Should your employer be able to browse through your messages on social media, either on the job or as part of the interview process?
Florida may become the latest state to say they should not. Under SB 186, passed in a bipartisan vote by the state’s Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee this month, employers would no longer have a right to ask for login credentials for their employees’ social media accounts.
“People have the right to privacy, and they have a right to not be put under pressure in a job interview to disclose things that maybe they wouldn’t want to disclose and that really has no relation to their ability to do a job,” said chief author Sen. Jeff Clemens, a Democrat from Lake Worth, according to the CBS affiliate in Miami.
“Even in a high-tech world, there should be an opportunity to express honest opinions between friends and family without it affecting your future or present career,” committee chairwoman Sen. Nancy Detert, a Republican from Venice, told the Washington Examiner.
“Employers already have the opportunity to do a background check, check previous employment history and even do a credit check. I think that gives them enough information,” Detert added.
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Not everyone agrees. The Associated Industries of Florida, a business lobbying group, believes it could hamper the ability of business to monitor employees who may or may not be engaged in illicit activity. “We oppose social media privacy legislation because employers can be held legally responsible for employee actions on these accounts and devices,” Brewster Bevis, AIF’s senior VP for state and government affairs, told the Examiner.
What about legislation that protects businesses from liability?
“We would love a bill that would do just that, but it wouldn’t address all of our concerns. It would still put a hamper on internal investigations that a company may have on their employee, and it wouldn’t properly address the situation if someone was wrongfully accused,” Bevis said.
However, if the legislation passes, it will add Florida to a growing list of states that have passed similar laws. California, Connecticut and Oregon also prevent employers from asking employees to access social media while their boss is present, while New Hampshire, Maine and Delaware have laws that prevent employers from pressuring their employees to be “friends” online.
Some of those states lean Republican, while others lean Democrat. The bipartisan support for the legislation in Florida presents further evidence that such laws have a broad base of support, which suggests similar legislation could eventually trickle up to the federal level. Detert indicated she would support that scenario, saying, “I do think that this privacy bill should be a national bill.”
In the meantime, the legislation must pass through the Senate’s Judiciary and Rules committees. If it does so, the full legislature will vote on the legislation in early 2016.
