Legality of voice recording in an office

UDP

Hi,

Hypothetically speaking is it legal for an employee to make a digital voice recording of the employee's manager while making it clear to the manager that he/she is making the recording?

I am thinking of a situation where an employee is being constantly accused of mistakes the employee didn't make i.e. being harassed/bullied. To stop the manager making the accusation the employee could have a digital voice recorder to hand to record the conversation telling the manager each time that he/she is going to record the conversation after which time the manager can stop if he/she doesn't want to be recorded.

Would that be legal?
Would the employee be entitled to do so?
Could the employer legally use the attempt to record against the employee negatively in some way?

Thanks

Frynge

It would be a hell of a lot easier to just use you're company's grievance procedure.

UDP

Frynge wrote: »

It would be a hell of a lot easier to just use you're company's grievance procedure.

Thanks. I am thinking of employment in a very small organisation where is there is no proper grievance procedure e.g. a school and where it would be very hard to prove bullying/harassment since there is no proof other than one person's word against another due to incidents being of a verbal nature.

I see in Laurentiu Eugen Iocob v The Central Hotel (DEC-E2010-147) an audio recording taken covertly was accepted as evidence which suggests its not illegal to do but whether the employer would have the right to tell the employee to stop making attempts to record him/her and bring disciplinary proceedings against the employee if he/she refuses is what I would be interested in especially in the case where the employee only has an oral contract.

ResearchWill

UDP wrote: »

Thanks. I am thinking of employment in a very small organisation where is there is no proper grievance procedure e.g. a school and where it would be very hard to prove bullying/harassment since there is no proof other than one person's word against another due to incidents being of a verbal nature.

I see in Laurentiu Eugen Iocob v The Central Hotel (DEC-E2010-147) an audio recording taken covertly was accepted as evidence which suggests its not illegal to do but whether the employer would have the right to tell the employee to stop making attempts to record him/her and bring disciplinary proceedings against the employee if he/she refuses is what I would be interested in especially in the case where the employee only has an oral contract.

Being a small organisation is no excuse not to have proper procedures. In relation to your question it seems you know the answer. But the admisability of evidence is usually up to the decision maker.

Benbulnen64

Employer attitude to taping and/or admissibility civilly aside, care needs to be taken that you don't potentially run foul of the Surveillance Devices Act and commit a Criminal Offence by doing so ( if done covertly)

ResearchWill

Benbulnen64 wrote: »

Employer attitude to taping and/or admissibility civilly aside, care needs to be taken that you don't potentially run foul of the Surveillance Devices Act and commit a Criminal Offence by doing so ( if done covertly)

The Survailance Act 2009 creates no criminal offence to the best of my knowledge. I am not aware of a survaliance devices act in Ireland. In any event the OP said in the situation the Employee was informing the Manager that recording was taking place.

Benbulnen64

RW how about instead of champing at the bit to leap in and say look at me I know all when you think someone just might have put an extra word in somewhere, you sit back and look at the whole picture.

This poster speaks of recording with the manager's knowledge. What about others reading contributions to this thread who are not legally trained, familiar with statues? Don't they deserve to know that in another scenario where a taping might be done covertly, they may be entering a minefield.

The Surveillance Act 2009 ( shoot me now for inserting the word devices although devices of course play a huge part!) governs such activity. For those
genuinely interested in the area ( i.e.not those like RW just sitting there in poised panting mode hoping to leap into the breach to seize upon real or imagined misstatements of another) John Barry on Cork Online Law Review has written an interesting article on the subject.

seamus

The manager could easily make a counter-claim that the employee's insistence on recording every conversation creates a tense and uncomfortable working environment, and prevents employees from speaking to eachother freely, thereby damaging workplace productivity and so is an act which is contrary to the best interests of the company.

On that basis the employer could take disciplinary action against the employee.

While it's probably technically legal, in a workplace environment you would need to be able to show that you have good reason for making and saving the recordings. Since the intention here is not to record actual conversation but rather to intimidate the manager into not speaking, I suspect this may be very much a legally grey question. At the very least it puts the employee in a compromised position (rather than a stronger one) and is not the preferred way of dealing this this.

