American Workers Increase Efforts to Establish a Legal Right to Privacy as Civility Declines in U.S. Society: Some Observations on the Effort and Its Social Context

I. Introduction II. A Summary Argument for the Decline of Civil Society in the United States III. Business Ethics and Attitudes toward Work Support Workers' Rights to Limited Privacy in the Workplace IV. History of Legal Efforts Leading to Workplace Privacy V. Comparison to Other Western Nation States and the European Community VI. Discussion of Workplace Privacy ... A. Essential Elements of Privacy ... B. Reduced Expectations of Privacy in the Workplace ... C. Problem Areas for Workplace Privacy Concepts ... 1. Drug Testing ... 2. Searching Employee Work Areas ... 3. Surveillance of Employees ... a. Capturing Conversations ... b. Monitoring Telephone Calls ... c. E-mail and Computer Monitoring ... d. Regulating Personal Associations VII. Conclusion ... A. Prudence of Using Law to Guarantee Privacy ... B. Problems of Social and Human Costs Left Out of Business Equations ... C. Decline of Civility and Increased Claims of Workplace Privacy: Correlation, Cause, or Coincidence? ... D. Root Cause in At-will Rule and Need for Workers' Bill of Rights? ... E. Circularity of Civility and Privacy: No Shelter Here