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Biometrics in the Workplace
ryth writes "The Globe and Mail reports that McDonald's Restaurants and a few other companies in Canada have introduced palm-scanning technologies for employees. Workers are now expected to 'sign' in and out using their palm prints to record the exact time of arrival and the identity of the employee. Quoted in the article Jorn Nordmann, president of S.M. Products, was blunt about why he installed a hand scanner at his fish-processing plant in Delta, B.C. 'If you want to control a whole bunch of people, it's the only way to go.' It seems that some of the most underpaid and undervalued workers are starting to be treated no better than the animals they are frying up." Except for the frying part.
While not as high-tech why not just stick with a punch card or swipe card. Sure you can get a few people who will punch in for someone every once and a while or something what's the big deal. This just sounds like a gigantic waste of money to me.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
This is old business with a new timecard. Some businesses (people, really) watch the one- and two-minute differences with no forgiveness.
Is it so significant that a palm scanner is being used now? It prevents deception - it's unlikely you'll cut off a hand for your friend to clock you in early. Other than that, it means you can't lose your timecard (major accidents excepted). Oh, and you might want to wash your hands more...
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Talking call centers which I know a bit about, it always seems to be the case that the lower you pay someone the more control the employer wants over them.
... or a nosy receptionist.
What am I missing here - they are paying for labour, so why shouldn't they make sure people start on time?
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
When your employer is paying for your time, they have a right to measure how much of it they are getting. Just like you have a right to put that bag of sugar on the scales and check that it really is 1kg.
Seems reasonable enough to me, anyway.
Unlike that door handle they most likely touched while coming into the building?
East Coast Brewers
If what I assume is correct, there is no reason for McDonalds to not use the hand/fingerprint data in some other way, if they wanted to, for example checking for criminal records, as mentioned in the article. They say they won't use the data for anything else, but they have also said their food is healthy. Would employees have the right to be informed if McDonalds suddenly used the hand/fingerprint data for something other than clocking in and out? Plus, it is not impossible for this data to be stolen and then abused. Who would then be responsible, under Canadian law? If employees have weaker protection under the law, does this mean that employers aren't required to secure the personal data of its employees the same way an e-tailer is required to the secure personal data of its customers?
Another problem is what happens when this technology becomes mainstream, and used in most workplaces. It is understandably used in workplaces where security is an issue, and for now it's only McDonalds and a handful of other places that do not have the same security concerns as say, a nuclear power plant. The more use, the more potential for abuse. Workers need to have their rights secured before these devices are used. I just hope Manitoba (and the other provinces lacking strong provincial privacy legislation) wake up and create new laws to protect the people!
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
His 50 employees would often "buddy-punch," ... "They're typical workers," Mr. Nordmann said. "It's not nice work. You have a lot of turnover. You have them one week, and the next week they're gone. You can't tell the faces any more."
What a wonderful view of workers. Sort of Victorian workhouse style. He could always try treating his staff well enough that they don't cheat the system or quit all the time.
Check me if I'm wrong Sammy, but I don't see how making employees sign in and out is all that terrible. Would it make people feel better if these employees pushed a button to sign in instead of having their palms scanned?
Yes, I'm an employer and I think you're absolutely right. You can't trust people to do the right thing, so must treat them like children or animals.
They should have pay docked by the minute if they're late. Of course if they're a early that time doesn't count, and of course if at the end of the day it takes them longer to finish than the hours you are paying them for, them that must be their fault so they shouldn't be paid for that either.
At my company, all employees wear a special hat with a cam and microphone pointed at thier faces, so that we can see and hear them at any time. If they are doing or saying anything that isn't strictly work related, we dock those minutes from their pay too. It is very efficient - it keeps our salary bills low. We do have some problems with staff retention though.
At a couple jobs I've worked I was expected to punch in and out. When I arrived, I took a card and put it in a stamper, same whenever I left. Was used to track my hours. Seems like a perfectly reasonable request by an employer, that they might want to know what hours you worked.
However time card have problems. They are easily damaged, since they are just paper. Also it is possible to get confused, and grab the wrong card, I did that on one occasion. However more important to an employer, another employee could punch a friend in, making it appear as if they were there.
This eliminates problems and just streamlines everything. You scan you plam, it knows you are you and clocks you in. Scan again to clock out. No confusion and no practical way to fake it.
