What are the rights of an employee?

What are my rights as an employee and how can I protect my personal information?

• Have anyone heard of a company called Auditos.com by HMS? They claim to have been hired by my company to audit my personal information. They want both of my wife and both of my sons data. I called HR. They say they do not know who these people are. But apparently the union that we belong to has hired them. I already had faxed them some documents before I checked with my company HR (they claim they do not know anything about this). Now I am seriously concerned. After many years of employment, the union has hired a third party company (HMS) to "audit" some employees personal data for "benefit verification" (that is what Auditos claims). Personally, I am very uncomfortable with handing out my personal data to some company with a shady web page. When I got hired in to the company years ago when I was hired, I supplied my company with all of my legal documents and I also did a even a pee test. I also know that I did not sign up to hand out our personal data to a third party. I am perfectly OK with giving HR all of the data again. But to fax a bunch of sensitive stuff like SS#s, tax returns, marriage license, .....to some company with shady web page is questionable to me. Would somebody tell me if this process is legal and how can I protect our sensitive information. There are so many shady companies that collect people's personal information and sell them to the highest bidders. I just do not want to add to my personal data their inventory. Basically, how ethical is this process and what are my rights as an employee? Thanks for your answers.

• Answer:

  Why did you just hand over data. The union works for you, you pay them to represent you. I don't think there can be a reasonable cause for them to need to know personal things about your children. In your shoes I would be going to the union and asking. If they say yes, you say no. And if no is not good enough you say I resign and once I am out of here I will be going to the work force and telling them about what your doing. The more I read your question the more I cant believe a responsible union would do this. If they did it would be breaching your privacy. They have no need to know your tax details. Your marriage license is also not their business. Anyone who shares this stuff is silly. BTW. Anyone can ask you for anything. Before answering them you have to ask your self is. Am I obliged to provide this information. In this case. NO. BTW. Are you in Australia?