Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 10, 1990 TAG: 9004100399
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Gwinnett Daily News
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Long
Five minutes later, your boss drops by your desk and makes a reference to the contents of what you thought was a private message.
Suddenly, it's no laughing matter.
Computer programs that enable supervisors to read their employees' electronic mail can also enable them to keep track of how much time workers spend completing a task, how many keystrokes they make and how many mistakes occur.
Electronic monitoring isn't the only way employers keep track of what employees do on the job, though.
Telephone call accounting records the number of calls an employee makes, the numbers dialed and the duration of the conversation. Service observation enables supervisors to listen in on telephone conversations.
As technological advances have increasingly automated the office, they have also generated questions about privacy in the work place.
Employers have embraced new technologies as a way to more efficiently manage the work process. But those same programs can take away an employee's dignity and autonomy, some employees allege.
The debate over balancing the rights of employer and worker has taken on Orwellian overtones, as opponents of electronic monitoring contend that the new technology puts Big Brother in the work place.
Opponents say the technologies have created an electronic sweatshop in some offices and point to the abuses that sometimes result. They raise concerns about increased stress, a declining quality of life at work and the fairness of the monitoring and the way its results are employed.
Businesses that use the technology say it enables them to streamline the work process, to plan workloads and get an unbiased measure of the quality of an employee's work.
Service observation, frequently used on long-distance operators, airline reservation agents and telemarketers, helps companies ensure that workers treat customers with courtesy and give them correct information.
Telephone call accounting can help companies keep track of costly long-distance calls and perhaps reduce the personal calls made by employees.
Traditionally, workers have not had a right to privacy on the job.
Only in recent years have moves toward such a right occurred, according to a report on electronic supervision prepared by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment.
As workers confront employers both on the job and in the courts about privacy issues, ideas about employees' rights are changing.
Some employees have won large jury awards in privacy cases, although the law provides little protection for the vast majority of workers on privacy issues.
Unions are continuing to push for restrictions on the use of technologies like electronic monitoring, although most U.S. workers are not covered by collective bargaining agreements.
Some 10 million U.S. workers are evaluated by electronic monitoring, according to a February report by 9 to 5, National Association of Working Women. As office automation increases, the numbers of workers subject to monitoring also will grow, according to the OTA report.
The type of worker checked on also will change. Clerical workers now make up the largest group of those monitored, but advances in technology have made it possible to survey the work habits of managerial and professional employees as well.
Much of the debate over electronic monitoring has centered on possible abuses of the technology.
Employers now listen in on conversations between workers and the public in industries like airline reservations and long-distance calling, and in federal agencies like the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration.
Employers say they use service observations to ensure their workers are courteous, give correct information and perhaps sell a product.
Improvements in technology make it possible for them to listen without any signs that a third party is monitoring the conversation. That lack of notice has led some to condemn the practice.
"It's a violation of the workers, but also the consumers. It greatly intensifies the stress on the workers and does nothing to improve the quality of service, which is generally the argument that's given for using it," says Gaye Williams Mack, a spokeswoman for the Communications Workers of America.
"This is an ineffective management tool, and it's a tool used more to intimidate workers than for anything like improving service quality."
AT&T has practiced service observation for many years to ensure operators dispense correct information and courtesy, and to gain guidelines on staffing levels, company spokesman Burte Stinson says.
He says the company does not want to notify operators when monitoring takes place because it might affect their usual behavior on the telephone. He likened using a warning tone on a monitored call to a factory notifying employees when a quality control inspection was planned.
A continuous beeping tone that would indicate when a third party is on the phone might also adversely affect the public, he says.
"There's a possibility that customers would be disturbed and perhaps annoyed," Stinson says.
He says the company has not received complaints about service observation from the public.
Sharon McLaughlin, formerly a secretary for a Pennsylvania telemarketing firm, says she has experienced what can happen when the technology is abused.
She says she learned her boss was eavesdropping on her personal calls when he asked her detailed questions about her pending divorce and when another supervisor asked her about an ovarian tumor. The two could have gained that information only through listening in on her calls, McLaughlin says.
She contacted a 9 to 5 computer spying hot line with details of her experience, and now talks about it to warn others of the potential for abuse.
Employers seem unlikely to give up monitoring programs, and indeed, checking up on employees has taken place as long as there have been bosses and workers.
As concerns grow over the tug-of-war between a company's needs and a worker's rights, the debate will increasingly spill out of the work place and into courts and legislatures, experts predict.
by CNB