He said because Tony Blair and Cherie Booth are both employment lawyers it was perhaps no surprise that the Government was happy for the courts to define the boundaries of the legislation. The law will force companies to be more explicit about what they regard as good and bad use of phones, e-mail and net surfing said Mr Russell. Stopping surfing There is no doubt that many employees browse the net for personal reasons and send personal e-mail messages on company time. Many companies filter e-mail to stop offensive material being distributed or stop employees visiting websites they consider unsuitable. In July this year a survey of Canadian workers estimated that up to 800 million work hours will be lost in Canada this year because workers are surfing for themselves on company time.
Many workers abuse systems in other ways.
In September Orange sacked 45 people who had been downloading and distributing pornography on company time. Norton Rose is currently representing some companies involved in e-mail disputes and Mr Russell said few of them have any formal policy in place or have spent any time telling employees what their obligations are. The ultimate result of the legal action could be restrictions on what people can do with e-mail and the net.