The Company has notified us that they plan to ask all of our Alcatel-Lucent members to fill out an on-line form confirming whether they are citizens of the United States, and if not, stating their other citizenship.  They claim this is necessary to abide by a law requiring the identification of EXPORT activity of certain technology and technological information to foreign countries. 

When we asked what that has to do with our members, they said they are interpreting the law to mean that if one employee gives a piece of equipment (or a technical document) to another employee, and if that other employee turns out to be a “foreign national,” that is considered an “export.”  Therefore, they have to be sure of everyone’s nationality.

It sounds far-fetched to us and I am sure it does to you too.  It sounds a lot like “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING” and we want no part of it.

They say they need to create a new data base of every employee’s (and contractor’s) nationality to comply with the requirement.

We had several objections:

1) We believe the interpretation of the regulation is much too broad and there is absolutely no need to collect this information from every employee.

2) The Company already has the information they need from our I-9s and employment applications.

3) They say the information they already have is not easily accessible, which brings us to our third point – this company has a terrible record of safeguarding our personal information and we don’t want to give them more information they can lose.

4) We do not believe they will get the information from the thousands of contractors they have in every area of the business.

Based on all that, our recommendation to our members is NOT to fill out the on-line forms.  At this point the Company is telling us it is a “request” so we say, “Don’t do it.”  If they do try to require it, please let us know so we can follow up with the Company.

In Unity,

Ralph V. Maly
Vice President
Communications & Technologies