Employer said too much to former employee's prospective employer
An Alberta employer was within its rights to tell workers a particular employee wasn’t working there anymore but shouldn’t have told a prospective employer about a non-work-related request for his personnel file, a privacy adjudicator has ruled.
Clean Harbors Lodging Services, a provider of lodging services to the refining and petrochemical industries based in Edmonton, was accused by a former employee of violating the employee’s privacy rights under Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) by revealing information about his termination to other staff members and the fact he requested his personnel file to a prospective employer.
After the former employee left the company, he became concerned that Clean Harbor told inaccurate information about his departure to new employees. The former employee also thought the company’s vice-president told a co-ordinator the former employee was fired. The former employee emailed the co-ordinator, who confirmed the vice-president revealed the information to him.
When the former employee applied for a job elsewhere, the prospective employer came to Clean Harbors for information and Clean Harbours disclosed that the former employee had requested his personnel file.
The vice-president claimed he only told the co-ordinator that it was company policy to advertise for new positions rather than automatically rehire former staff and the former employee couldn’t be rehired for that reason. He denied revealing anything about the circumstances of the former employee’s termination and the co-ordinator may have assumed certain facts about the dismissal.
An adjudicator for the Alberta Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner found there was no evidence to back up the former employee’s claim Clean Harbors revealed inaccurate information to other staff members. There was only evidence the vice-president said he was a former employee, not how his employment ended.
Clean Harbor admitted it told the prospective employer about the request for his personnel file. The adjudicator found the request was of an HR nature and occurred after the end of his employment, so it was not work-related. This qualified as personal information and Clean Harbour should not have disclosed it without consent, said the adjudicator.
Clean Harbor argued PIPA allowed organizations to disclose personal employee information without consent if it was disclosed to another organization looking to recruit the employee, but the adjudicator found the request for a personnel file had nothing to do with recruitment.
