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Worker Fired For Disabling GPS App That Tracked Her 24 Hours a Day
An anonymous reader writes: Myrna Arias claims she was fired for refusing to run an app that would track her location even when she was off the clock. She is now suing Intermex Wire Transfer LLC in a Kern County Superior Court. Her claim reads in part: "After researching the app and speaking with a trainer from Xora, Plaintiff and her co-workers asked whether Intermex would be monitoring their movements while off duty. Stubits admitted that employees would be monitored while off duty and bragged that he knew how fast she was driving at specific moments ever since she installed the app on her phone. Plaintiff expressed that she had no problem with the app's GPS function during work hours, but she objected to the monitoring of her location during non-work hours and complained to Stubits that this was an invasion of her privacy. She likened the app to a prisoner's ankle bracelet and informed Stubits that his actions were illegal. Stubits replied that she should tolerate the illegal intrusion...."
The solution: leave the phone at work when you are off duty.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
You're a slave, and if you're lucky, and behave, your servitude will have some modicum of treatment that is necessary to keep you fit for employment.
Welcome to the new future. Same as the old past.
So, what is good about all these chains anyway?
GPS trackers are being used ubiquitously nowadays. I do not have any problems with them, although I do not have any. They are being used for controlling people who drive for a living.
But, using them to track people off duty is a completely ludicrous. It should be banned. In Portugal, I know, the Personal Data Protection Law strictly forbids it. IMHO, the US could learn a lot from certain European laws.
They should be allowed to know where their property is. She has no case.
This may well be sarcastic, but they do know where their property is. It's with the employee. They have no reason to care where the phone is spatially since they aren't going to physically access the phone. The reason for the app wasn't to track the phone, but to track the employee attached to the phone.
Fuck off. It means exactly what I and others think it means. What you and the other fascists who run around ridiculing others for is for objecting to the blatant over reach and Police State tactics employed by the FORMERLY FREE United States of America by implying that we should have no expectations of "privacy", nor any "rights" at all for that matter. So while you and I both know that America is nothing short of a Fascist Police State, on Paper it's supposed to be a Free Society and though the Interests of a Corporate Personhood outweighs the rights of a "citizen" -- In this case, the "citizen" is correct and shall be awarded damages for this intrusion into her "privacy" and violation of Labor Code.
Even if that is the case, that is not what they were using the functionality for.
From the article:
"Management never made mention of mileage. They would tell her co-workers and her of their driving speed, roads taken, and time spent at customer locations. Her manager made it clear that he was using the program to continuously monitor her, during company as well as personal time." (emphasis mine)
They were not using the GPS functionality to track the phone. They were using it to track employees both on and off-work.
This is creepy as heck. IMHO, there should be criminal laws against this sort of behavior. This should be a criminal case her manager, not a civil one against the company.
Her employer required her to use the company issued phone, and to have it on 24/7 (from the lawsuit).
Your "solution" would result in the exact same thing hers did: termination.
If the allegations are true, it sounds like both her manager and CEO were douchebags. And stupid ones at that.
She probably lied about it.
That's no justification for the employer's action. If your employee doesn't behave properly, you talk with them, maybe put them on performance plan, or maybe terminate their employment.
To talk with another employer to get her fired there is pretty unethical and evidence of douchebaggery.
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once you did that, it's not your phone and your life any more.
they want crap apps on a phone, they have to provide the phone. otherwise, you are chattel, like cattle, only not in demand at the supermarket.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
And selling yourself into slavery is a PRIVATE agreement between a PRIVATE master and a PRIVATE slave. That doesn't make it okay, though!
Now go fuck yourself.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
There are certain things that government DOES have a right to interfere with. This should be one. Especially when job markets are less than ideal there are certain things and areas that government should interfere in so that things don't have to get as bad as they have been in the past before people rebell enough to fix things by themselves.
I'm sure you're against minimum wage too? After all if someone wants to work $0.01 in a private contract, why not let them? Extreme example sure but if you let it play out I'm sure we'd get close tovtgat number. Walmart will be able to find someone at $8 then at $7.89, $7.79 and so on. If this wasnt the case walmart would already pay more than minimun wage for all employees.
but it was never hers. It was company provided!
So why didn't she just use a different phone while off duty?
She should have bought her own phone for after hours and left the work phone at home. No employer can force you to carry their phone when you are not working.
You got +5 for this nonsense? The "Fascist Police State" that you condemn is the mechanism that this lady is using to right the wrong committed against her by her employer. Your entire post is off-topic ranting about issues that have nothing to do with the TFA.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
She won't be awarded shit. If she didn't want to be tracked, she could simply have left the EMPLOYER-SUPPLIED iPhone either in the office or at home when she was off the clock. She has no right to bitch about GPS tracking on EMPLOYER-SUPPLIED equipment. Read the fucking article, then fuck off yourself.
