A lawmaker wants to protect workers from employer spying
Workers today are subject to more monitoring and tracking on the job — often without their knowledge — than ever before, advocates say.
Various productivity applications, often on workers' smartphones or other devices, track and predict delivery drivers' and warehouse workers' every move, collecting data on their location, speed, and accuracy in finishing orders, according to a study by UC Berkeley's Labor Center.
Meanwhile some employers install software on remote workers' computers to log their keystrokes, monitor their internet activity, or take screenshots at any moment — even turning on webcams to monitor them. If workers refuse to be tracked they are risking their jobs, advocates say.
Assemblymember Ash Kalra proposed a bill Monday that he said would ensure workers gain some protection from off-duty employer surveillance and retaliation.
The Workplace Technology Accountability Act, or AB 1651, would create a set of privacy standards for employer workplace monitoring tools.
The bill will be heard Wednesday in the Assembly's Committee on Labor and Employment.
It would require employers to give workers advance notice and explain how, when and why monitoring technology is being used on the job. It would prohibit employers from monitoring workers off duty or on their personal devices, and it would allow workers to view and correct data about them.
It also would ban the use of facial recognition technology, and it would stop employers from using algorithms to decide when and if an employee is to be disciplined or fired.
Kalra, a Democrat representing San Jose, said low-income workers of color often bear the brunt of workplace surveillance. Nationally, four out of 10 frontline workers are people of color, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington D.C..
“Here in California with the Black and Latino workforce … they're the ones that are being asked to take on the burden of keeping our economy moving,” Kalra said.
“And yet they also, at the same time, are being asked more and more to be under surveillance and to be under the control in many ways (by) technologies that are designed to squeeze out every single ounce of productivity from them, without giving them the empowerment to have much say in their work environment.”
At the national level, exemptions in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 gave employers the right to spy on workers' written and verbal communications.
In recent years the market for workplace surveillance technology has exploded, especially during the pandemic.
Coworker.org, a tech worker advocacy nonprofit, released a report last year on the rise of workplace surveillance tech. It found nearly a third of the more than 550 new workplace tech products and companies it cataloged were created in the last two years.
Similarly a 2021 UC Berkeley Labor Center report showed workers across various industries — including retail, hospitality, construction and healthcare — were subject to increased surveillance with little oversight from the government.
“It's really kind of the wild west out there, and employers are pretty free to do whatever they want with predictably negative effects on workers,” said Mitch Steiger,
a legislative advocate for the California Labor Federation.
He said monitoring has become routine in workplaces and unfair use of algorithms and productivity tracking increasingly are tied to disciplinary actions, often leading to physical injuries for workers.
Last month, the state of Washington's Department of Labor & Industries fined Amazon $60,000, noting that there was a “direct connection” between workers' joint and muscle disorders and the company's use of employee monitoring and discipline systems.
Work included hours of repetitive lifting and twisting at a fulfillment center in Kent, Wash. The department said Amazon's productivity tracking technology forced workers to overextend themselves to meet quotas with little time to recover without penalty.