Chetu, a Florida-based company must pay a remote worker $73,000 for wrongful termination.
The software development company has over 2,800 software developers working on its current contracts. Most are remote workers.
Webcam dispute
The Dutch court ruled for the virtual employee who lives in the Netherlands. It decided that requiring an employee to leave their webcam on is an intrusion of privacy rights. And was “not legally valid.”
Court documents confirm that Chetu must pay its former employee €50,000 (USD 48,500) in fair compensation. Along with €2,700 (USD $2,600) for unpaid salary. An added penalty of €8,373.13 (USD 8,126) for wrongful termination, and previous unpaid holiday allowance.
The employee who wasn’t named in the suit had been with Chetu since 2019.
The company told the worker on August 23rd that webcams must be left on all day for the virtual training program.
The employee refused to say he didn’t “feel comfortable being monitored for 9 hours a day by a camera.”
“This is an invasion of my privacy and makes me feel really uncomfortable,” he told the company. “That’s the reason why my camera isn’t on.”
