The Court of Cassation clarified this without mincing words: conversations exchanged on company chats can be read and used by the employer for disciplinary purposes, at least when there is a well-founded suspicion of illicit behaviour. This is not a violation of privacy, but the legitimate use of a work tool.
The decision comes from a ruling regarding the dismissal for just cause of an Amazon human resources manager, which took place in 2020. The manager was dismissed after the company acquired and analyzed the messages exchanged in an internal work chat.
From those conversations emerged undue pressure in the selection of a candidate, a non-transparent change of evaluation and even an agreement on how to hinder internal checks initiated by the company. All elements that led to the dismissal and which, according to the judges, fully justified the employer’s intervention.
When and why your boss can access work chats
The central point of the ruling is the nature of corporate chat. For the Court of Cassation it is not comparable to a WhatsApp group between colleagues: it is a work tool, designed for service communications. Although it can, in fact, be used for personal or out-of-hours messages, this does not change its main function. Precisely for this reason, the data and information contained in the chat can be used “for all purposes”, including disciplinary ones.
Then there is another key step: the so-called “defensive checks“. The Court reiterates that the employer can carry out controls, including technological ones, when they serve to protect the company from illicit behavior attributable to individual employees. But under a precise condition: there must be a well-founded suspicion, based on concrete evidence. A generalized or preventive control is not permitted, but a targeted intervention to ascertain an illicit act.
In the Amazon case, the Court of Cassation also underlined an often underestimated aspect: information to workers. The company policy explicitly prohibited the use of IT systems for illicit purposes and clearly warned that chats could be used for disciplinary purposes in the presence of irregularities. Those rules were easily consultable and were referred to in the employment contract. In other words, the manager knew — or should have known — what he was getting into.
This ruling must be read together with another Supreme Court decision, of an opposite nature, which dates back to last March. In that case the judges had established that the messages exchanged in a WhatsApp group limited to colleagues could not justify dismissal, even if offensive or racist. The principle of secrecy of communications had prevailed there, because it was a private space, not a corporate tool.
The boundary, therefore, is clear: work chats and business tools are not free zones. If the employer has a well-founded suspicion of wrongdoing and has correctly informed employees about the rules of use, he can read those conversations and use them against those who make mistakes. Thinking that you are “safe” just because you write in chat, in this context, is an illusion.
