I'll be watching you

By Katy Humpert, Jayplay writer

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Imagine working at a job where your employer constantly monitors you. An electronic monitor records the time you arrive and leave. Surveillance cameras watch everywhere you go in the building. Every key stroke you type on the computer is stored. The Web sites you visit, the emails you write, everything you do is saved for possible future review. Your boss can listen to your phone conversations at any point. On top of that, you are subjected to random drugs tests where you have to submit bodily fluids to your employer, and, if you object to any of these practices you could be fired.

Stop imagining

For many KU students and millions of employees nationwide, surveillance in the workplace is an everyday reality. New technologies allow companies to have more control than ever over their employees through the monitoring of their daily activities. These practices are not only legal, but commonplace. While employers can lawfully monitor employees, experts say that does not necessarily make it right.

Photo by Kit Leffler

Yes, you are being watched

If you work in an office setting, chances are your boss is somehow watching what you are doing on the computer.

The 2005 Electronic Monitoring and Surveillance Survey from the American Management Association and The e-Policy Institute says 76 percent of companies monitor the Web sites workers visit. Another 50 percent store and review computer files on workers’ computers while even more, 55 percent, retain and review employees’ e-mail messages. Take into account that 67 percent of companies already use software to block inappropriate Web sites and it’s easy to see that the corporations of America aren’t taking any chances when letting their staff use the Internet. Lincoln Lewis, Lawrence senior, interned at an architecture firm in Rhode Island and says his superiors kept vigilance over what he and his co-workers did on the Internet. Not only were the sites he visited monitored with software, but his employers physically watched over his shoulder while he spent time online.

The phone, another way for workers to potentially waste time, presents another medium for monitoring. The same survey says 51 percent of employers, up from 9 percent in 2001, track the amount of time spent on the phone and the numbers dialed by employees. According to the survey, 19 percent of organizations record and review their workers’ telephone conversations. Voicemails are also fair ground for monitoring. In fact, 15 percent of companies admit to listening to employee voicemail messages, including those that have been deleted.

Joe Green, Olathe senior, works as an intern at Capitol One Home Loans and says at any time his phone conversations with customers can be monitored, but that his employer lets employees know when they are being recorded.

Photo by Kit Leffler

Even employees at Target feel the watchful eye of their superiors. Shanna Thomas, Winfield junior, says video cameras follow her and her co-workers everywhere they go in the store, from the loading docks to the parking lots. The bathrooms are the only locations immune to video surveillance. She says not only are there a plethora of cameras, but they also have the ability to zoom in close enough to see what employees are writing in their check books. Overall, 51 percent of companies use video monitoring to counter theft and violence among employees, according to the survey.

Cover your ass

Nancy Flynn, executive director of the e-Policy Institute, says the number one reason for monitoring employees is legal liability. She says e-mails and Internet history can become valuable evidence in litigations involving sexual harassment, discrimination and any other workplace lawsuit, adding that 20 percent of employers have had employee e-mail subpoenaed as part of a lawsuit or investigation. She also says several companies have actually gone to court because of an employee e-mail.

Bill Staples, chair of the sociology department at the University of Kansas, says employers also say they monitor employees to stop them from wasting time and company resources. This way, a manager will have physical proof that employees spend more time on the phone or downloading Friends re-runs than actually working before firing them.

Staples, who is also the author of Everyday Surveillance, says the validity of these concerns is questionable. He says, for example, that a company claiming to monitor employees “to stop them from wasting resources,” while at the same time providing million-dollar severance pay for recently fired executives, may have other motives.

Staples says many employers use surveillance as a way to control employees. He says the knowledge that you are being watched by your boss and the fear of getting in trouble really keeps you in line. “The more you watch people, the more likely it is that they will be submissive and not confront management,” Staples says.

Because an employer owns the computer and pays for the Internet, employees should expect that they will be monitored. Legally, Flynn says an employee has no expectation of privacy when it comes to the company’s computer system.

What can they do?

You know your boss can keep track of what you are doing, but what are the consequences? Well, let’s just say dilly-dallying while the boss is out of the room is a thing of the past. Flynn says firing employees solely based on information gathered through surveillance is fairly common.

Flynn says 25 percent of companies have fired workers for misusing the Internet and another 26 percent have terminated employees for abusing e-mail privileges. That means no more spending the day writing e-mails to your sister complaining about how boring your job is. Moreover, Flynn asserts that employees are fired on a regular basis for posting negative comments on their personal blogs about anything from their superiors to their companies’ products.

