This is the last article you can read this month
You can read more article this month
You can read more articles this month
Sorry your limit is up for this month
Reset on:
Please help support the Morning Star by subscribing here
CLOTHING retailer H&M has been issued a €35.3 million (£32m) fine in Germany for snooping on its workers.
Hamburg’s data-protection commissioner said that the Swedish company collected private information about employees at a customer-service centre in Nuremberg, “ranging from rather harmless details to family issues and religious beliefs.”
The information was recorded on a network drive accessible to up to 50 managers and “used, among other things, to obtain a detailed profile of employees for measures and decisions regarding their employment.”
Data Protection Commissioner Johannes Caspar said the “combination of collecting details about their private lives and the recording of their activities led to a particularly intensive encroachment on employees’ civil rights.”
The spying was only discovered when the data accidentally became briefly visible to everyone on the company network.
H&M said that the Nuremberg activities did not correspond to company guidelines, but it accepted responsibility and apologised to its staff and will compensate spied-on workers.
