Dive Brief:

• Ars Technica reports that a Central California woman claims she was fired after uninstalling an app that her employer required her to run constantly on her company-issued iPhone—an app that tracked her 24/7.
• Plaintiff Myrna Arias, a former Bakersfield sales executive for money transfer service Intermex, claims in a state court lawsuit that her boss, John Stubits, fired her shortly after she uninstalled the job-management Xora app that she and her colleagues were required to use.
• The suit, which claims invasion of privacy, retaliation, unfair business practices, and other allegations, seeks damages in excess of $500,000 and asserts she was monitored on the weekends when she was not working. ARS Tecnica reports Intermex did not immediately respond for comment.

Dive Insight:

Using GPS apps to track employees during working hours certainly is not unheard of, but an article in the National Law Review, written by Lillian Chaves Moon, an employment lawyer with Jackson Lewis, says "employers should consider whether employees have a reasonable expectation of privacy when using the equipment on which the GPS device is to be attached or installed."

Other sound advice for HR leaders in the article include "policies should be carefully drafted to explain the legitimate business purpose, circumstances under which monitoring will take place, notice of the company’s right to monitor employee actions while using Company owned property, the GPS monitoring capabilities of the Company-issued property, and that employees should not have an expectation of privacy while using the same."