Bosses Keep Sharp Eye on Mobile Workers

camusflage writes "AP is running a story on the penetration of GPS devices and monitoring of fleet operations. Such technology is hitting the mainstream, with UPS distributing 100,000 GPS-enabled handhelds 'to alert them when they're at the wrong address.' One driver is quoted saying, 'It's kind of like Big Brother is watching a little bit. But it's where we're heading in this society.' Needless to say, the Teamsters weigh in on the negative side on the whole thing."

Comments

If you're on the clock..

[dustinbarbour]

..then you need to be doing only business related tasks. That is unless you have an understanding with your employer. Period. Kaput. Nothing else to see here.. yadi yadi yada.

Of course the Teamsters don't like it

[The I Shing]

Of course the Teamsters don't like it... I can see it now... "So, either of you fellows care to explain why you drove the delivery van over to Mario Calienti's office and then drove it and a cement mixer over to the waterfront?"

Re:Of course the Teamsters don't like it

[LewsTherinKinslayer]

"So, either of you fellows care to explain why you drove the delivery van over to Mario Calienti's office and then drove it and a cement mixer over to the waterfront?"

Because 8-Ball's shop was closed.

Seriously Sims, Give It A Rest

[the_mad_poster]

How is this an issue? Explain to me, please, how having oversight of the people you're supposed to have oversight on is a bad thing? Guess what? We track our employees via time clocks, quality assurance, and production quotes. We know where they are all the time while they're here, and if we don't, they're punished for being somewhere they're not supposed to be.

Yet another example of the reason that slashbot crowd simply does not have it's collective head planted anywhere near reality. If you have a problem with your employer making sure you're doing your bloody job, then quit. Be unemployed. When this starts to become an issue of people trying to monitor their employees in their homes or when they're off the clock or something, let me know.

I have a new opinion of the YRO section: anything that appears in it, especially if it's posted by Comrade Censorific Sims, is something that doesn't matter, and I shouldn't care about. This section is only good for keeping me up to date on all the things that aren't an issue and nobody needs to know about.

Re:Seriously Sims, Give It A Rest

[stupidfoo]

$15 an hour * 100,000 truck drivers = $1.5 million an hour

$1.5 million an hour * 40 hours / week * 52 weeks /year = $3,120,000,000

A little bit more than the money they pay their execs.

Re:Seriously Sims, Give It A Rest

[wwest4]

> If you have a problem with your employer making sure you're doing your
> bloody job, then quit.

Aren't there more black-box ways of determining whether I've done my job without gathering extraneous information that invades my privacy? I see problems with the Big Brother approach as not dealing with root cause.

Example: At my workplace, we have a loser who is significantly less productive than his counterparts. He pisses his day away looking at the Internet, talking at the water cooler, forwarding unfunny internet apocrypha and jokes to everyone, and eating 15 meals a day.

He eventually gets his work done, but he does it so slowly, that he is not worth his salary.

Instead of enacting policy that cripples everyone else in order to deal with his particular loafing strategies, doesn't it make a lot more sense to fire him for not earning his compensation, barring a better excuse (health, etc)?

No. Why? The litigious nature of our culture? Personal feelings interfering with management objectivity? Who knows. Whatever it is, I'd like to find out so that I don't have to implement another custom snort filter or whitelist instead of just firing the loser.

The flip side of this is that it disallows me from accepting a job that is easy for me. If I choose to work at Joe's Tape Backup Emporium, and I am compensated for the duration of my time pushing catrtidges, and my work requirements are met, I don't see why I cannot read a book during the downtime (can't leave, but I'm idle). Just because I'm capable of exceeding my quota, while Johhny Newbie has to concentrate 100% just to match me at 50% effort, does not mean I should be compelled to share the benefit of my personal efficiency with my employer if he does not compensate me more than Johnny. If he's not paying me more for my efficiency, why does he care if I'm reading or staring at the screen? The right answer is that he shouldn't, but he does because people like getting shit for free. However, I see no justification of the position that you must work until it's a grind for you. And that's what pervasive monitoring could lead to, because it's always in the employers' interest to squeeze you for all you're worth at the cheapest possible price.

Hasn'y This Been Common With Truckers?

[reallocate]

Can't recall the name, but remember reading several years ago about a U.S. trucking firm that did real-time tracking of all its trucks, monitored their fuel consumption, speed, how long it took of load and offload, if they deviated from the designated route or schedule, etc. Apparently resulted in serious efficiencies and serious revenue, with little grousing from drivers.

This doesn't seem to me to be a grievous problem. Employees don't have the right to use the boss's time and property as they choose.

Cool advantages of this tech

[syslog]

We (www.agilissystems.com) make software that can GPS track cell phones and beam jobs down to them. There are some pretty cool advantages to this tech beyond just tracking people. The following illustrates this:

One of our customers is a large midwest grocery chain that has a fleet of trucks that deliver all kinds of groceries to their stores. All the drivers carry our GPS tracked cell phones - the cell phones lists the jobs (deliveries) that the driver has to do that day. As soon as a driver is done delivering at one store, the system automatically calls the next store in line (using VOIP via Asterisk, no less :) with the estimated arrival time. The store preps its loading dock to receive the truck. This allows them to turn the truck around quicker than they could otherwise. This leads directly to significant savings (more deliveries per truck, fewer drivers needs etc etc). They don't care one zot of where their drivers are, just that their stores are ready to unload their trucks when they arrive.

</shameless plug>

Oh, and a quick note. Don't be fooled into thinking thats its only GPS enabled devices that can be tracked. We can (and do) track *regular* cell phones using cell tower triangulation as well

-naeem