Recently, workers fired for blogging have set a blaze to news headlines. This list includes Jessica Cutler, a staff assistant on Capitol Hill, who, in 2004, was fired after only two weeks of blogging about her sexual exploits with a few high-up government staffers. Nadine Haobsh was fired from Ladies Home Journal this summer after blogging about the inner-workings of her office.

Outraging or understandable?

Lauren Airey, former KU student from Lenexa, just began working at a small lobbying firm in Washington, D.C. While her organization has no policy on monitoring employees, she says it is justified in monitoring company computers. She says, because her employers own the equipment and pay for the broadband, they have every right to watch what she does online, just like a parent can track what his child does online.

Lewis, who worked at a Rhode Island architecture firm, says his superiors once reprimanded one of his co-workers for wasting time. He says they knew how much time he was spending online and which sites he was visiting. None of which were job-related. Lewis says he was happy the surveillance caught his fellow employee, mostly because he didn’t want to have to do more work to make up for someone else’s lack of effort.

Monitoring phone conversations takes surveillance one step further into an employee’s comfort zone. Green, from Capitol One Home Loans, says that although he has yet to be monitored while on the phone, the idea of his boss listening to his conversation rubs him the wrong way. He says that kind of monitoring makes him feel as though he isn’t trusted. “I think I should be able to do my job and be trusted to do my job without having people worry about monitoring me,” he says.

He isn’t alone. More than 80 percent of the public believes employers have no right to monitor phone calls at work, according to The Naked Employee, a book on surveillance by Frederick S. Lane. In this day of ever-changing technology, however, employers continually find new ways to literally spy on employees.

In his book, Lane writes that nearly all Fortune 500 companies conduct drug tests on employees before they are hired, as well as randomly throughout their employment. Staples says drug testing is a much more sensitive area. He says many employees who have no problem with computer surveillance have severe reservations about providing urine samples. Once the monitoring becomes physical, he says, it turns into a different issue.

John Gilliom, author of Overseers of the Poor: Surveillance, Resistance and the Limits of Privacy, says the most common way employers test for drugs is through a urine sample. He says usually someone stands outside of the bathroom stall and listens for the sound of normal urination and, in some cases, an employee is forced to urinate in direct view of the testing official.

Gilliom also says drug testing is often referred to in offices as “comically useless.” He says if you are using drugs and coming to work high, then the effect on your job performance should be obvious to those around you. On the other hand, he says, if you are one of the millions of Americans who smokes pot occasionally on the weekends and doesn’t let it affect your work, then your habits really are none of your employers’ business.

Genetic testing for diseases through an employee’s urine is also practiced in some organizations.

Lane writes about a recent case where the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad was sued for conducting secret genetic tests on workers from blood collected for drug tests. This company utilized the tests to cut down on worker compensation claims for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, taking surveillance one step closer to the world of “Big Brother.”

The big picture

Working at a job where your boss monitors you can have negative effects on your job performance and your sanity. Emily Smith and David Lyon of The Surveillance Project at Queen’s University in Canada say surveillance at work demonstrates a lack of trust by employers. They say research has shown that intensive monitoring creates a “highly stressful and dehumanizing environment for workers”, which can harm a worker’s health.

Staples says the forms of surveillance used by corporations also create an aura of intimidation. In an age where fewer and fewer employees have union representation, he says surveillance is just one more instrument of power that employers hold over workers. The decrease of union presence means many employees don’t object to the surveillance because no one will stand up for them if they do. Most workers don’t even realize they have the right to object, he says.

Students who’ve worked in these situations say the reason they don’t mind surveillance in the workplace is because they aren’t doing anything wrong. Gilliom says the issue of surveillance is much more complex than that. When different kinds of surveillance are introduced, they only slice out a small deviant behavior that the majority of society isn’t guilty of, such as the cameras that catch people who run yellow lights or drug tests that catch potheads. But, he says, once you begin putting these small pieces of surveillance together, a surveillance society emerges.

“Do you want to look up in 15 years to find that any part of our privacy and autonomy is gone?” Gilliom asks.

Ultimately, Smith and Lyon say employees should decide where the limits of privacy are in the workplace and convey that message to their employers.

Whether you have experience with electronic monitoring in the workplace or not, employee surveillance will likely be as common as locks on the doors in whatever occupation you pursue. The best you can do is try to understand how your boss monitors you and not be afraid to voice your opinion.

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