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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...."
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?
Exactly. There should still have been mention that the required app had that functionality.
Honestly, I'm really hoping she wins this. Businesses have far too much invasion as it is, and it's way past time that ceases.
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.
That's only a solution if the job has no requirement for her to be "on-call" outside office hours; being reachable when off the clock seems like the sort of thing that a sales exec is regularly expected to be. So not actually a solution.
The article spells out that she was required to have the phone on her 24/7 as a condition of employment.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
That's a great point but it does seem like a company should have the right to enable GPS tracking for company assets. Perhaps a good compromise would be that you could indicate when you were off-work to avoid tracking, but if required the device could be signaled to turn back on tracking.
I personally would probably get one of those signal shielding bags and drop it in there when I wasn't to be on-call. Then you could carry it with you even. Then it also appears just as if it lost power for a while, so it would be hard to get in trouble over it...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have been paranoid about this for years.
If it's important to you, get your own cell phone and forward your work line to your personal phone. I do this and leave my work cell at home.
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.
Think. You keep using that word...
I think this needs to be fixes in law, not just in a court case. Some law that makes it explicit that employers have no interest in what you do with yourself when "off duty", and protects your privacy and dignity from your employer when you're not at work (or otherwise on the clock).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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...
uh ... where exactly does it say that ?
Line 26 and 27 of page three and line 1 of page 4 of the complaint:
He confirmed that she was required to keep her phones power on "24/7" to answer phone calls from clients.
He in this case is Stubbs.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I do not mean to pry, but you don't by any chance happen to have six fingers on your right hand?
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I used to have a phone with the problem described in TFA, along with me allegedly being "on-call" at all hours.
Such a shielding bag (really just a Faraday cage) generally worked just fine.
It is important to note, however, that putting the phone in the Faraday bag emulated loss of signal, instead of loss of power, since the program in the phone reported these conditions differently, and so also were the interpretations of these conditions by management.
Kid-proof tablet..
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.
You don't suppose that this app has a remote photo-capture feature, do you? Maybe a few other RAT functions? That might be a motive for requiring a (female) employee to have it with them, powered on 24/7...
Just a thought...
Apparently you have never worked in a job where you are on call 24/7 even when you only work in the office 9-5. I am a Sr. Systems Engineer, but when things go really bad somewhere, I am supposed to be reachable at all times except when I specifically am "on vacation". Fortunately, I get to use my own phone with no obnoxious company software on it.
Nevermore.
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.
Does it spell out that she was compensated on a 24 hour basis? Didn't think so. F U company, and every other company that requires 24/7 support for 8/5 wages.
$7200/month is pretty good wages, and she knew the 24/7 on call requirement before she took the job. She was, apparently, also working for another company doing the same kind of job. Of all the things to object to, this is about the least objectionable.
The first claims in her case are shaky because she agreed to them all. Use your personal phone for work, check. Have it with you 24/7, check. Install the app so you can be tracked, check. She's pretty much got them by the shorts when it comes to them telling her other employer she was disloyal, though.
Of course, it's hard to understand why any company would let you work for three months for a competitor while they're paying you to work for them.
"On call" means she's always on the clock and therefore has a billing claim against her employers. At least, that's how it theoretically works in England (RCN V London NHS, held that sitting next to a telephone or travelling between clients at their homes (but not going between home and work) was actually billable hours (with the exception of being between on call and travelling to that call which is all on the clock), according to the National Minimum Wage Act 1998).
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
There are certain off-work things that an employer should know about - witness the guy who intentionally flew the airliner into the mountain and killed all on board - when it can affect their on-the-clock performance. But there's no reason to track someone 24-7 unless you're paying them 24-7. And in this case, they didn't need to track her at all - they had her on-the-job performance metrics. They only tracked her because they could - even though she told them it was illegal, and her boss told her basically "so what?"
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
The complaint (the pdf in the second link of the story) outlines the laws she alleges were broken. An interesting read.
She also asked for a jury trial, which in civil cases only requires 9 of 12 jurors to agree with her. If the jury decides that the allegations are more likely than not to be true, the company (and the 15 John Does and named defendants) are going to pay. People should always have the option to decide whether they want their private life known, and to who.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
There are certain off-work things that an employer should know about - witness the guy who intentionally flew the airliner into the mountain and killed all on board
Oh, absolutely. If one of my employees intentionally flies a plane into a mountain, killing himself and everyone on board, I'll be firing him the very next day.
that would be the ones on zero hours contracts. I'm in the process of building a case which involves some reliance on the RCN decision to prove that zero hours contracts aren't just controversial, they're actually illegal.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
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
i agree bud but its gotten this way because the people allow it until someone like her makes a fuss and puts a stop to it.
In my lifetime the number of incarcerated Americans has risen about 300%.
There are certain off-work things that an employer should know about - witness the guy who intentionally flew the airliner into the mountain and killed all on board
I'm pretty sure he was on the clock while flying the plane...
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
Not really. I mean, maybe if the job in question is life-safety-critical (and probably not even then!), but the vast majority of jobs are not even slightly like that.
It's worth noting that the situation you cite has happened exactly once in all recorded history, so it's not exactly a common case worth optimizing for.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You touch on part of the big picture here.
quote
If you don't like being tracked on the job, then find a different job.
end quote
We as a society need to ask the question if constant tracking, even during on-call hours, is something an employer should legally be allowed to coerce an employee into doing. At the moment your statement is absolutely true because we have no law that explains how an employer may act in this sort of scenario.
