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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...."
Privacy. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
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.
Not if that provision has ugly side-effects.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
The solution: leave the phone at work when you are off duty.
In the desk they don't give you? in the lockable drawer it doesn't have? Let me guess, when the cleaning service walks off with the phone, she's responsible for buying a new one. And if she's on call and her employer expects to be able to reach her after work hours?
1) Just because it's their equipment doesn't give them the right to infringe on someone's private life
2) Just because you can find no wrong with this behavior doesn't mean there's nothing wrong with it. It just means you're either
a) a sociopathic fuck, or...
b) an apologist for a sociopathic fuck
3) all that aside, a person objecting to someone infringing on their personal privacy doesn't bestow a right on the employer to fire them without cause
(unless they're in a Republican "right to work" state, in which case anyone not pulling in seven or eight figures a years is fucked anyway. "You're not rich, you don't have any rights")
Why in the world would you bring your work phone back home and keep it on you while it's the week-end? i'm not doing my laundry at the office, why would you bring your customers outside of the hours you're paid for?
The law may or may not be on the plaintiff's side.
Either way, the employer should be beaten with a tire iron, in my opinion.
It's a company issued phone. Turn it off after you "clock out" via the app. When you're ready to "clock in", turn the phone on and do so. If you need to be reached at the number of the phone during off hours, use the call forwarding services provided by every major carrier. If you get a work call that requires you to do something on the work phone, you can turn it back on and clock in.
I'd hand it to my boss every day at the end of the day as I walked out the door, and pick it back up when I got in the next morning.
Fine, require the use of a 3rd party that only enables tracking in the event of theft.
Neh, it's much more fun to stalk people
They were tracking the iPhone, which they own.
Companies need to learn that slavery works totally different in 20th century:
The company should have offered her 5% less salary on the job offer and then ask if she wants to join a "voluntary data collection study" that measures employee driving behavior off-duty compared to work tasks. She could win by being part of the study a maximum of 7% on top of her salary. On top she should be proud of being part of this circle of privileged employees that push the boundaries of making work a better place. And all she had to do is install an app on her phone that collects data. During her anniversary review she would receive a 5% as part of being in the study, by just missing by few points the bracket for 7%.... but she can do better next year...
I hope one would see the sarcasm in the previous statement...
It was a company issued phone. So I see no problem in it.
If it was her own device then I would not install it. But a company device. Then she can just turn it off when she is off the clock. And then get her own phone.
Is the app installed on her personal device, or was it installed on the company's personal device? Her personal device should be her personal business, broadly speaking. Her company's personal device is their business.
Finding God in a Dog
The plaintiff was working two jobs during this time (she wanted to attain health insurance at the earlier place) and the defendants maliciously called the other employer apparently within a week of when she would have gotten her health insurance benefit and got her fired there.
It's one thing to fire an employee, you can always find some fig leaf pretext to cover your ass. But using private information that you got from the employee and going out of your way to contact another employer and cause harm to the ex-employee? There's no legitimate cause for that. That's demonstrates that it wasn't just a bad employee.
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.
Stubits replied that she should tolerate the illegal intrusion....
.... And?! I need closure on that anecdote!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I have seen this kind of abuse before. When I had a company phone and I knew my boss was tracking me I used airplane mode quite a bit and I would also forward my company owned cell calls to my personal cell phone to sidestep the tracking of my voyeuristic "boss".
What country does this guy think he's living in that it should *EVER* be an expectation on an employee's part that their employer will, and by their own admission no less, BREAK THE FUCKING LAW?
He might be lucky to not end up facing jailtime if he admits to actually saying that.
At-will employment does not entitle an employer to violate an employee's civic rights... or at least not without all of the applicable consequences.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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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Condition of employment. You want the job or not?
Have gnu, will travel.
That is NOT what the article, or the civil complaint say. Even then, they don't have a right to track you 24/7. Read the complaint.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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?
but it was never hers. It was company provided!
