6 ms·

Everyone replying with "what's the big deal?" is showing their tech privilege. You may not have to deal with intrusive monitoring, but warehouse workers are inc

• JanisErdmanis 2y ago
  > Plenty of jobs require you to hand your social media passwords to your employer. Can you elaborate with examples or references?
  • paxys 2y ago
    Why exactly do you think a half dozen states have passed laws specifically banning it? https://www.foley.com/insights/publications/2024/03/ny-social-media-privacy-protections-3-12-2024/ https://www.foley.com/insights/publications/2024/03/ny-socia...
  • topkai22 2y ago
    Here is one https://www.aclu.org/documents/employers-schools-and-social-networking-privacy https://www.aclu.org/documents/employers-schools-and-social-...
  • heymijo 2y ago
    “Kochland” includes a chapter on warehouse operations that tracked workers’ activity down to the minute (each conversation and bathroom trip had to be accounted for) and posted their performance rankings on a bulletin board. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/books/review-kochland-secret-history-koch-industries.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/books/review-kochland-sec...
• vundercind 2y ago
  > Not everyone is able to say "no" to all this and still make rent next month. I'm happy the government is finally stepping in. More good news is that since workplace surveillance is already heavily-limited by law in some other highly-productive developed-economy states, this shit’s all probably pointless anyway. Just one of many cases of execs going full “seeing like a state” and wanting everything down to the finest detail to be “legible” and able to sort-by on a spreadsheet, even when it’s actually just noise.
• manuelmoreale 2y ago
  Not arguing against your points but I'm wondering if this is more a US related issue? I never heard this being a thing here in the EU but maybe it's just me being unaware of all the various situations. I don't know anyone who works from home (whether in tech and in other sectors) that has to deal with all that nonsense.
  • fnordian_slip 2y ago
    Germany reporting in, couldn't see that becoming a thing here. I have about 99% wfh currently, and if my employer would try to implement something like that, the union would probably not even have time to get involved because the works council ("Betriebsrat", not sure if that's a good translation) would swat it down instantly. It sounds insane, but believable for the US (but that might be my bias showing, I've always heard bad things about worker's rights in the US).
    • manuelmoreale 2y ago
      Yeah I’m in Italy and I don’t know anyone who’s dealing with all that nonsense that’s why I was wondering if this is a US thing.
    • Zak 2y ago
      The fact that you have a Betriebsrat along with strong unions is why that sort of thing doesn't happen. Many European countries have works councils with a similar union-adjacent role. I'm not aware of an equivalent in the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council
  • pjc50 2y ago
    GDPR prevents most of this. There are rules about email snooping, for example: https://www.edps.europa.eu/data-protection/data-protection/reference-library/private-use-electronic-communications-workplace_en https://www.edps.europa.eu/data-protection/data-protection/r... (presumably someone will be along to say that this is the EU destroying businesses by not allowing them 100% power over the lives of their employees)
  • 2y ago
• quectophoton 2y ago
  Last year when I started looking for jobs I landed a job in a company that did consulting services. All looked fine on the outside, but when I joined I found out they are doing software for this kind of stalking, and even use AI to classify employees as "productive", "not productive", and other criteria based on their computer's activity. I noped the hell out of there without even having spent a week working for them. The fact that they even accepted those kind of jobs told me our sense of ethics was way too different, and I didn't want to contribute to that. If it were "just" web tracking, then I would be able to (barely) accept it, if a bit reluctantly. But that's more or less where I draw the line. I still haven't found a job since then, and I'm currently barely surviving through freelance gigs. Professionally speaking, leaving that job might have been a mistake; but I still think it was the correct decision.
  • sanitycheck 2y ago
    I'd have done the same, and have done before when I've found myself on client projects related to online gambling (the business model is to milk addicts for everything they have and more, don't listen to anyone who says otherwise). I know if I don't do it someone else will so it doesn't really make a difference - but at least I can retain some sense that I'm not the kind of person who does bad things, and that's worth something. With web tracking you can at least be 'careless' in your implementation and 'accidentally' make it not work very well because most of the time nobody will ever test it properly. No way to get away with that with this "Bossware" stuff, it'll be in active use all the time. Hope you find something better soon.
    • quectophoton 2y ago
      > With web tracking you can at least be 'careless' in your implementation and 'accidentally' make it not work very well because most of the time nobody will ever test it properly. And users can normally install tracking blockers, either in browser or DNS-based (in your home's router), to at least prevent some thirdparty stuff from loading, so that's some defense against it. Of course it's not always possible. But the chances that a user can do something against a web service tracking them are still better when compared to an employer's in-device tracking.
• Dalewyn 2y ago
  >install always-on keyloggers and other monitoring software on their personal computers and phones 1. WTF is anyone doing using their personal belongings for their work? Cleanly and clearly demarcating personal and professional is CYA 101, for both employee and employer. 2. WTF is the employer doing if they don't provide all necessary tooling for the job prescribed? 3. WTF are you doing working for above employer? I sympathize not everyone can do so, but the only way such bullshit will change is if enough of the workforce says "nope" and quits for greener pastures.
  • ghaff 2y ago
    Especially when I was traveling a lot I routinely used my personal laptop and phone all the time. You can WTF all you like but situations do differ.
