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London Tube Cleaners Don't Want Fingerprint Clock-in
Bismillah writes "Biometrics is hot stuff, not just for Apple but cleaning companies like the UK division of Denmark's IIS which tidies the London Underground railway network. However, the cleaners aren't happy about having to clock in and out with biometric fingerprint sensors, and are taking industrial action to stop the practice."
I wouldn't want to touch anything down there barehanded either.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head."
The only "civil liberty" it attacks is the ability to fraudulently sign in for someone else. This is how unions get a bad name. Bio-metrics are used for time card validation on many places and it is neither "draconian" nor "an attack on civil liberties".
The article then goes on to talk about biometric authentication on mobile devices which has nothing to do with biometric time card sign ins. This is another sensationalistic piece which brings together unrelated information in an attempt to make a big splash.
Just be happy you have a job.
This is exactly what the slavemasters want you to think.
I'm currently undecided if this is a good thing or not. On one hand, I'm against technology for the sake of technology. Using computers and touch screens because they are new and fancy is stupid when a pen and paper will do. It's one thing to have biometrics in clean areas like banks and office buildings, it's another to have then in maintenance areas. How long before they start to fail and workers are not getting paid because they can't clock in due to dirt and grease build up.
On the other hand, They have really failed to outline how their civil liberties are being attacked. To what extent can someones thumbprint be abused and how will this affect workers and their rights. None of that was even attempted to be explained.
To anyone saying that the workers just want to fraudulently sign in for someone else and abuse the system needs to try again and come up with a real argument. The assumption that workers just want to screw over employers is elitist and is a part of the same poor logic of "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about." It completely side steps the real issues and disguises the technology as only hurting the bad people. While I don't deny that fraud probably happens, there is no way that fraud is the sole reason for rejection of biometrics. Give real reasons for it, not made up reasons for why the are against it.
This is exactly where technology like this will be deployed. They will say you know what it is just a slight inconvenience to the menial tube workers. Then eventually the government and other employers will hand out some no bid contract to some corporation to install these in all places as self identification methods. This technology must be fervently resisted before it is too late. If you don't believe me, just look at the how the TSA is expanding operations from airports to rail stations, highways, and bus depots.
How about instead "Just be thankful you have workers"?
What's more important: human beings or the profit of corporations?
I think the best way to promote a positive evolution of morality, for the sake of mankind, is to deal with each individual according to their answer to that question... As a form of preliminary screening.
No, not necessarily. They might adopt a strict work-to-rule regime where workers do absolutely nothing that is not by-the-book, no staying 10 minutes over time to finish a job, no doing a job without that is not covered explicitly in their work agreements, taking every minute of meal breaks, reporting every little maintenance task they find in glorious detail, etc.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
well the reason they don't want the scanners is that then they can't as easily sell their job when they move on - or have their cousin cover for them on a sick day.
unfortunately england is chock full of people who would take the job. for this same reason there's factories in china and latin america where the attendance of the workers is 99.9%(that is: no sickdays taken ever). sure, you can't be sure that it's always the same guy but you can be sure the family arranges someone to cover because that one worker feeds 10 people.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Right....but the AC said that it's the Peter Principle at work. That is, the situation they described (using inappropriate metrics of suitability for a job, like being able to clock in at the right time as a judgement of being able to clean the tube station) is an example of something that might happen when the manager is an employee who has risen beyond their level of competence.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Their data is obviously 100% secure so I don't really see any problems. Cleaning companies are famous for their rigid IT infrastructure, since their operational margin is huge and they have tons of cash to spend. There is also no market for hundreds (thousands?) of fingerprints with matching names and other personal data on a black market. So what could possibly go wrong?
Uhm, no. This is the Peter Principle:...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle
Cute.
He quotes the actual book.
You contradict him citing the Wikipedia article summary about the book.
It is a sad world when people treat Wikipedia (a tertiary source) as more authoritative than the primary source.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Please leave it more than three years before you come back here next time.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
If wishes were mod-points, we'd all be +5.
I've really had it with these slavemasters since the era of the IDE hardware bus.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Possibly, but another very good reason they don't want scanners is that it's demeaning and insulting.
Unless there are significant problems (and not just "significant bending of the rules", but "significant extra expense or reduction in quality"), there is no reason to treat people like criminals.
And if there are significant problems, there's a better solution: Hire people you trust, and then trust the people you hire; and don't judge them by stupid metrics like "has been physically present exactly N hours?", but by metrics like, "Is the area they were responsible for clean?" If it would take an average person working at a reasonable rate 8 hours to clean a certain area, and because of me the area is now clean, then pay me for 8 hours worth of work, whether it took me 8 hours or three hours.
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
There's a bunch of problems with "clocking in as someone else"
1) If there's a disaster and they need to know "who are we searching for", time card records are a good source
2) There are wage and hour laws designed to prevent employer abuse of employees (e.g. overtime rules). Allowing one person to clock in as another opens the door to abuse: (you take my shift or I'll report that you were doing drugs in the restroom on break) (I don't care if you've got to get home, and I'm not paying overtime, clock in as Joe Blow for second shift)
3) Insurance rates and payments (worker's comp, unemployment) are set by number of hours worked/dollars paid.
4) Liability issues with "were you at work when you received this injury"
5) Safety issues with working hours (OK, now that you've driven that bus as John Doe for 8 hours and you've hit your max duty hour limit, you can sign is a Richard Roe and do another shift)
Yes, many employers have inflexible policies on work shifts, either out of inertia or bad management. But perturbing the record keeping to work around it is a bad solution. Fix the underlying problem, don't band aid it.
In the US, work-to-rule and slowdown are 2 different but similar actions:
- In work-to-rule, union members follow all procedures perfectly, including the stupidly contradicting ones as a way of slowing up the works. This is the least risky union tactic, because any time management calls union members on it they can point out that they are correctly and diligently following the procedures that management put in place, and that if there's a problem it's with the procedures rather than the workers following them.
- In a slowdown, union members simply work more slowly (letting some of the product get ruined if needed). This is obviously a bit more risky, but it is a common escalation if a work-to-rule doesn't solve the union's problem.
Both tactics can wreak havoc with productivity, but are significantly less messy than a all-out strike.
I am officially gone from
Or, we as society could stop demeaning people for doing good work and making the world a better place. Do you want to be able to take a subway without the place reeking of shit and puke? Then be thankful for the people cleaning it up; give them respect, good working conditions, and a living wage. Anyone who is creating value for society deserves that much, whether they're designing the next iPhone or washing the piss smell of a public lavatory. And if you don't give them any of that, don't be surprised if they don't deliver very much value to you.
If the card is exactly the same, then why go through the expense of the fancy new equipment?
If the fingerprint system really is cheaper / more robust / maintainable / whatever, then it may make sense to upgrade. If, as I suspect, it is is more expensive, and they're doing it not to reduce costs and increase efficiency of processing but to have more control over people. Either that's not necessary, in which case it's demeaning, or it is necessary, in which case (it seems to me) they're doing something else really wrong.
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
+5 Insightful?
So then. It is just not you that has no clue what a slave is.
Fry: "You know the worst thing about being a slave? They make you work but they don't pay you or let you go..."
Leela: "That's the only thing about being a slave.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
Interesting. At what level of career achievement does someone stop being a subhuman deserving of debasement, in your eyes?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.