetu, a Florida-based telemarketing company, sacked the employee for refusing to be watched "for nine hours per day" by a program that required sharing of the screens and streaming of his webcam.

According to the news report, in a decision against a US software corporation, a Dutch court concluded that "requiring remote staff to keep their webcam on constitutes a human rights violation."

"Florida-based Chetu must now pay $72,700 to a former remote staffer based in the Netherlands after the company fired him for refusing to keep his webcam on for "eight hours per day."

Additionally, the court cited the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: "Video surveillance of an employee in the workplace, be it covert or not, must be considered as a considerable intrusion into the employee's private life."

The Dutch employee said he was uncomfortable and felt it was an invasion of his privacy by the company to monitor him at all times via his webcam during a virtual training program. The monitoring also required the employee to share his laptop screen, said the Fortune, adding that the company promptly fired him, citing "insubordination" and "refusal to work" as the reasons.

The company said it fired the worker for "refusal to work" and "insubordination," The Verge reported.

According to a survey by Digital.com, monitoring software is used by 60% of businesses with remote workers to keep tabs on their productivity and job activity. 53% of employees whose behaviour is being tracked do non-work-related activities for three or more hours every day.