That may be true, but it's not relevant. By requiring her to keep it with her 24/7, they're not using it to track the phone's location but hers. And unless you want to argue that she's a slave, she's not their property.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
First, read TFA. It's short. Then you won't look like a moron. You'll see things like the first paragraph:
A Central California woman claims she was fired after uninstalling an app that her employer required her to run constantly on her company issued iPhone - an app that tracked her every move 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
You'll also find bits like this:
The app had a "clock in/out" feature which did not stop GPS monitoring, that function remained on. This is the problem about which Ms. Arias complained.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
According to the article, she was makin 87 000 per year. They wanted her on call 24/7. They were paying her $9.93 per hour. Asshole boss thinks he owns her.
One thing she could have done - turn call forwarding to a private phone on, so that the 24/7 condition is met, and then... sky's the limit.
Get a friendly taxi driver to take the phone for the night.
Put it on an RC plane and take it for a trip over the city center.
Put it in a box and attach with a magnet to your boss' car.
Borrow it for a friend who does car races (preferably illegal) to take it for a 200MPH ride.
Root the phone, get a GPS spoofing app and "send it to Antarctica".
Or just leave it in a desk drawer at work...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Access to the data being generated means that data can be abused. Especially when there is no one monitioring it's use who has a vested interest in ensuring the proper use of that data. (AKA the person that data pertains to.)
The biggest thing I see from the summary is the fact that someone was gloating about the fact they could monitor the employee outside of work hours. If that dumbass had kept his mouth shut this would be a non-story, because no one would have bothered to check and even if they did they would have no ability to prove it. (Remote evidience (AKA data) collection means that evdience can be deleted when nessacarry, in some cases that evidence can be a warning to the conspiritors that the police are on to them, etc.)
Laws only have the power to perscribe redresses in the event that they are broken. They cannot prevent the crime outright, doing that requires active enforcement. You can actively enforce the security of a bank from being robbed. You cannot actively enforce the security of a bank's website from being robbed once the system hosting it is compromised. In the case of the physical bank, once the alarms are disabled, and the vault cracked open, you still have people with guns to deal with. In the case of the bank website, once the lock has been picked, and the alarms disabled, there's no one around to prevent you from performing as many transfers as you want as long as the system continues running. Bonus, it can be done from anywhere in the world and you may not even be able to find the criminals, much less extridite them to face charges.
The location tracking is no different. You can protect your location if someone tries to get it by searching for you in person. You can't protect your location, if the agent in your back pocket / purse / etc. phones home every second. Some have already said leave the thing somewhere. But as the article points out, it was a requirement of her job that she keep the phone on her 24/7. If the law can do anything here, it's ban the 24/7 on call requirement, but that would also be incredibley difficult to enforce, due to the current expectations of the corprate world. (Human resources should be avaibale at all times because it's a damn resource. It's not useful to us if we can't use it when we demand it's use.)
Basicly stated, people are not mature enough to only use that data for ethical purposes. It's one thing to know where the compony's property is. It's another thing to track the user of that property constantly even when that user is not on company time, and the requirement of her job is that peice of company proptery must remain on her person at all times.
Unless she was being required to carry this phone all the time I don't see the issue; when you're off the clock, clock out in the app and turn the phone off. When you start work, turn it on and clock in. What's hard about that?
The solution is to use the clock out function, then turn the phone off or put it in a tin box. Take the phone out of the tin box or turn it on again when it's time to clock in.
Get your own smartphone to add/remove apps from.
but it was never hers. It was company provided!
So why didn't she just use a different phone while off duty?
The End
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This is only an issue if the following criteria are met 1) she was required to have phone on her 24/7 2) she was not advised the tracking would happen and be monitored in her contract If not both of those, then it's a non issue as she could have left her cell phone home, and she was aware what she was getting into- and getting paid mighty fine for it. A company has a right to track the location of its equipment at all times. It's their equipment.
Imagine the fun you could have with a fake a GPS signal - When your employer asks why you fly to the north pole every night at 3000mph you can tell him you're moonlighting for Santa.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
That's a great plan. Then she could instead be fired for not taking calls from customers 24/7 on the phone in the tin box instead. Brilliant!
IT WAS HER PHONE... I'm not handing my boss my phone....
