The Conflict And The Balance Between The Right To Privacy Of Employees And The Right To Know Of Employers

In recent years, the consciousness of right, especially the one of 'the right to privacy', of the citizens in our country has been evidently raised. In December 2002, the Civil Law (draft) that has been brewed for years was submitted to the National People's Congress (NPC) of China for consideration, in which 'the right to privacy of citizens' is one of the hot issues concerned by the people. The protection of the right to privacy is an important symbol of the modern civilization. With the foundation and the improvement of the system of law, and the raising of the people's consciousness of the right, the defects and shortage of the law in our country gradually emerge. The problem of the tort of the right to privacy gradually stands out, especially with the development of the science, technology, network and the technique of surveillance. These issues have attracted comprehensive consideration from the society, especially which of the modern China. The right to privacy, which is very important, is the necessary consequence of the development of the system ruled by law. However, in real society, due to the inequality of the people in status, possession and other social resource, the benefit of the group that in a relative inferior level is often neglected. The group in superior level may infringe upon the benefit of than in inferior level when the benefit of them conflicts with each other. The most typical case is the conflict between the right to know of the employers that is on behalf of their economic benefit and the right to privacy of the employees that is on behalf of their personality one.The employers have believed for a long time that it is necessary to take surveillance on the work of employees. The range of the surveillance in the past was just limited in examining the selling data, tracing the satisfaction degree of the client and the final outcome of the work. However, with the comprehensive application of the advanced high-tech surveillant equipment in the enterprise, on the one hand the employers believe that they have the right and the responsibility to surveil the entire working place, not just settling for examining the basic work status and the product quality, in order to find out the behaviors of the employees that infringe upon the benefit of the enterprise, such as stealing, malpractice, shirking, sabotage, seeking self-interest and revealing business secret, etc. Additionally, the employers also expect to know as more as possible the private data of the employees, such as the health condition, the records of criminal or misconduct, etc, so that to employ more excellent staffs or managers to improve the work efficiency. On the other hand, the employees believe that they should have some private space even though in a working place, and should work in a place with environment of freedom, uncontrolledness and interrespect. Even for the employers, it should also be forbidden to arbitrarily control the employees' words and deeds or examine their private dada, and otherwise it was a tort of the right to privacy. The conflict between the two sides in the employment is actually one between the different benefits of them. Concretely, it is the conflict between the right to know of the employers that is on behalf of their economic benefit and the right to privacy of the employees that is on behalf of their spiritual one.In this paper, by analyzing the concrete case of tort of the right to privacy performed by the employers to the employees in working places, we have argued the rationality and the necessity of the protection of the right to privacy of the employees in working places and proposed detailed application schemes; by analyzing the rationality and the necessity of the right to know of the employers that is opposite to the right to privacy of the employees, we have redetermined the reasonable boundary and the execution radius of their respective benefit; by analyzing the reason and the essential of the right inflict between them, we have scaled and balanced their benefit and proposed the solutions and the methods in the aspect of nomology, economics and sociology. In the process of this solution, the author hopes, in the one hand, to protect the personality benefit of the employees in a relative inferior level in order to realize the essential character of the civil law, i.e., protecting and respecting human rights no matter where one is and in spite of one's status and economic condition; one the other hand, the author also hopes to realize the maximum economic benefit of the employers. In the precondition of maintaining the justice of the law, we can realize the maximum of the social benefit and the value object of the law of justicial and efficient.