Het recht op privacy in de arbeidsrelatie in Suriname

Abstract

In this study, attention is paid to safeguarding of the right to privacy of the employee within the private law employment relationship. Within the employment relationship, the employer is in the position to take decisions that may concern the privacy of the employees. Due to their subordinate position, employees will, in most cases, comply with control measures taken by the employer, even if such measures may mean an infringement of their privacy. It is therefore of eminent importance that the right to privacy of the employee within the employment relationship is safeguarded. The right to privacy is after all embedded in various international treaties and in the Constitution and should therefore be respected. To answer the central question, an assessment framework is developed in Chapter 5. This assessment framework is mainly aimed to examine the labour practices and the collective labour agreements in relation to the protection of privacy at control measures and processing of personal data by the employer. The norms of the assessment framework in question are derived from the considerations in Chapters 3 and 4, as well as the therein discussed treaty provisions (Chapter 3) and the corresponding assessment criteria of the right to privacy (§ 4.3), legal regulations, literature and jurisprudence. The conducted field study in relation to the collective labour agreements mentioned in Chapter 6, shows that the current provisions in the collective labour agreements, are in general very widely formulated and are therefore susceptible to multiple interpretations. Remarkably, the collective labour agreements in particular enforce obligations on the employees, so that his/her subordinate position can clearly be observed, and insufficient attention is given to protection of privacy. The conducted field study referred to in Chapter 7, also shows that the companies hardly give attention to the right to privacy of the employee. Specific policy within the companies aimed at the protection of the right to privacy is rather an exception than a rule. The policy of various employers, however, more often than not, unjustifiably infringes the privacy of the employees Maintenance of the current situation means, in my opinion, a further discrepancy between the labour practice and the assessment framework.

In my study, I showed that there are gaps in the privacy protection of employees in Suriname. This occurred on the basis of an assessment framework which I developed based on international norms. In the meantime, the Government of Suriname has published a number of draft legislative bills that are very important for privacy protection. As outlined in § 9.2, these draft bills are focused on a number of identified gaps, and I also made a few recommendations with regard to problems encountered by me, based on my assessment framework, that are not fully dealt with by the draft bills. These draft bills, once adopted, can set restrictions to some of the practices, such as the current random and beyond proportion medical examinations by the employers and the careless dealing with personal data. With this, privacy protection in Suriname is still in its infancy. My study has exposed gaps and the legislator has in the meantime taken a few important initiatives to increase the privacy protection. My analysis and recommendations can help to further shape these developments.