Reference no: EM132866160

For the last twenty years there have been problems between management and the employees at Ticonderoga Manufacturing. Things have gotten increasingly worse in the last six months, and word on the street is that the employees are talking about unionizing. The company has taken a number of steps to try and prevent that from occurring. It now appears that one of those actions has been to monitor employee e-mail traffic. The automated system they are using has the ability not only to work on the company's e-mail system, but it has the ability to link out and read e-mails on personal accounts or computers that the company system comes in contact with. The company had sent out a short survey about a company picnic, and had asked employees to respond from their home e-mail system. The company was now able to read all the employee e-mail traffic on about 95% on their personal systems.

Is this monitoring process an unfair labor practice? Is it legal under the privacy laws we looked at earlier?