This in no way limits your privacy your rights or anything else. You employer has a right to know when you are working for them. And guess what? If the system is lax, people will abuse it. Like now I work at a university and all hourly positions (which is only student positions really) simply fill out a timebook once a week, which is then signed by their supervisor. So what happens? You guessed it, people cheat. A student will show up to work 15 minutes late, take a long lunch, and slip out 30 minutes eairly yet still report a full work day.
It works the other way too. Makes it much harder for a company to screw you. Say you need to work late. They decide they don't want to pay you for that time to try to claim you weren't there. Hard for them to say if there is a palm scan record of you leaving. Much easier to say if there is no record, or just a punch card.
I think selacious was saying that biometrics is no different from a button or punch cards. And it isn't, whether its punch cards/buttons/biometrics, its still a manager looking at a name/number with a time next to it and not having a clue what that employee.
Bad/good management determines whether a time recording system works or doesn't, the technology just makes it harder to cheat. So now the honest guy who is late by 5 minutes doesn't get into trouble while the sneaky guy comes in half an hour late, safe in the knowledge that his card is already swiped.
East Coast Brewers
Interesting. At my workplace, we don't use obscenely hyperbolic arguments to attempt to defend against completely reasonable points.
Learned this from a /. post a long time ago and it has guided me in our company's quest for a 2nd factor of authentication. We don't all have the same body parts and a biometric solution needs to work for 100% of the users.
...especially since the #1 problem with timecards, according to a friend who manages a small manufacturing business, is that employees regularly clock each other in/out as favors.
So lets get this straight- it prevents theft and reduces peer pressure("Hey bob, clock me in early tomorrow, will ya? The kid needs new braces.") It involves absolutely nothing intrusive(I fail to see how storing the dimensions of your hand is intrusive) and is merely an improvement on a system that's been in use for almost a CENTURY.
What's the problem here? That biometrics are evil?
Please help metamoderate.
My major concern in these rigid employee control devices is not so much a privacy invasion, as a reduction in trust and spontaneity. If people don't feel like they can cheat or bend the system a little (sneak in late, take an extra 15 min on lunch), they focus alot more on how much work controls their life.
A little workplace entropy distracts from the oppressive order of day to day work.
For many reasons:
1) Lower pay jobs tend to be hourly. Well if employers are paying by the hour, they want to maje sure they get what they pay for. Likewise by the hour jobs generally include OT pay, which they don't want to pay if they can avoid it. Higher pay jobs are more often salaried so it doesn't matter as much. Sure you may come into work 15 minutes late but you also may be asked to work all weekend at no extra pay.
2) Lower pay jobs tend to be more time oriented, less results oriented. Like McDonalds. It is important that you are there for the time they expect. Why? Well because at any time customers may come in and require your services and you need to be there fore that. Much less important as a software developer. It's just important that you get the software done, regardless of if that happens 0900-1700 or 0000-0800.
3) People tend to care less about lower pay jobs. If you make $5.15 an hour, how movtivated are you to give it your all, really? I know I wasn't. I would have been perfectly happy to slip out if I could. There's quite a bit more motivation if you make $100,000/year to keep your job.
Not saying it's all justified or anything, but there are legit reasons why an employeer would want to keep a closer eye on a lower payed employee.
Its obvious that there are lots of folks here who have never had to lead a team of people to do anything, much less work. Not that I am holding up McD's as a paragon of virtue (they aren't) but this is about as sinister as when a former neigbor of mine let me know that the US Post Office changes the stamps in circulation as part of a world wide code to communicate with the angels living here on earth. :-)
In any environment where you have high turn over finding a way to track workers is critical, especially in low margin businesses like fast food. Business implements changes out of (hopefully intelligent) self interest, not part some conspiracy to "control" workers. Now, do there need to be safeguards in place to make sure corporations don't share biometrics as well as other personal data, absolutely. However, American corporations are so afraid of being sued most only confirm employement dates of former employees, rather than telling the truth, even when the former employee deserves a negative review. So I find it hard to imagine the circumstance where some minimum wage worker's handprint is so valuable that a corporation is willing to part with the data, and take the risk of a high profile lawsuit. The only real exception to this is of course, the government. There is a potential for abuse there, and if I were a potential employee I would like to know what the employer's policy on information requests from law enforcement looks like, ie do they require a subpoena etc. Also how long will the company keep the information would be something I would ask.
