Can You Be Fired for Sending Personal E-Mails at Work?

Dec. 17, 2009 — -- You probably don't think twice about sending personal messages through your work e-mail. But sending e-mails about a seemingly innocuous hobby cost one financial advisor his job when his employer tapped into his work account and read his messages.

Cameron Pettigrew, who worked as a client relations manager at Fidelity Investments in Texas, was fired after supervisors found out he was sending messages about a fantasy football league that he ran.

"Firing a guy for being in a $20 fantasy league?" Pettigrew told the Fort Worth Star Telegram. "Let's be honest: that's a complete overreaction."

Welcome to the realities of the cyber workspace. Pettigrew, a young MBA graduate, is just one of the most recent victims to find out the hard way that employers have almost limitless rights to check personal messages sent over company computers, cell phones and PDAs.

In fact, more than a quarter of companies have fired employees for misusing e-mail and one-third have fired employees for misusing the Internet, according to a survey by the American Management Association. The same survey found that 43 percent of employers read workers' e-mail messages and 66 percent check Web site connections.

The growing number of disputes between employers and employees over cyberspace privacy has caught the attention of the Supreme Court, which decided this week to review a lawsuit between a California cop and supervisors who read his racy text messages.

"The law gives most employers a great deal of freedom to monitor communications sent using work equipment in order to make sure that work they are paying for is being done," says Jonathan Ezor, a professor of law and technology at Touro Law Center in Long Island, New York. "Workers can get in trouble for forgetting that."

In this particular case, Pettigrew was fired because Fidelity disapproved of what it considered to be gambling.

"Participation in any form of gambling through the use of Fidelity time or equipment or any other company resource is prohibited," Fidelity spokesman Vin Loporchio told The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "In addition to being illegal in a lot of places, it can also be disruptive. We want our employees to be focused on our customers and clients."

Privacy conflicts between employers and their staff are nothing new. Before the advent ofBlackberries, cellphones and even computers, workers and their bosses sparred over drugs and porn found in lockers and desk drawers. But the near ubiquity of electronic communication devices, along with the growing popularity of "sexting" and other online activities that could tarnish an employer's reputation, have once again dragged the issue into the news.