All and all I hope she wins. When you are off the clock, the tracking should stop. If you are on call, but still off work, the tracking should stop.
Some may argue the company has a right to know exactly where their equipment is at all times. This comes down to trust and if a company doesn't trust an employee to take a cellphone home and return it without constant tracking, I would strongly question why I would want to work for such an un-trusting company.
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, $7.79 and so on. If this wasnt the case walmart would already pay more than minimun wage for all employees.
but it was never hers. It was company provided!
So why didn't she just use a different phone while off duty?
Ray Rice is a public figure and as such a public face of the NFL. He as obligations to the NFL in his public persona which are spelled out in his contract.
So, in certain cases, what you do in your off times IS your employer's business, but only so far as it affects your employer's business. However, in this case, I don't think the employer had a "need to know" or a business reason to track employees in their off duty hours.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
That's a great plan. Then she could instead be fired for not taking calls from customers 24/7 on the phone in the tin box instead. Brilliant!
Just because they own it, they do not have the right to track it when they lend it to you to use out of hours. So do landlords have the right to fit cameras in their rental properties, specifically in the bedroom and toilets, so they can sell the video obtained for profit. Their properties, their laws or is that a false premise. So corporate rights, is it all just PR=B$ in order to justify ego power trips by executives and a lust driven desire to control their employees lives.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Maybe the US of A should put more money into public schools, infrastructure and public service instead of F-22's.
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.
We already spend more per student than the rest of the developed world, how much more should we spend? Maybe it's how it's being spent, not now much is being spent...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
Will you people stop it!!! The company does NOT have a "right" to track their phone. They have a right to get it back when requested. They have a right for you to not abuse the service plan. What did these poor companies do before GPS? TRUST THEIR EMPLOYEES and hold them responsible for loss/damage. Exactly what does tracking the phone have to do with getting business done? Employee drives a truck and you want to monitor their route? That is a legitimate business data collection and analysis need. Tag the vehicle and not their phone.
And if you DO want to insist on this ridiculous opinion that they have a "right" to track their equipment's real-time location, then i submit that "right" ends where the employee's right to privacy starts. I mean afterall, what about their right to monitor the sound surrounding their equipment? That is their right after all to make sure the phone isn't being abused by listening to ALL sounds around it.
"But there is no 'right' to privacy" in the constitution you say. Well there is no "right" to track your equipment in real time either. There is the ability, now, but that is not the same thing as a right.
In my lifetime the number of incarcerated Americans has risen about 300%.
I KNEW this was someone's fault!
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Maybe the US of A should put more money into public schools
The United States spends more per pupil than most other countries with less to show for it. There are many problems with the American education system; a lack of money is not one of them, at least in the aggregate (there are obviously individual school districts that are hard up)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Where's that money actually GOING though? Odds are it's not getting to the classroom, it's being diverted to administrators' pockets.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Yeah, too bad in the US that concept doesn't exist at all.
I've seen small businesses that practically want their employees to sit in the break room all day, and then clock in anytime a customer walks up to the counter, and then clock out as soon as they leave. Essentially businesses want to shift the risk to the employees, and keep the profits to themselves.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
Uhhhh - you're pulling emotional strings here. How about we examine the actual numbers of cops killed, nationwide?
http://www.nleomf.org/facts/of...
It doesn't appear that the number of cops killed in a given year in the US has EVER EXCEEDED 300. The highest year on that chart looks like 1974, with 280.
How does that compare with other occupations? Hmmm . . . .
Have you ever expressed similar sentiments for logging personnel? Pilots? Fishermen? Truck drivers? (I'll give even odds that you are one of the millions of Americans who INTENTIONALLY CUT TRUCK DRIVERS OFF on a daily basis) How about auto mechanics? Have you ever given a thought to them? Do you think about miners, in the same way you think about cops?
There are a lot of occupations more dangerous than police work. I get so tired of the cops getting all the glory, all the sympathy - but you have none to spare for the people who keep the cogs of civilization working.
The 10 Deadliest Jobs:
1. Logging workers
2. Fishers and related fishing workers
3. Aircraft pilot and flight engineers
4. Roofers
5. Structural iron and steel workers
6. Refuse and recyclable material collectors
7. Electrical power-line installers and repairers
8. Drivers/sales workers and truck drivers
9. Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers
10. Construction laborers
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...
You may, of course, find and cite your own sources - but no credible source places police among the most dangerous professions. I, for one, have always resented the damned cops for asserting that they are in a dangerous profession. They lie, and the gullible public believes them. And NONE OF YOU GIVE A DAMN ABOUT US WHO DO DANGEROUS WORK!!
"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.
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.
What? This was a PRIVATE employment agreement between a PRIVATE employer and a PRIVATE employee. If she doesn't like the employers terms she can find a new job. The GOVERNMENT has zero business intruding in a PRIVATE affair!
This was a demand by a Federally licensed LLC on an individual.
If the owner(s) of the LLC wants to be personally legally liable for the actions of the company, I have no problem agreeing with the sentiments in your comment. But as long as those owner(s) want special legal protection by the government, they can respect a few basic social rights.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
She sold herself only for 8 hours, she gets paid only for 8 hours. They claimed her for 24/7.
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