Personally, I think I'd invest $15 in an old flip phone and use that for my "personal" phone for work... Run your tracking app on that, dear leader.... No sir, that I-Phone in my pocket is NOT for work.... It's so my ailing mother can do face time with me...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
They were tracking the iPhone, which they own.
I understood that it was HER phone...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Tracking the iPhone is fine.
Requiring you to carry the iPhone 24/7 is fine.
The combination of the two is *NOT* fine.
Agree. Unless there is a *very* good reason for tracking employees around the clock (I can't think of any) and the employee explicitly agreed to it, this should be a punishable invasion of privacy. Not sure what the law says on this in different countries.
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.
it is possible to have two phones one for work and one for personal stuff and never the twain shall meet.
lose != loose
There's no version of this story where I install that app on my personal phone.
If they want to issue me a company phone to put that on, then so be it. And I'll leave that phone behind at work when I leave.
First paragraph from TFA
A Central California woman claims she was fired after uninstalling an app that her employer required her to run constantly on her company issued iPhone—an app that tracked her every move 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Not only was it not her phone, she removed pre-installed software.
First paragraph of article
A Central California woman claims she was fired after uninstalling an app that her employer required her to run constantly on her company issued iPhone—an app that tracked her every move 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Like it or not, a lot of nasty employment conditions are technically legal or hard to prove. Really the best thing is to publicize what is happening on glassdoor and similar sites. It's not going to immediately stop entry level employees, who have few better choices, from applying. But confirmed bad practices will deny the perpetrator ability to recruit top talent for positions that have the most impact on the company's future.
As of now, Intermex is described as nice working environment on Glassdoor. If I was considering an offer and read about 24/7 GPS tracking in page after page of reviews, I certainly would not join.
Why? If it's stolen, sure, but most phones already have methods for tracking their location if they're stolen. If the employee says she still has it in her possession, what reason could they possibly have for needing to know where it is, other than wanting to know where the employee is when off the clock?
I've known a number of medical practitioners who have to remain within a certain radius of the hospital when they're on-call, since they need to be able to get back within a certain timeframe, but even they weren't subject to stuff like this, and we're talking about an office worker here, by the sounds of things. Why in the world would she be subject to this?
Employers should have nothing to say about what employees do off the time clock. The sick part is that if she left the phone at work the employer would insist that they had the right to contact her to report to work suddenly if required. I've been there. The employer says i am to stay near my phone all weekend in case an emergency comes to pass. I told the employer i would be off shore fishing and would keep fishing with or without an emergency unless I was paid to stay near my phone. I never allowed employers to pull that kind of crap on me.
TFA says that, but I didn't see anything in the primary source (the formal legal paperwork) to support it.
The relevant phrasing direct from the complaint says things like:
In April 2014, Intermex asked Plaintiff and other employees to download an application ("app") called Xora to their smart phones.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I am not sure it's illegal, but I do not understand how she was "off the clock" if she was required to perform company functions. They didn't monitor refute the fact that she was monitored when she asked. So they can't really be said to have hidden it from her. She is certainly owe back pay for every hour of the day and the company should certain pay the penalty for not paying an employee's salary in a timely manner. But those are civil matters... I am not sure anything illegal was actually happening here... Now if they denied spying on her while they in fact did spy on her, then I can see how criminal laws would apply. Oh, and I am not a lawyer.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
But they didn't pay her for those hours. If she was performing company duties, she's owed back pay for every hour she did.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
There's no version of this story where I install that app on my personal phone.
If they want to issue me a company phone to put that on, then so be it. And I'll leave that phone behind at work when I leave.
There's no version of the story that says it's her phone. It IS a company phone. RTFA!
Root -> Xposed -> Xprivacy -> Fake location == DONE
I was replying to the guy who said it was her personal phone.
There's no version of the story that says it's her phone. It IS a company phone. RTFA!
The version of the story in the court filing says the app was installed on employee phones and she was told she had to keep her phone on 24/7 etc. That's the official legal version of the story; what ars Technica comes up with is modern journalism.
