"That is an unsettled issue," Reuben says.Ģ) Assume any email, text message, or other electronic communication you send on your employer's system can be used against you. That means the NLRB may eventually conclude that employers are not able to monitor emails related to union organizing, even if they are sent using the employer's server or equipment. One gray area: A recent National Labor Relations Board case ruling found that employees have a presumptive right to use their employer's email system for union organizing, although labor laws restrict employers from surveillance of union organizing activities. "When you send an email from work, the company server doesn’t know or care whether this email is on your company email account or your personal Yahoo account-it monitors everything," says Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute. To start, that means your boss can see any messages you send using your work email. Reuben, employment lawyer at the firm Hirsch Roberts Weinstein LLP. In most cases, courts have taken the position that employers have the right to monitor what employees do on the employer's computer systems and equipment, says Catherine E. Here's what you should know about the privacy of your work emails-namely, that you don't have any.ġ) Your employer can monitor pretty much anything you access on the company's computer system, even your personal email account. Under federal law, Clinton was required to preserve all of her communications.īut you don't have to be a former secretary of state and favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination for your work emails to be preserved for posterity, and someone might be interested in their contents: your boss. Hillary Clinton has come under scrutiny for exclusively using her personal email account for all of her work communications when she was secretary of state, according to a report in the New York Times.