The wasted money goes to extra levels of administration, special ed teachers for students who will never be able to do anything but drool, lavish facilities, and technological frippery.
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> special ed teachers for students who will never be able to do anything but drool,
I've yet to meet a retarded person that is an asshole. It seems to me that your school could have benefited from more guidance counselors/shrinks to handle the likes of you.
Please. More money does NOT make for better students. The poorest of students have often times been the best of students. Each individual student needs some THING to ignite a hunger for knowledge within him. If/when that hunger is lit, nothing can hold a student back, short of death.
We Americans, despite the economic "hardships" of the past decade, remain among the wealthiest people in history, world wide. We don't starve. We aren't dropping in the streets from diseases. We don't have open warfare in our streets. Barring some violent weather now and then, we almost all go home to find our homes intact every day.
More money in the education system, or even more money in the classroom, will NOT make for better students. History proves that idea to be FALSE.
Our education system is badly flawed, and that flaw can be traced, at least in part, to the idea that more money can "fix" education. We have pampered little children who are distracted by meaningless nonsense. Kim Kardashian? Reality TV? Rock stars? Sports? Oh yeah - drugs. I can understand drug usage by the dirt poor, who live miserable lives. Those who spend all day out scavenging for a little bit of food, and still go to bed hungry - I can forgive them for trying to escape reality. Our little rich kids, with to much time on their hands? Escape from reality? They are LOSERS. And, we have raised them to be LOSERS.
Money isn't the answer.
Kids need to learn morals. Kids need some hardship. Kids need to WORK for the privilege of higher education - and I do NOT MEAN that they should be impoverished for life in exchange for an education. I mean, they should have to WORK for the privilege, instead of being pampered.
Keep the money. Instead, go into the classrooms, and get tough. We've needed a strong dose of tough love in the classrooms for the past 30 years, or more. Crack the whip, and stop treating kids like babies. Just drop pre-school, headstart, kindergarten, and all the rest of that shit.
I started school at age 5, and went straight into first grade. One month after my 18th birthday, I graduated high school. No amount of pre-schooling implemented since 1960 has improved on the final results among high school grads. NOTHING has improved those final results.
All that money has been WASTED.
If you have an old rotten ship, which threatens to sink every time it sails, how can you justify continuing to send it to sea? How can you justify painting it, again and again, and calling it seaworthy?
That is precisely the state of our education system. It is sinking, and we continue to paint it, to make it look pretty.
Cut the funds, and force school administrators to actually EDUCATE children!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Bottom-rung workers should be on welfare. The alternative to working + welfare is just welfare - and that's far more corrosive to society. You can't make a person whose market value is $8/hr suddenly have a market value of $15/hr just by raising the minimum wage - you just make them unemployable. (Before you trot out the studies that show that modest increases in minimum wage don't increase unemployment, please be prepared to discuss just what qualifies as "modest", and why the results shouldn't be extrapolated to mandate a $100/hr minimum wage.)
You're just redefining what constitutes a livable wage. If you really want to live like someone in the 1950's, you can still do it quite easily on the median salary. No meals out, a house that's ~1000 square feet for a family of four (share the bedrooms and there's only one bath!), one television, no cable, one phone, one car, no air conditioning. Mom makes about half the clothes herself. Dad fixes the car whenever something goes wrong.
Back in the late nineties, I knew people who had their lives whittled down to about $8k/year in necessary expenses, and that was with air conditioning and modern cars. That's a little less than $12k today, basically right at the federal poverty line. They lived out in the boonies in trailers, but they had dial-up internet (as nearly all of us did at the time), and they were pretty happy with things the way they were.
really? you are able to NEGOTIATE with a company, these days?
in the job market now, that's really stupid. its a corporate heaven right now; those guys who are the 'job creators' (puke) are having a great time. the rest of us, we're getting by, at best.
there has to be a fair balance if there is any leverage. the only leverage she would have is to just leave. but you cannot make a company do things on threat of your leaving. that went out 20 years ago, if it even existed back then.
we're serfs and you know it. admit it. this is the world we now live in. companies fucking own us; some a little, some a lot. but things have gotton worse, not better, in terms of freedom and rights of employees.
THIS is why bosses are assholes like that guy. they are bold because they realize the imbalance of power in the current labor market.
and we've done such a great job over the past 50 years of killing the union movement, its basically only there for those that held on tight and didn't let go (oddly enough, cops have a union that 'protect' them; but regular people are not 'allowed' to have unions, since that's, uhm, somehow bad.)
no power in a weak labor market. this is what you get. blatant employer abuse.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
This is all irrelevant. She consented to have the app running as a condition of her employment, and she removed it, and got fired. This is a simple cut and dried case.
