Affirmative Action: Re-visited       

Rights

     Increasingly, it seems rights on a personal level will also be an area of affirmative action policy that must be recognized as important.  Special attention should be focused on freedom of information, concerning gay marriage or any other new equality issues which will inevitably arise in the workplace as information access becomes increasingly important.  Employees should have the right to spend their lunch breaks and personal time on the job in any way that does not infringe on someone else’s rights.  Arguably, the welfare of the company does not take precedent over your personal affairs, in this arena the area of privacy is touched on a bit.  For example, in the realm of web/email privacy policies a recent debate has been in Internet filtering software and the banning of access to web based email accounts in companies.  First Union Bank, however has made gallant efforts to include rights for their employees without being sanctioned by the government to do so.  According to the reporter Ramsey a corporate executive at First Union said, “We understood that employees were likely to use the Web for personal reasons anyway, so why make it a ‘crime’?” (Ramsay, 2).  First Union’s ability to recognize employee rights is an important new avenue that should be considered in affirmative action policies, because it takes both the idea of equality and privacy combined and undoubtedly creates a better work environment.