Private investigators being hired to conduct surveillance's of employees when they call in sick.

Rick Raymond parked his black Kia SUV behind a row of trees and peered out at his target. It was 4 a.m., and Raymond - a seasoned private detective who has worked roughly 300 cases, from thieves to philandering spouses - was closing in on a different sort of prey.

Raymond recently has come to occupy a new and expanding niche in the surveillance universe. Corporations pay him to spy on workers who take "sick days" when they may not, in fact, be sick.

In what became the landmark case for corporate snooping, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago dismissed her lawsuit. A panel of judges declared that while surveillance "may not be preferred employer behavior," it wasn't unlawful.

According to Susan Kline, a partner at the Baker & Daniels law firm in Indianapolis, the case encouraged companies "to consider hiring their own private detectives." It also set a precedent, she said, that "reasonable suspicion" is sufficient justification for employer spying.

Such techniques have become permissible at a time when workers are more likely to play hooky. Kronos, a workforce productivity firm in Chelmsford, Mass., recently found that 57 percent of salaried employees take sick days when they're not sick - almost a 20 percent increase from statistics gathered between 2006 and 2008.


Link:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/06/BUK81GLNK1.DTL