Not only was it not her phone,
The official court document linked to in the summary says it was her phone.
she removed pre-installed software.
She didn't install the Xora app on her phone until two months after she started working for the company. That's not "pre-installed."
Majority of employers have it state when you get an update to the employee contract terms, you "Agree to these new terms by continuing to work here.
It's much more direct than that. We know she agreed to install the app because ... she installed the app on her phone.
I'm sorry, I don't get cell coverage here (in my bomb shelter).
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Maybe in some socialist hellhole they can't. But in the Land of the Free, you'll do what ever your masters tell you to, or live the rest of your life on the streets.
Maybe "living off the land" should become an official school subject? It's not like the situation is going to improve.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You can also get two bums to consent to a fist fight in the street for twenty bucks, dosent make it legal.
Invasion of privacy doesn't stick... IF this app in installed on a work device, then it should not be carried anywhere when off the clock. It should be left in the truck, locker, with all other Company provided tools. If might just backfire as abusing of company provided equipment for personal use. Carry your own phone off work just as you'd be using your own car and own cloth instead of driving around town and going on a family trip with the company's provided vehicle and wondering why the company's insurance wouldn't want to cover damages from an accident that would happen when you're not even on the clock. "There is something Rotten in the land of Denmark."
---- If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.
I don't want a job for a business that's doing something flagrantly illegal. For example, I don't want a job making counterfeit Desoxyn in a meth lab.
That depends on whether this is a salaried or hourly job, assorted state and federal labor laws and regulations, etc., etc. It's possible that the job description was written such that this was a legitimate contract term and that overtime and on call pay did not apply.
IANAL, but this is a case in which one (with some labor law expertise), is needed. Now, whether one can extend the idea of being on call 24 hours a day to being tracked is yet another question.
Have gnu, will travel.
When has America been a free country? Seriously, go read "A People's History of the United States". We've been a heck hole for ages. Hell, the reason we have a Senate is to keep the pleebs from voting themselves land (google it). We've always been a country by the wealthy & for the wealthy. We've always put property rights first and human rights second. I don't know why get so confused when we do stuff like this. We've been doing it since the country was founded...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This may not be the popular opinion, but the company should be able to run pretty tracking software if they want, assuming that it's their phone, and they disclose what is going on.
By the same token, a company phone can (and probably should, in most scenarios) go into the desk drawer in your office at the end of the work day.
If you're on call a lot, then things get a little fuzzier.
They basically lied to her about the function of the app by not telling her that they would be tracking her every move 24/7. When she discovered she was being tracked all the time and her creepy boss was making creepy stalker-like comments about her, she complained, then removed the app. The company would be very smart to settle out of court.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Very simple. Leave the 'Company issues iPhone' at home when you are not 'on the clock' and switch it off. QED.
A bit creepy maybe. But how's this different from installing a GPS on a company car? As other posters have pointed out, it's a work issued phone. So if you're being monitored by your use of company property, then don't use it unless you're at work. Leave the car/smartphone at the office. Get another car/phone for your personal needs.
There are other technical solutions like turning off the cellphone. Or put it inside a microwave oven (just remember to take it out before you pop in your burito). It would be another matter if the GPS thingy was being embedded into her skin/scalp.
She didnt' agree to 24/7 monitoring and it's quite possible her supervisor exceeded his authority by using it that way. It's a bit stalkery and creepy if you think about it at all.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This.
nosig today
Don't you mean, "She should have left the work phone at the office"?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Some employers can require on call engineers. The question comes down to salaried or hourly. If salaried and mandentory on call, then the alternate solution is to leave the phone at work for privacy reasons and auto forward to your Google Voice number. My GV account can ring up to 3 phones at once. This can include a landline, cell, and google talk. A VOIP line with some providers can allow multi presence. This includes a VOIP phone at home, a VOIP app on a tablet, etc. I can be reashed, but I don't have to give out my personal cell number to be reached.
My GV piints to a free IP Kall number, which goes to a free VOIP account on IPPI, which has free voicemail, free missed call notifications by email, and multi presence up to 3 phones. Solves my after hours contact number while exiting employer tracking. I can call in using Goolge Voice. I can be home, at a club, or in Disnyland and the origin does not show up, only the GV number.