You are grossly underestimating the allure of metrics. One of today's management fads is to reduce everything to numbers. If it can't be easily measured, it must not be important. Managers are told to set measurable goals in their performance planning. This forces them to look for things that can be measured, whether they are material to the success of the business or not. Joe Shmoe being five minutes late may not be important. Joe Shmoe screwing up a metric that is one of his manager's performance goals is a major problem, as it directly affects his manager's performance evaluation and status in the company.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I had an job at a popular burger chain in high school, and while yes, there where a lot of people there that were 'just passing through' as in getting an education and exploiting flexible hours, there were also a fair share of individuals who had 'reached their full potential' shall we say. It's the nature of the fact that you're making minimum wage. At the time, we were required to punch in/out by keying our SSN into the registers. (Which might make people cringe, but your employer needs anyway to pay you). This is really no different and arguably more secure. (How many ways can I currently use you palm scan to steal your identity?)
On the animal note... I can draw more references to the average aptitude needed to operate a fry machine than I can to the way people are treated. That and if your treated unfairly at one burger joint, move your damn cheese. Half the places out there required simply that you speak English (an even this might be waved) and that you are breathing/have a pulse.
When they start taking blood samples ala Gattica or feeding worker rendered coworkers, then complain.
...for a company not doing very well. I am the lowest paid employee at my company. ie: all of my employees get paid more than I do. The company has no profits. Sometimes I don't even get a paycheck. Sometimes part of payroll gets put on my personal VISA. Welcome to owning your own business. Imagine how you'd feel in this position, to discover that some of your employees were taking advantage of the situation, by not showing up and getting someone else to clock in? I have an employee who habitually shows up an hour late, takes 2 hour lunches, and leaves when the clock strikes 5:00. Yet complains when his cow-orker, who does the same work, gets paid more. Yeah, I love most of my employees. They do terrific work and I pay them as much as I can afford. But I'd implement whatever I could to keep them in line if they were taking advantage of me.
I've read probably about half the >= +2 comments, and I saw a lot of them bitching about "reducing the employee to a string of numbers". I'm not sure what company these folks work for (or if they even work), but guess what? You already are a string of numbers to most places.
:) (And for anybody that cares, I'm all for privacy)
Take your job for example. What's the easiest way to keep one employee straight from another one? Assign some type of unique identification to each one. The easiest uniqie ID thus far has been a number...you don't run out of them!
Now, you have to keep in mind that this number is really only used on the backend systems...the payroll system, the employee benefits system, the HR system. You don't see employee #57823 greet you with "Hi, 23884!" do you? If you, please stop reading now, and find a new job. Your co-workers are freaks.
And metrics? Yeah, they're important. It's important for a company (or at least most companies) to make money, correct? So you need to know where you are spending your money to figure out how much you're gonna have left. One component of this is, you guessed it, finding out how much you're paying your employees! Now these hourly folks, you don't want them clocking each other in when they're not actually on the job, or otherwise finding a way to cheat the system (disclaimer: all systems can be cheated in some way)? In other words, getting paid for time they didn't work? Of course not. Would you pay the plumber for time he wasn't actually working on your clogged toilet? Pay the auto mechanic for time he wasn't working on somebody else's car? Pay the web monkey for time he wasn't marking up a webpage? No. You're not going to waste money.
So you're going to have your bosses, or at least the accountants in your company, run numbers to find out where the money's going. And this kind of thing isn't new, it's not some metrics trend, it's been going on for quite awhile now.
What about some other places? Do you think that store cares to know your name? The big one you buy your clothes at? Of course not, what possible use does that serve them? The mom and pop shops might, but they can afford to, that's their allure. But the larger shops aren't in the business of knowing the names of all their customers, they're in the business of providing you with a large selection of products to purchase. The larger entities in society don't care to know your name. There's no reason to know your name.
Yes, it is true, you are a number to them. Yes, they can probably track you and find out that "Customer #349374 likes to purchase grapes, red t-shirts, and fishing magazines, so we need to market product X to them". They can probably match this stuff to your home address and begin mailing you circulars.
But that's more to do with privacy which isn't going to be touched on here
--mh
Everybody who works in a fish processing plant or fast food joint will essentially get a chance to shake hands. I hope they washed after using the john.