German data protection authorities said on Wednesday that they fined the Swedish clothing chain H&M more than 35 million euros for illegal “surveillance” of their employees.
The amount is the highest fine for such violations in Germany since its most recent data protection legislation came into force, in a country known for jealously protecting the right to privacy.
Business executives at the group’s Nuremberg service center were found to have delved too deeply into their employees’ private lives and received information “ranging from fairly harmless details to family problems and religious beliefs”.
Detailed “symptoms of disease and diagnoses” were also recorded and stored digitally, the German data protection officer said in a statement.
“The current case documents a serious disregard for data protection for employees on the H & M website in Nuremberg,” says Johannes Caspar, the Commissioner for Data Protection in Hamburg, where H & M’s German arm is based.
“The level of fines is therefore appropriate and appropriate to deter companies from infringing on the privacy of their employees.”
The data protection officer said that managers at the service center had “welcome back” conversations with employees after their return from illness or vacation.
Symptoms and diagnoses of illness as well as holiday experiences were documented and made available to up to 50 managers.
The data collection had been stored since at least 2014 and only became known when the recordings were available to the entire company for a few hours in October 2019 due to a computer error.
H&M said it would “carefully examine the decision” and added that “practice in processing Nuremberg employee data was inconsistent with H & M’s policies and instructions.”
“After the incident was discovered and reported, H&M immediately initiated far-reaching measures at the Nuremberg service center,” the company said.
“H&M takes full responsibility and wishes to express an unconditional apology to Nuremberg employees.”
The Germans value integrity, which is manifested in their continued high use of banknotes and coins rather than credit cards. It is often considered a hangover from oppressive surveillance under the Nazis and East German Stasis.