The truth shall set you free!
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.
Her problem may have had a solution: leave the company-issued work at work, or turn it off after hours. Buy a private phone, use that one off duty. If you must answer phone calls off duty, forward calls from the company phone to the private one.
That's a coward's solution, however. And, technically, you lied to your employer about your availability while on-call. That'll get you into more trouble than anything, even if the reasoning behind that was sensible.
The real solution is you answer the phone, say "Okay, is it in my contract to work on-call, and is that a reasonable contract? Yes? Where? You're saying I'm REQUIRED to turn up now? Sorry, I don't think I am. We'll discuss it 9am tomorrow with my lawyer in tow, no?"
I do not have an "on-call" contract. However, there's a line about "other reasonable requests given by Boss X". The definition of reasonable isn't there, but reasonable is a two-way street. The servers just exploded, the business is dying, and I'm the only guy with the password? Yes. I'll help. Your printer has jammed at 3am? No. I won't, Wait until I'm in tomorrow.
The first time my phone number is abused like that, that's game over. I will remove your right to call the number, in writing, and add you to my blocklists.
I am under no obligation to give you that number, but I do so out of reasonableness if there's a problem. I am under ABSOLUTELY no obligation to answer that phone. But I may do so for similar reasons. I am certainly not required to DO anything about any phone call beyond the limits of my courtesy unless it specifically says so in writing.
At that point, however, you will provide me with a work phone as I'm not sustaining a personal phone just to be used for work all the time. And at that point, the work phone's availability will mirror my own.
Lying to an employer to try to be clever to get out of this stuff helps no-one. You can get into trouble. The employer gets a reason to sack you (not because you refused, but because you lied about it). And everyone knows what's really happening and you being "smart" doesn't help.
Just tell them - no. That's my limit, sorry. Renegotiate my contract? Sure. How many hours will I be officially on-call? Okay, I would need a salary of X to reflect that, and the tools to do so. Don't like that, so you're going to sack me? Unfair dismissal.
The amount of employment law in your favour these days is unbelievable, there's no need to bullshit.
Nasty employment conditions probably aren't technically legal. It's just that nobody has challenged them. Remember those companies that forced users to give up their Facebook passwords, etc.? They claimed the same. Until someone challenged them.
A work contract is an agreement of two people. It has to be a "meeting of minds" (i.e. you both come to agree) and it has to be reasonable (a two-way street). You can include anything you like, you can even sign it, it can sign you have to give them your first-born, it doesn't necessarily mean it's legal, enforceable or binding. (There's a long history of legal cases that establish that standard boilerplate contract terms are binding, for instance, but stuff related to 24/7 GPS tracking etc.? That's something that needs to be questioned as to its utility and reasonableness).
Uninstalling the app from the work phone may be against the IT policies, however, but they are much simpler alternatives. Just leave the phone somewhere or turn it off when you're not using it.
Implicit in law is the right to a private family life. While you're on-call, you're pseudo-working, pseudo-private. IANAL, but I could probably argue that they don't need to track you even while on-call unless something happens that requires you to come in - and then it's just a matter of phoning and asking where you are. I could certainly argue that they have no reason for me to even have the phone on when I'm not on-call, and certainly not with any kind of tracking.
But this all boils down to one thing - you're working for a scumbag company that doesn't care about your private life. Find another job if that bothers you. Amazingly, for some people, it DOESN'T bother them. Those people scare me. I mean, honestly... come on.
If you're not on the clock, turn off the phone. It's a company provided device, so don't tamper with it, but you can shut it off.
Stalking Laws: https://www.victimsofcrime.org...
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
... an app that her employer required her to run constantly on her company issued iPhone ...
There is the problem right there. She is using a company issued phone and is surprised when the company wants to keep track of where it is?
My company issues me a phone that does something similar but I never use it for this very reason. It costs me nothing to have their phone and why they think I need it is beyond me but I still have and use my own personal phone and just leave the company one at home unless I'm out on official business.
