LONG POST: Long time lurker here…I want to get you guys opinion about this. First some background: my fiancé has been the HR manager for a local transportation company for nearly a year. She’s smart, incredibly professional, hard working, very sweet and someone I’m lucky to be with. She’s had a hard time in her job and has had to deal with many challenges ranging from:
-being promised things like remote work during the hiring process and the company going back on that
-a lot of DOT things that she was never informed she needed to do/were part of her job
-her coworkers snitching on her about her work ethic and times she works (yet she’s actually one of the hardest workers there)
-the owner of the company constantly criticizing whether she gets her work done, and a few months ago forcing her to go from salary to hourly since he believes salaried employees MUST work 8-5 M-F and he clearly believed she doesn’t do that much work (jokes on him…it happened right before a time my fiancé had to work several 60-70 hour weeks so more money for her!!)
-her not feeling valued or appreciated constantly even though she’s learning the company
There’s others but regardless she has grown to not love the job at all. I’ve pushed her to stay until we get married next month and potentially move states, to help us financially and she has. Lately it’s just been stressful so she has dropped the ball on a few things the past few weeks just with life and the wedding and her health ramping up.
She’s been sick all week and her boss told her today not to work at all and asked for her password to her email. Obviously something was up so she decided to go in and meet with her boss…essentially while she was sick her boss was curious about a few things that she was behind on and went into my fiancés office, onto her work computer and saw that my fiancés personal Google account was logged in and decided to go through her history (and maybe email…? Idk). She saw my fiancé searching for stuff for our move, other jobs, the wedding etc during work hours. She then said that she has lost trust in my fiancé and doesn’t think this position is for her anymore. (Even though the things my fiancé was behind on are things her boss has been behind on before).
ANYWAYS, her boss said she was going to chat with the owner over the weekend and see what their action steps will be on Monday… My fiancé honestly wishes that they were just fire her so that way she can collect unemployment, and I’m urging my fiancé to start looking for new jobs. But my big question is this: even though she was logged in on a work computer was it legal what her boss did, knowingly go through her personal Google accounts? I saw something about the Stored Communications Act and it sounds like this is in violation.
PS: I just got onto her Google account and signed out of all of the work computers that she was signed on and attempt to stop her boss from making any screenshots or printed evidence from her personal accounts.
Any thoughts or advice? She honestly doesn’t want to stay anymore but I’m wondering what action we can take if something like this wasn’t legal. Thanks 🙂