ResearchWill

Benbulnen64 wrote: »

RW how about instead of champing at the bit to leap in and say look at me I know all when you think someone just might have put an extra word in somewhere, you sit back and look at the whole picture.

This poster speaks of recording with the manager's knowledge. What about others reading contributions to this thread who are not legally trained, familiar with statues? Don't they deserve to know that in another scenario where a taping might be done covertly, they may be entering a minefield.

The Surveillance Act 2009 ( shoot me now for inserting the word devices although devices of course play a huge part!) governs such activity. For those
genuinely interested in the area ( i.e.not those like RW just sitting there in poised panting mode hoping to leap into the breach to seize upon real or imagined misstatements of another) John Barry on Cork Online Law Review has written an interesting article on the subject.

The only person jumping is you, there are Survaliance Devices Acts in other countries which may make private survaliance illegal. The survaliance Act 2009 has no bearing on this situation as it only applies to AGS, DF and Revenue.

Application of Act.

2.— (1) This Act applies to surveillance carried out by members of the Garda Síochána, members of the Defence Forces and officers of the Revenue Commissioners.

(2) Nothing in this Act shall render unlawful any activity that would otherwise be lawful.

While the tone in my post was in no way getting at any poster, lets look at my post again, "The Survailance Act 2009 creates no criminal offence to the best of my knowledge. I am not aware of a survaliance devices act in Ireland.

You stated in your post that a act created a criminal offence, by implication the OP may have committed an offence, I said to the best of my knowledge the Act did not do so. I then went on to say I was unaware of a Survaliance Devices Act in ireland, I never said there was not one in case there was and I did not know about it. Don't know why you took such offence at my post. It was polite, informed and was very open to be corrected if I was wrong hence why I used words like to the best of my knowledge and I am not aware.

ResearchWill

seamus wrote: »

The manager could easily make a counter-claim that the employee's insistence on recording every conversation creates a tense and uncomfortable working environment, and prevents employees from speaking to eachother freely, thereby damaging workplace productivity and so is an act which is contrary to the best interests of the company.

On that basis the employer could take disciplinary action against the employee.

While it's probably technically legal, in a workplace environment you would need to be able to show that you have good reason for making and saving the recordings. Since the intention here is not to record actual conversation but rather to intimidate the manager into not speaking, I suspect this may be very much a legally grey question. At the very least it puts the employee in a compromised position (rather than a stronger one) and is not the preferred way of dealing this this.

I agree it could possibly be considered by the manager as bullying. It is in Ireland a very grey area, and work place interactions can be littered with minefields.

hullaballoo

Benbulnen64 wrote: »

RW how about instead of champing at the bit to leap in and say look at me I know all when you think someone just might have put an extra word in somewhere, you sit back and look at the whole picture.

This poster speaks of recording with the manager's knowledge. What about others reading contributions to this thread who are not legally trained, familiar with statues? Don't they deserve to know that in another scenario where a taping might be done covertly, they may be entering a minefield.

The Surveillance Act 2009 ( shoot me now for inserting the word devices although devices of course play a huge part!) governs such activity. For those
genuinely interested in the area ( i.e.not those like RW just sitting there in poised panting mode hoping to leap into the breach to seize upon real or imagined misstatements of another) John Barry on Cork Online Law Review has written an interesting article on the subject.

RW is right, there's nothing in the Surveillance Act 2009 that makes what the OP is talking about unlawful.

I don't think he was in any way abrasive or "chomping at the bit". If you have a problem with a post, the correct procedure is to report it. What you are doing is back-seat moderating and a further occurrence of this will result in a ban.

valleyoftheunos

I would think that while lawful, insisting on recording all conversations with a manager would be considered unreasonable and disruptive behaviour in the workplace (no matter how small) and could result in disciplinary action. If an employee has a grievance with a manager there are many ways of dealing with it constructively, this would not be one of them.