Any company that insists on tracking you 24/7 is not worth working for, imho.
The company knows that the phone is in her possession, and that she is responsible for it. That's all they need to know.
If the phone gets lost/stolen/damaged, it is her responsibility to replace it.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
The one thing Germany has going for it is it's privacy and data protection laws. They're being eroded as we speak by EU lobbying, dimwit politicians and clue-/careless citizens, but they still are tight enough that a German court would've given the employer a good public shafting. Without lube, after having a good laugh and concluding the verdict in 10 minutes.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Being required to answer the company phone 24/7.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I have this problem all the time. Companies create bullshit language in their policies, terms, contracts, and agreements. And then refuse to budge because they think the law will follow whatever bullshit they have. No, I don't care what your policy says if your policy in unenforceable. Saying something is "non-refundable" might sound like a good policy, but unless a judge agrees the policy is pretty useless.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Stupids? That poor man, how long has he struggled to get out from under a name like that, only to have it become his now permanent moniker.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
...and nothing but the truth
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
You've never been on call?
Indeed, there are a number of people who post on Facebook about cop deaths, and then that "there were no riots after this guy was killed."
Well, duh. There's generally not any riots when a convenience store clerk is killed (in similar manner, I might add). Why? Who are you going to riot against? Is a cop being shot more terrible than the night-shift guy at 7-11?
Being a cop is not just a guy with a bad, blue uniform, and a job. They're a representative of government authority, with more power than the average citizen. When they start popping off citizens, they're display a form of OPPRESSION. People aren't rioting because Bob X died, they're rioting because a representative of government authority whose job is to PROTECT citizens is instead OPPRESSING and KILLING them.
RTFLawsuit. It was her phone. The article botched that part of the story.
If you're an 'On Call' employee they can make it a condition of your employment. How thoroughly that can be enforced depends on the state of course, YMMV.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
There's no version of this story where I install that app on my personal phone.
If they want to issue me a company phone to put that on, then so be it. And I'll leave that phone behind at work when I leave.
There's no version of the story that says it's her phone. It IS a company phone. RTFA!
TFA got it wrong. Read the lawsuit. It was her phone.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If racism is the factor cited by blacks as the reason that they cannot get ahead, live in urban wastelands, etc. then it stands to reason that fresh-of-the-boat blacks from Africa would face the same racism. And so it should be similarly impossible for African blacks in America to succeed as it is for African-Americans to succeed.
Since that does not appear to be the case, perhaps the "black culture" is to blame and not racism.
Everyone was told to install the app at the same time as the other employees - it was not a pre-condition to her or anyone else's employment. Please read the actual complaint - the second link in the article.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
this list is incomplete
In the 80's a California regional airline suffered a crash when a disgruntled (are employees ever gruntled?) forced his way into the cockpit with a handgun, shot the pilots and ran the plane into a hillside near San Luis Obispo, killing all aboard. I was part of the team that recovered body pieces and identified the remains. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Personally, I think being oncall 24/7 without comp time off is more invasive than the GPS tracking. Left my previous job after they introduced oncall rotation without any new benefit to show from it. If I get paged at 4am I am going to have a headache the next day, so don't expect me to come to office and write code. And if I can not go to swimming pool or drink beer for the whole week, a 3 day weekend next week, when I am NOT on call, would be the minimum that would compensate for that. Other than that, when I am on call I am already not free to go on with my life, so my locations are going to be pretty boring anyway.
Since a company with large number of billions in the bank thought they can get away with uncompensated oncall in my case, I would guess chances for legal success against that are slim.
This was modded to +5 but there are still only 3 reviews there? C'mon, /. .. there should be dozens of reviews by now!
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
Or just turn it off. Unless they were giving her a 110% for being available off-hours, and double-time on weekends....
mark "alternatively, give it back to the boss... as a suppository"
Don't agree with everything, but Daniel Quinn's essay on education is a must read.
http://ishmael.org/Education/W...
Some excerpts...
