WORKPLACE SURVEILLANCE AND EMPLOYEE PRIVACY: A LABOUR LAW PERSPECTIVE IN INDIA

AUTHOR – S. SRINITHI, STUDENT AT SCHOOL OF EXCELLENCE IN LAW, THE TAMIL NADU DR AMBEDKAR LAW UNIVERSITY

BEST CITATION – S. SRINITHI, WORKPLACE SURVEILLANCE AND EMPLOYEE PRIVACY: A LABOUR LAW PERSPECTIVE IN INDIA, INDIAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL REVIEW (IJLR), 6 (5) OF 2026, PG. 849-863, APIS – 3920 – 0001 & ISSN – 2583-2344.

ABSTRACT

The relationship between employer and employee has always involved an element of supervision. The manager walking the floor, the timekeeper at the factory gate, the supervisor reviewing completed work. But the digital revolution has transformed supervision into something qualitatively different: pervasive, continuous, algorithmic surveillance that monitors not just what workers do but how they do it, how long they take, where they go, what they say, and sometimes even how they feel. In contemporary Indian workplaces, employees may be tracked through biometric attendance systems, CCTV cameras, GPS devices in company vehicles, keystroke loggers on company computers, email monitoring software, and algorithmic performance management systems that score every interaction and flag every deviation from expected behaviour. The employer’s justification is always productivity, security, or compliance. The employee’s experience is frequently one of anxiety, distrust, and a pervasive sense of being watched. Indian labour law has not kept pace with this surveillance revolution. There is no comprehensive legislation governing workplace surveillance, no clear standard for what employers may and may not monitor, and no effective remedy for employees whose privacy is violated through excessive or abusive monitoring. The right to privacy, declared a fundamental right by the Supreme Court in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), has not been translated into specific workplace protections. This article examines the tension between legitimate employer interests in supervision and the employee’s fundamental right to privacy, analyses the existing legal framework and its inadequacies, considers how other jurisdictions have balanced these competing interests, and proposes a framework for workplace surveillance regulation that respects both employer needs and employee dignity.

Keywords: Workplace Surveillance, Employee Privacy, Labour Law, Right to Privacy, Biometric Data, Digital Monitoring, GDPR, Personal Data Protection, Employee Rights