Company Opening Post

Plazaman

The company I work for has adopted a policy where all incoming mail is now being opened, be it generally addressed to the company or personally addressed to an employee. It used to be that all personally addressed mail was left unopened on the employees desk. While the majority of personally addressed mail is business related, there are times where is it just that - personal mail. The reason I get mail delivered to work rather than home is that my workplace is the otherside of the country and I only get home at weekends. So any letters addressed to me, even if marked Private & Confidential e.g. a bank statement, will be opened, presumably read and then delivered to me.

I remember a postman telling me years ago about restrictions on opening privately addressed post and quoting a piece of legislation or a statute. Does anyone know this legislation? Is this still in place? How can a company override this if so?

P.S. There are already internal work procedures in place where if say I was out sick for a week or two, my immediate colleagues would check post on my desk for business related mail but leave Private & Confidential letters alone.

P.P.S. Obvious solution is to get personal mail sent to home address but wondering anyway.

GerardKeating

Plazaman wrote: »

The company I work for has adopted a policy where all incoming mail is now being opened, be it generally addressed to the company or personally addressed to an employee. It used to be that all personally addressed mail was left unopened on the employees desk. While the majority of personally addressed mail is business related, there are times where is it just that - personal mail. The reason I get mail delivered to work rather than home is that my workplace is the otherside of the country and I only get home at weekends. So any letters addressed to me, even if marked Private & Confidential e.g. a bank statement, will be opened, presumably read and then delivered to me.

I remember a postman telling me years ago about restrictions on opening privately addressed post and quoting a piece of legislation or a statute. Does anyone know this legislation? Is this still in place? How can a company override this if so?

P.S. There are already internal work procedures in place where if say I was out sick for a week or two, my immediate colleagues would check post on my desk for business related mail but leave Private & Confidential letters alone.

P.P.S. Obvious solution is to get personal mail sent to home address but wondering anyway.

There is legislation about opening other peoples post, but if the company name is in the address (along with your name) if might be difficult to argue whose the post it, even if marked "Private and Confidential" .

Michael D Not Higgins

Your employer might reasonably argue that post sent to the company address should only be for company business and that the post is therefore not personal and can be opened. Depending on the size of your company, you could suggest an exception for yourself due to your circumstances.

runawaybishop

Private and confidential means nothing really. If its got the companies name on it then they can open it.

Plazaman

Thanks folks, thought as much. Will just have to get personal post sent home in future.

Ken.

You could go to the post office local to your work and see about getting a postbox there. If it's close you could nip out from work on lunch break once or twice a week.

schemingbohemia

Sorry, but are you living in a car whilst working? Surely you have some sort of accommodation near where you work, just get it sent there. Problem solved, your company are being a bit of a pain, but it's their premises so their rules.

GerardKeating

schemingbohemia wrote: »

Sorry, but are you living in a car whilst working? Surely you have some sort of accommodation near where you work, just get it sent there. Problem solved, your company are being a bit of a pain, but it's their premises so their rules.

The OP could be a Rep, on the road during the week, staying in different hotels etc...

runawaybishop

Any Parcel Motel near you OP?

seamus

The policy itself might actually be getting put in place to deal with the OP.

Handling mail takes effort and manpower. Most companies tolerate small amounts of mail and online orders. But if they saw a persistent pattern; like the OP, someone constantly receiving personal mail, when their job generally wouldn't require them to receive mail, then they're going to wonder what's going on.

The purpose of opening and reading the mail is probably twofold;

1. To catch and bin spam mail
2. To keep track of who is abusing the use of company's mailroom.

Whether they can open it or not is legally fine. It's the same principle as scanning emails. The facility is provided for business purposes, which means that all communications through that medium are the property/responsibility of the business.

My advice would be to switch to online billing for anything which is urgent, and have everything redirected home. Your bank statements can wait till the weekend.

Valentine1

A company is entitled to open any mail it receives at its premises or return it if it has been sent to the wrong address.

OP you don't have any legal right to have personal post delivered to your work without your employers permission. Presumably the Company have personal use policies relating to both email and post and I imagine you are in breach of them.

Either get permission or make other arrangements for you mail.

No Pants

I used to work at a company in the UK and they used to open the mail. It wasn't personal mail, so I didn't car much, but occasionally it would be sensitive information regarding another employee. I did ask the one or two people who would do it to stop, but they didn't.

A guy on my team then heard me complain about this. He immediately opened Word, typed out "Stop reading my ****ing mail you ****ing nosy *****!", printed it, stuck it in an envelope, addressed it to me and popped it in the post.

They stopped opening my mail.

Carawaystick

Valentine1 wrote: »

A company is entitled to open any mail it receives at its premises or return it if it has been sent to the wrong address.

OP you don't have any legal right to have personal post delivered to your work without your employers permission. Presumably the Company have personal use policies relating to both email and post and I imagine you are in breach of them.

Either get permission or make other arrangements for you mail.

as a company is a person, your post reads
"a person is entitled to open any mail it receives at it's premises"

If a natural person got incorrectly addressed post, I doubt they would be legally entitled to open it. Why would a legal person?

If you lived in a house with another person, would you open their mail?

Valentine1

Carawaystick wrote: »

as a company is a person, your post reads
"a person is entitled to open any mail it receives at it's premises"

If a natural person got incorrectly addressed post, I doubt they would be legally entitled to open it. Why would a legal person?

If you lived in a house with another person, would you open their mail?

There is a difference between a company and person so you changing the meaning of my sentence there. A Company is a legal person not natural person and the two are quite different.

Your analogy isn't valid as the OP doesn't live at the Company's premises, as unlike someone in a house share he works there and doesn't have the right to have personal mail delivered there without the company's agreement.

As the OP is an employee of the Company the company is entitled to open post addressed to its employee at their premises.

Carawaystick

Valentine1 wrote: »

There is a difference between a company and person so you changing the meaning of my sentence there. A Company is a legal person not natural person and the two are quite different.

Your analogy isn't valid as the OP doesn't live at the Company's premises, as unlike someone in a house share he works there and doesn't have the right to have personal mail delivered there without the company's agreement.

As the OP is an employee of the Company the company is entitled to open post addressed to its employee at their premises.

How is this different to a child working for a sole trader parent? Where the child gets a letter sent to the address of the sole trader parent?

usernamegoes

Michael D Not Higgins wrote: »

Your employer might reasonably argue that post sent to the company address should only be for company business and that the post is therefore not personal and can be opened. Depending on the size of your company, you could suggest an exception for yourself due to your circumstances.

You have a reasonable expectation of privacy in work as well.

If you job want you to stop getting personal mail they should not allow it.

Valentine1

Carawaystick wrote: »

How is this different to a child working for a sole trader parent? Where the child gets a letter sent to the address of the sole trader parent?

I'm not sure that this is a genuine question really, the two situations are utterly unrelated and in no way analogous to each other.