"Of course, then, as now, everyone knew that the citizen's education was doing no such thing. It was perceived then--as now--that there was something strangely wrong with the schools. They were failing--and failing miserably--at delivering on these enticing promises. Ah well, teachers weren't being paid enough, so what could you expect? We raised teachers' salaries--again and again and again--and still the schools failed. Well, what could you expect? The schools were physically decrepit, lightless, and uninspiring. We built new ones--tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of them--and still the schools failed. Well, what could you expect? The curriculum was antiquated and irrelevant. We modernized the curriculum, did our damnedest to make it relevant--and still the schools failed. Every week--then as now--you could read about some bright new idea that would surely "fix" whatever was wrong with our schools: the open classroom, team teaching, back to basics, more homework, less homework, no homework--I couldn't begin to enumerate them all. Hundreds of these bright ideas were implemented--thousands of them were implemented--and still the schools failed.
"During the Great Depression it became urgently important to keep young people off the job market for as long as possible, and so it came to be understood that a twelfth-grade education was essential for every citizen. As before, it didn't much matter what was added to fill up the time, so long as it was marginally plausible. Let's have them learn how to analyze a poem, even if they never read another one in their whole adult life. Let's have them read a great classic novel, even if they never read another one in their whole adult life. Let's have them study world history, even if it all just goes in one ear and out the other. Let's have them study Euclidean geometry, even if two years later they couldn't prove a single theorem to save their lives. All these things and many, many more were of course justified on the basis that they would contribute to the success and rich fulfilment that these children would experience as adults. Except, of course, that it didn't. But no one wanted to know about that. No one would have dreamed of testing young people five years after graduation to find out how much of it they'd retained. No one would have dreamed of asking them how useful it had been to them in realistic terms or how much it had contributed to their success and fulfilment as humans. What would be the point of asking them to evaluate their education? What did they know about it, after all? They were just high-school graduates, not professional educators.
"At the end of the Second World War, no one knew what the economic future was going to be like. With the disappearance of the war industries, would the country fall back into the pre-war depression slump? The word began to go out that the citizen's education should really include four years of college. Everyone should go to college. As the economy continued to grow, however, this injunction began to be softened. Four years of college would sure be good for you, but it wasn't part of the citizen's education, which ultimately remained a twelfth-grade education.
"And it should be noted that our high-school graduates are reliably entry-level workers. We want them to have to grab the lowest rung on the ladder. What sense would it make to give them skills that would make it possible for them to grab the second rung or the third rung? Those are the rungs their older brothers and sisters are reaching for. And if this year's graduates were reaching for the second or third rungs, who would be doing the work at the bottom? The business people who do the hiring constantly complain that graduates know absolutely nothing, have virtually no useful skills at all. But in truth how could it be otherwise
"I will happily pay another 20 cents on a Big Mac so that the people making my food get a reasonable wage.
Then by all means, please, take some of your money and open a restaurant and pay your workers $20/hour or any other wage you feel is necessary. I'm sure that you will engender a clientele so enlightened that they will think nothing about paying $17.95 for a Big Mac because it makes them feel good that the person who flipped their burger is making a living wage. You'll have zero problems.
Or at least you could write to all the restaurants you frequent and advise them that if they do not increase the wages they pay to their employees, you will not eat there? Once all your similarly enlightened friends join you, those places will surely comply, right?
Why do "progressive" ideas always center around forcing everyone to do what progressives think is the right thing.
Ideas so good, they need to be mandatory and enforced by men with uniforms and guns.
Except as noted 10000 times in the thread the article does not match the account within the court filing the article is based on. Apparently the journalist is a moron and you believe everything you read on the internet.
The court filing says explicitly that it was HER personal phone.
I'm not sure where ARS got that from - I couldn't see anywhere in the filing that specified ownership of the phone, and any references were to their phones or her phone.
While the Citizens United ruling moved the bar into "corporate speech" you need to understand that the decision was based on a 501(c)4 corporation, which is not at all like a business corporation. There are a lot of 501(c)4 organizations, and most are not political per se.