  • LiquidSky 2y ago
    3. WTF are you doing working for above employer? I sympathize not everyone can do so, but the only way such bullshit will change is if enough of the workforce says "nope" and quits for greener pastures. ...this is exactly what the parent comment is talking about. People take these jobs because you need money to live and not everyone has the luxury of being able to turn down jobs with shitty conditions. Employers take advantage of this and do things like require their employees to use their personal belongings. 1. WTF is anyone doing using their personal belongings for their work? Cleanly and clearly demarcating personal and professional is CYA 101, for both employee and employer. 2. WTF is the employer doing if they don't provide all necessary tooling for the job prescribed? Because then they don't have to spend any company money.
  • mrgoldenbrown 2y ago
    1 and 2 is how all the gig companies like Uber, door dash, amazon delivery etc work. The line between personal and professional has been blurred intentionally by the big employers. This helps them CYA as you phrase it.
  • BeetleB 2y ago
    Regarding 1: Not everyone wants to buy a burner phone to do 2 factor authentication. And many (most?) employers won't provide one just for this. The real evil are companies that require you to use a phone for 2 factor authentication and assert that they have the right to examine your phone because you use it for work purposes.
• steve_rambo 2y ago
  This is crazy to read. I live in what you consider a highly authoritarian and non-free society and can't imagine something like this happening here. Lower paid jobs are even more privileged in some ways: for example, in many companies you can just not show up for work for a couple of days if you feel like it, and the worst thing you can expect is a small pay cut at the end of the month.
  • Filligree 2y ago
    America is a strange place, that’s for sure. It doesn’t look any saner from here in Europe.
    • resource_waste 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • saagarjha 2y ago
        Turns out that happiness is not all about air conditioning or sitting in a car.
  • tracker1 2y ago
    It will really vary. Most places I've worked, even in lower paid jobs in my later teens, they're pretty lenient and understanding with personal/sick time.
    • Repulsion9513 2y ago
      I have found, between the span of $8/hour and $88,000/year, that the amount of tracking (and also the amount of "if you have time to lean you have time to clean"-type busywork) is very close to inversely proportional to income in the US.
• resource_waste 2y ago
  >I'm happy the government is finally stepping in. As a small player, I'm always afraid of this. Two of my companies died because of legal stuff that was outside the economics I could front.
  • brianmcc 2y ago
    if "don't aggressively spy on your employees" puts you out of business what on earth's your business model?
    • resource_waste 2y ago
      I read this as: "remove management" Doesnt that sound great? Cheaper, less subjective. And sure, its cheaper to let Asia do it. They don't have the regulations. Get in-line and work for the established players!
• underlipton 2y ago
  Well-positioned workers have little recognition of what lower-paid or lower-prestige labor has to deal with, even a few years out of such work. And when they know, they rarely understand. Seemingly small or innocuous things can make a massive difference in your experience at an employer. It was surprisingly frustrating having to throw my phone into a locker at my $16/hr warehouse job like I was entering a SCIF when, really, they just wanted to cut down on people taking photos of OSHA violations. The joke is that it was easy to use their disposition system to sneak photos to my email. Which is to say, this class of policy/tech just encourages people to find undocumented (read: insecure) ways to retain their at-work QoL.
• next_xibalba 2y ago
  I can't find a single source for your claim that warehouse workers are being made to wear ankle bracelets. The closest I see is an Amazon patent from 2018. This kind of hyperbole is not helpful to conversations like this. I've worked in factories and seen the degree to which productivity is an issue. I actually lobbied for us to use the time tracking that was already available to us via our ERP, and management declined. Humans are lazy by default. We seek the highest return on our effort. Building great things (i.e. making life better) requires us to fight this instinct. Additionally, I have seen absurd abuse of WFH/remote since COVID among co-workers. There have been instances where I truly cannot wrap my head around someone seeing it as anything but theft. I don't particularly like being monitored either, but I definitely understand the motivation for monitoring or RTO initiatives.
  • paxys 2y ago
    It is literally mentioned in the article, but sure.
    • next_xibalba 2y ago
      It is not. If I'm wrong, please quote the exact line in full.
      • elicksaur 2y ago
        As pointed out elsewhere in the thread, the distinction of where a wearable device is worn on the body is not the most important point to most people. I don’t see how someone can read the various articles about how closely workers are monitored in warehouses these days and be this defensive about the surveillance practices. Do you work for a tech company that uses a lot of warehouses? ;)
  • ttyprintk 2y ago
    Nice try. The memo from NLRB mentioned in the article makes the claim. National Law Review is the top search result on Kagi: https://natlawreview.com/article/nlrb-general-counsel-issues-memorandum-electronic-monitoring-employees https://natlawreview.com/article/nlrb-general-counsel-issues...
• hammock 2y ago
  > warehouse workers are increasingly being made to wear ankle bracelets so every movement of theirs can be monitored and stack ranked. Aha! The true use case for Neuralink - bossware installed in your brain, for knowledge workers.
  • next_xibalba 2y ago
    [flagged]
• brianmcc 2y ago
  Plus workers in tech are absolutely not immune to this stuff and nobody should be complacent. "They can't monitor me because I spent my morning mentor Alan the Junior at his desk" - that may be so but it won't stop them from trying, and the lag from deploying bad business intiatives to realising they're bad can be months or years in the making.
• t0bia_s 2y ago
  -> I'm happy the government is finally stepping in. Why are you happy from taking learning process and responsibility from individuals? With regulation of sick mindset you potentially keep alive edited form of it. Instead employees should really refuse to be part of those illegal activity and let company die naturally. This learn both sides.