Management efficiency versus data protection: jurisdictional reactivity to "human rights inflation" (at work)?

Commentary on the Ruling of the Constitutional Court 160/2021, of 4 October

Abstract

The Spanish Constitutional Court has concluded that it does not violate the right to data protection to use for disciplinary purposes, by the company, the recordings made in their workplace of an employed person despite the fact that the company committed, through a collective agreement, only a formative use. Determining the specific scope of the collective agreement is a matter that corresponds to ordinary jurisdiction, but it would remain outside the walls of the right to data protection. In this way, the Spanish Constitutional Court underestimates the role of collective autonomy in improving the guarantees of the right to data protection, thereby departing from the approach of European Union Law (art. 88 General Protection Regulation of Data). It is not an isolated case, but is part of a judicial policy of devaluation of the human right to data protection in work environments.