BOSS PROBABLY SPIES ON YOU, SURVEY SHOWS.

Byline: Maggie Jackson Associated Press 

Feel like the boss is watching your every move? You might be right.

Nearly two-thirds of employers videotape workers, review their computer files or record their voice mail, e-mail or phone calls, the American Management Association said Thursday as it released a survey that provides the most substantive look yet at the prevalence of employer spying.

Moreover, the AMA said, as many as a quarter of companies that spy don't tell their employees.

In almost all cases, the spying is perfectly legal. Short of serious intrusions, such as videotaping the bathroom stalls, little prevents employers from secretly recording and reviewing almost anything a worker does in the workplace.

``Employees are generally at the mercy of employers,'' said Robert Ellis Smith, publisher of the Privacy Journal, an independent monthly. ``There is no protection in the workplace.''

The only federal law that limits employer surveillance comes from the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which bans employer eavesdropping on spoken personal conversations.

Few companies watch all employees all the time, the AMA and Employment Testing magazine said in its survey of 900 midsize and large companies. Companies most often monitor selected workers, using routine spot checks.

Still, the survey's findings - that 63 percent of companies use some surveillance or monitoring, and up to 23 percent of those companies don't tell workers - surprised both the survey's authors and civil-rights advocates.

The most common forms of surveillance are the tallying of phone numbers called and the duration of calls, done by nearly 37 percent of the companies surveyed; videotaping of employees' work, done by nearly 16 percent; storing and reviewing of e-mail, 15 percent; and storing and reviewing computer files, done by nearly 14 percent. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Monitoring ``can work to the customer's benefit,'' said Eric Rolfe Greenberg, who directed the study for the nonprofit management association. ``Supervisors are checking to see that policies are being followed and laws and regulations obeyed.''

It's a matter of respect, says Francklin Etienne, who is suing the Sheraton Boston hotel for secretly videotaping the men's dressing room to ferret out possible drug dealing.

``Every day now when I go to work and when I go to the bathroom, I look for wires,'' the room service waiter said. ``The bosses need to respect you. You don't belong to them. You're not their property.''

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Box/Drawing: (Color) Working for Big Brother

Associated Press