NETHERLANDS ANTILLES LABOR LAW (VII)
Court termination for a serious cause
Each party may request the competent Court to terminate the employment agreement on the basis of a serious cause. A serious cause may be an urgent cause that has not previously been invoked to terminate the employment agreement immediately, or a change in the circumstances of such a nature that the employment reasonably should be terminated instantly or on short notice. The procedure is widely used as a proper alternative for the DDLA procedure as mentioned above.
All relevant facts related to the grounds for the requested termination must be presented and explained to the Court. Each party has the right to be heard. If the Court grants the termination, it fixes an effective termination date. This termination does not have retroactive effect. Neither a DDLA permit nor a period of notice is required.
If the Court grants termination because of a change in the circumstances, it may award the employee a compensation. Compensation will be awarded if the Court deems such fair under the given circumstances.
Karel Frielink
Attorney (Lawyer) / Partner
Dear Mr. Frielink,
I was wondering if you could provide me some information about emplyees privacy regarding internal e-mail.
Explanation: an e-mail send by the employee to a colleague in confidentiality was read by system administrator.
Thank you in advance for your information.
Best regards,
Jeanette Hooker-Soliana
Thank you for your question. Many employees make use of electronic mail (e-mail) during business hours, sometimes for excessive personal use. Many of them do not know the extent of their privacy rights regarding their company-provided e-mail accounts. They believe that personal e-mail messages sent from work are protected from their employer’s scrutiny: this is not true. Netherlands Antilles law provides little guidance as far as e-mail monitoring is concerned.
In my opinion, as long as an employer has legitimate business justifications, e-mail monitoring is justified. Examples of justifications: the company’s reputation, employee productivity and preventing employee disclosure of company secrets. However, the moment it is clear that the e-mail communications are of a private nature only (e.g. when the employee uses the sub-folder ‘private’) and there is no reason to believe that such e-mails affect the company’s legitimate interests in any way, the privacy rights should prevail.
As far as your question is concerned there is no conclusive case-law yet. I recommend that employers draft a detailed and clearly written electronic communications policy to be distributed to the employees before any monitoring begins.
Kind regards,
Karel Frielink
Attorney / Lawyer