There is an area of law that states that contracts are only enforceable if they are legal and at least somewhat fair - there are things that simply cannot be signed away, as well as those that are considered unconscionable additions that have higher scrutiny by the law in order for you to do so. For example, while it is totally legal to give up your children to another (adoption, etc.), it would never be considered legally binding if a work contract had a clause in it requiring you to. Likewise a clause requiring you to perform fellatio might be upheld in a contract for a porn star - it's part of the main focus of the job - but would never be considered a valid clause for pretty much any other job out there.
No head start? No kindergarten? Read a book about early education and understand all the evidence that teaching children skills early on is critical for success. Unfortunately people will waste their time with reality TV and other meaningless garbage. It's their right to do so. It doesn't mean that people who waste their time doing this aren't intelligent. The best way to challenge the pampered bullshit is to reveal how off basis it is from reality. Nothing fancy or extreme needed to prove it, the simpler the better.
First of all, you must have been around in the 1960's when you could get a full-time factory job and that would pay for college. That doesn't exist on either side. There are no good paying factory jobs, and even if there were, You still can't afford college. You are right, we pay more for our education system than anyone else, but that is a misleading statistic. We are the largest 1st world country, so we will spend more money on our schooling just due to salary. There are inefficiencies, but the real reason we are behind everyone else is time. We are the only nation that takes summers off. So when we graduate from High school we have 2 years less schooling than a student abroad. You are right, money doesn't solve problems, it just repairs buildings, buys desks, pays for art and sport programs, buys books, pays for teachers and bussing, but fuck all that, we need to spend that money elsewhere. The kids can sit around the fire while their pastor tells them what's best. These damn entitled kids. I would also like you to cite some resources on where the "poorest students are often times the best" From my experience, working poor families have either single parent, or dual employed parent situations. Usually working shitty shifts that don't allow them the time to work with their kids. If you are rich you can afford a tutor and a doctor, if you are poor, you just get labeled as dumb.
Which lowers tax revenues, which defunds the schools, which makes it that much harder for low-income students to escape the cycle of poverty. Eventually the neighborhood will be ripe for gentrification, and the school will be turned into a bunch of luxury condos. So the 1% gets cheap land, and the rest of us get shitty schools. Par for the course with these guys; their idea of "urban renewal" is when a block of housing projects burns down.
And I think you've got 1 and 3 right. There are schools where nearly every student gets free breakfast and lunch because the area is so poor. Lower incomes are correlated with increased crime, so I think you're right there.
It's time to stop paying for schools out of property taxes. It makes Lily White Charter School that much more well-funded, but PS 142 in the 'hood will never be able to get its head above water. The schools should be funded out of the state coffers (I know the states help the localities, but it's not enough). If the schools are equally funded and equipped, then every student gets the same opportunity.
I know, I hear you screaming about dumbing down and failing gifted students. What happens when that gifted student is Latino? Or black? They're being failed right now. Time to level the field. Let the rich kids learn what it's like to have limited resources, and let the low-income kids learn that they are valued and given the resources they need.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Get ready for the SJWs to scream "that's raciss!" but it has NOTHING to do with money and everything to do with culture and peer pressure.
I've lived in both predominately Black and predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods, what did I see? Black kids that tried to get an education and do better were "uncle toms" who were "cooning" and "acting white" and treated like shit by those around them, while those that stood on the corner acting gansta were actually chased by the opposite sex as were looked upon as being "down" with their neighborhood. The Hispanics were busting their butts to get ahead, starting their own businesses, etc, while you had "aspiring rappers" in the black neighborhood.
And its not got a damned thing to do with race, its culture. Look up the figures of Blacks straight off the boat from Africa, despite language and culture barriers they are more than 300% more likely to reach middle class in just 1 generation, and something like 1000% more likely to reach it in 2 than American Blacks. As long as American Blacks glorify violence and ignorance and condemn learning and getting ahead? Things will never change.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Wow are you clueless.
About 60-80% of educational achievement is based on the kid's parents and life outside of school.
When mom and dad both work two jobs and the kid goes to school hungry, no amount of "tough love" at school will work.
Mom and dad are too busy trying to keep everyone alive via minimum wage jobs to parent like in your idyllic childhood. You don't have time to make sure the kid is doing their homework properly when the kid goes to school when you leave for work in the morning, and goes to bed when you get home from the second job.
And that presumes both mom and dad are in the picture. Thanks to the glory of "the war on drugs", and moronic policies like mandatory minimum sentences and "three strikes" laws, that isn't always the case. Add in the incentives where the police personally profit from planting evidence and it gets even worse.
Fix those problems? Nah, let's just cut the funds and demand one teacher somehow dispense "tough love" to 120 first graders.
"Our little rich kids" graduate on time just fine. And mommy and daddy make sure they go to the best colleges, telling the kids that they are good, hard workers. And then they show up on Slashdot posting that everyone else is a lazy bum.