A 501(c)4 simply allows a group of people to pool their after-tax money (that's important, donations to a 501(c)4 are not deductible and hence are after-tax dollars) so that they can, as a group, sign contracts and hire people. They're tax exempt largely because the money donated to them has already been taxed, and they don't generally produce anything of commercial value (they don't generally sell stuff except memberships).
501(c)4 was created by the government for the purpose of providing these abilities. Groups like AARP and the NRA are 501(c)4 corporations. So are Rotary Clubs, Kiwanis Clubs, and Lions Clubs, the Miss America Organization, and the League of Women Voters.
They are by their very nature "speech" groups. The "corporate" part is a legal necessity for hiring staff and paying bills. They don't need the limited liability, etc. normally associated with what most people think of when they hear the word "corporation".
And then there's the notion that about 1M laudable charities exist in the USA, and they are almost all 501(c)3 corporations.
The company would be very smart to settle out of court.
I agree. They are in the wrong. My point is that she agreed to work for the pay she was getting (so has no complaint about being on call 24/7 and the company isn't in the wrong for expecting it.) Her mistake was installing the app on her phone before reading the information about the app. When I google "Xora app" today, the first result is for Xora.com which has various links shown, one for "Employee Location Tracking." When you click that link, it takes you to a page that tells you:
Kind of hard to see where every worker is on a Google Map without it tracking where you are, I'd say. Basic info about an app that someone wants you to install on your phone. It's not hidden info like the fact that the cell company tracks the phone already, it's kinda right out there.
Forward employer-provided phone to personal phone. Leave employer-provided tracking phone at the office.
Are clear example of when tracking is almost certainly going to happen and is probably a good thing for the employee. Of course, ti should be tracking to company-owned vehicle and not the employee per se.
Who cares why you didn't pick up the phone. You're a sales rep, you get paid if and only if you sell product.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
It's a question of fitness for the job. Do you want your next operation to be performed by someone who hasn't recovered from a 3-day bender but can hide it well?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
If that phone was on all the time... what *else* did he record? If I were her, I'd have a warrant for the records of what was stored on the phone, or uploaded. I mean, those things have cameras built in, and if it was tracking her all the time... AND HE KNEW WHERE SHE'D BEEN, so he was personally looking at what she was doing off-time, could he have turned on the phone and recorded her personal life?
mark
Sure, but I have my own phone and only I decide what gets installed on it.
If you ask me... it was a company iPhone.
So, Go to work and take it out of a tin foil lined box turn it on and clock in.
Leave work turn if off and put it back in the box. Perhaps with recharge battery in the
box so it is fully charged.
A key to deciding if a person is entitled to overtime is tracking and a time clock.
Her salary sounds nice but will not pay the rent in San Francisco today. If she is
on call 7x24 they need to pay her 7x24 with time and a half and double time on holidays etc.
To me she is not exempt but they are playing that game on both sides of the coin.
They owe her coin.
The application allows: See the location of every mobile worker on a Google Map. You can drill down
on an individual worker to see where they have been, the route they have driven and where they are now.
It also tracks mileage so all the miles they tracked need to be paid for.
In addition ALL the employees that are so tracked need to be compensated retroactively.
The key words in the Xora application are "work" and "mobile worker". Since they bragged that they could
and do track her any time and anyplace they trespassed on her life or they owe her and the other employes
a lot of $$.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
In college I designed a system which tracked my movement in 3D space and uploaded the coordinates to a MySQL database, which using another app I wrote, could reconstruct a stick figure model of myself in the area :-). I had about 1000 people actually visit the website running it regularly for fun and only one person ever ran the modelling software. My point? It's not a big deal to give off your location, I intentionally did for months and NOTHING happened to me, my work had access, my family had access, even the police had access and look, I'm still perfectly safe. If you still think it's a big deal, just write a quick app to bypass the location tracking and give it false information when you're off work, then you don't have to worry.
The phone belonged to the company. She should have left it at work when off duty.
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.
Well, and think back before 'apps' and mobile/cell phones. Can anyone name a single job on the planet that required you to be radio tagged 24/7, even when off work?
We don't even need new laws to handle this (like 99% of all "new problems" that technology brings up do not require any new laws....just common sense).