The boss installed a program that spy on the employee's computer: now she is required to return her salary, because she does not work much

A Canadian accountant will have to reimburse his employer for "theft of time". The reason is quite simple - the company's software determined that the employee was performing personal tasks while claiming to be working. The court ruling marks one of the first times that such technology has been used to force an employee to pay damages to an employer for inaction in the workplace. The edition told in more detail CBS News.

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Carly Bess, an employee at accounting firm Reach CPA in Vancouver, Canada, claims she was wrongfully fired and owed $5000 in unpaid wages and severance pay by her employer.

The employer said that he fired her because she was stealing time. The owner of the company has filed a counterclaim seeking the return of more than $2600 of wages paid to her during the time when the employee was not working, as well as part of the advance she received in advance.

More and more companies are installing time tracking software on their employees' computers. Such a program monitors employees and sees what they do on the computer during working hours. According to employers, this should make remote employees work more efficiently. Some critics say that such surveillance amounts to espionage and violates the basic rights of employees.

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In October 2022, the National Labor Relations Board raised concerns about the growing electronic surveillance of employees by employers and its potential interference with their right to privacy.

NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo announced her intention to "protect employees to the fullest extent possible from intrusive or abusive electronic monitoring and automated control practices that tend to violate Title 7 rights."

Section 7 protects the right of workers to keep certain activities confidential from their employer.

Bess said she initiated meetings with a personal manager in February 2022 to improve her performance. The employer then installed time tracking software called TimeCamp on her work laptop.

A month later, the company said that they found Bess behind her work schedule.

There was also a discrepancy between recording her activity in time-tracking software and how she recorded her time manually. From Feb. 22 to March 25, the firm reported that Bess, according to the tracking software log, recorded nearly 51 hours on her timesheets during which she was not completing work tasks.

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According to the Civil Tribunal, Canada's first online court, screen recordings from TimeCamp ended up proving that it was engaged in "time theft." The video shows what documents the user is opening and how long they interact with them, and the software distinguishes between work and non-work activities, such as video streaming. It also categorizes activities as "personal" and "work".

Bess claims she typed the documents in question and worked with paper copies, but did not report this to the company. The employer said that her printing activities were limited, so that she could not print the large volume of documents needed for her work.

The court dismissed the plaintiffs' claims and ordered her to pay Reach $1506,34.

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