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Thursday, October 01, 2020
Things are not going well for the Swedish fashion chain H&M: just hours after the group announced that it would close 250 branches in Germany, the Hamburg commissioner for data protection issued a fine of one million dollars for violations of the Data Protection.
Swedish fashion giant Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) is said to pay a fine of 35.3 million euros for spying on employees. The Hamburg commissioner for data protection, Johannes Caspar, justified the decree by monitoring hundreds of employees at the service center in Nuremberg. The present case documents a serious disregard for the protection of employee data.
“The amount of the fine imposed is, therefore, adequate and adequate to dissuade companies from violating the privacy of their employees,” he emphasized. The case is the responsibility of the Hamburg Data Protection Commissioner, because the company has its German headquarters in the Hanseatic city.
The case became known last year. According to the authority, information on their private living conditions has been extensively recorded and stored for some of the employees since at least 2014. After the holidays and sick leave, the superiors reportedly held a “Welcome Talk” and then In several cases, they not only documented specific vacation experiences, but also symptoms of illness and diagnoses.
Documented private problems and religion
Some superiors had also “acquired extensive knowledge of their employees’ private lives through personal and on-the-floor discussions, ranging from harmless details to family problems and religious beliefs,” he said. Caspar has expressly valued positively the efforts of the group’s management “to compensate those affected on site and regain confidence in the company as an employer.” This clearly demonstrates the will to “give those affected the respect and appreciation they deserve in their daily work.”
Shortly before, the group had announced that it wanted to reduce the number of businesses by around 250 next year, despite the group’s recovery from the crisis. As is already known, the retailer managed to return to the black in the summer quarter after H&M posted losses in the second quarter, which was particularly affected by the pandemic.
According to the company, 166 of the total of about 5,000 H&M branches are currently closed. By the end of the quarter, more than 200 stores had not restarted. However, the pandemic also had a strong impact in the third quarter.
