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Big Boss is watching you

March 29, 2006

 
According to a recent study by the National Workrights Institute, 92% of employers conducted some form of workplace monitoring.

George Orwell may have been a little off in his dark predictions of a future without privacy, populated by individuals subject to strict control by faceless government agencies.

Some workers' rights advocates believe it is corporate America, not government, that has been emerging as the clearest embodiment of Big Brother - the all-seeing, all-knowing entity in Orwell's novel "1984."

Many Americans take their right to privacy for granted. But most don't realize that this right doesn't extend into the place where they spend most of their waking hours: their workplace.

"People worry a lot about the FBI spying on them," said Lewis Maltby, president of National Workrights Institute, an advocacy group for human rights in the workplace. "But your chances of being spied on by the FBI are one in a million. Your chances of being spied on by your boss are better than 50-50."

From monitoring keystrokes, to video surveillance, to GPS satellite tracking, today's employers are using technology to spy on employees, including checking employee phone calls, Internet connections and computer files.

Corporations can block your e-mail from particular senders, stop you from printing documents deemed too sensitive and record instant-messaging conversations among workers.

And if you use a key card to access your job, your employer knows your exact comings and goings.

The federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 - amended in 2001 - gives employers what privacy experts call pretty much carte blanche. Nancy Flynn, executive director of the ePolicy Institute in Columbus, Ohio, says the provisions of the act can be translated this way: "The computer system is the property of the employer, and as such the employer has the right to monitor Internet activity and e-mail. Employees should have no reasonable expectation to privacy."

Most employers who use forms of surveillance say they notify their employees. The American Management/ePolicy Institute research found that 80% let workers know they're being monitored for computer content, keystrokes and keyboard time; 82% let them know computer files are stored and reviewed; 86%, that e-mail is tracked; and 89%, that Web visits are monitored.

"There is very little, if any, privacy in the workplace, particularly in the private sector," says Jeremy Gruber, legal director of the National Workrights Institute. "Privacy is one of the most-violated principles in the American workplace. People are aware to a degree how much monitoring goes on in the workplace, but most individuals are unaware of how pervasive the lack of privacy is."

Now a growing number of employers have gone a step further.

Officials at Wyckoff Hospital in Brooklyn say they require nurses to wear personal tracking devices to improve care, but the local nursing representative calls the practice a clear violation of privacy, reports ABC.

"These badges are worn every place they go," says Christine Terranova of the New York State Nurses Association. "If they take their break, if they go to the bathroom, it reads out on a computer-generated real-time screen and it's logged."

The nurse's union filed a grievance against wearing the sensors but lost that battle in arbitration.

The pressure on nurses to account for every moment is a threat to patients, too, says Terranova.

"Patients are crying cause they just found out they have cancer, and I can't stop for five minutes and hold their hand because I know the schematic is going to say that I spent 35 minutes there instead of five," says Terranova.

An increasing number of workers have no choice but to wear the devices. In the hospital industry alone, 55,000 employees now wear an electronic monitor as a condition of employment. That means the cost of objecting to it may be their job.

 
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