Electronic Monitoring of Teleworkers

Posted on August 7, 2008 by Michael Moore

John Phillips at The Word on Employment Law posted about the “Electronic Leash” and cites to a Wall Street Journal post by Sue Shellenbarger that conjures up visions of 1850 sweatshops with following description of employer’s exploitive electronic monitoring of home workers:

In a budding trend some employment experts say is invasive, companies are stepping up electronic monitoring and oversight of tens of thousands of home-based independent contractors. They're taking photos of workers' computer screens at random, counting keystrokes and mouse clicks and snapping photos of them at their computers. They're plying sophisticated technology to instantaneously detect anger, raised voices or children crying in the background on workers' home-office calls. Others are using Darwinian routing systems that keep calls coming so fast workers have no time to go to the bathroom.

The Home Shoring business proponents put a different spin on the work environment tauting flexibility for workers and accountability for businesses using their services. Although I have never worked in a call center, my interaction with employers that have them shows me that they are highly structured work environments where productivity is closely monitored. Many employees who do not work at home are subject to some of the same types of electronic monitoring that seems objectionable to home workers. Maybe this begs the question, but why should the home-work environment be any less supervised than the at-work environment?

Employer’s biggest concern for at home workers is the lack of supervision. Many advocates of working at home know it has limitations. Teleworking is not for everyone. As noted by Brittany Maling at HR World, it requires self-disciplined and efficient workers who are most successful if their home office mimicks the traits of the traditional work environment. Perhaps the future of telecommuting has reached its tipping point, but there are still many issues to be worked out including the proper balance between mistrust and obsessive monitoring.

From a legal perspective, the degree of electronic supervision directed toward an independent contractor will likely result in a recharacterization of the relationship to one of employee/employer.   We have previously outlined the other legal issues in Legal issues in Telecommuting: Gas Prices make Businesses Reconsider Policies.

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FLSA causes Global Warming: Sixteen Other Reasons to Consider a 4-day Work Week

Posted on July 18, 2008 by Michael Moore

It’s no secret that the FLSA is anachronistic, but now it’s ruining the planet too. The 40-hour week divided into 5 consecutive workdays is a product of the FLSA, which was enacted in 1938. During the last 70 years, we have been consuming energy by commuting to work and operating facilities all the while pumping green house gasses into the atmosphere for an extra day a week.

Aaron Newton makes this brilliant observation in his post on The 4 Day Work Week:

The notion of our standard work week here in America has remained largely the same since 1938. That was the year the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, standardizing the eight hour work day and the 40 hour work week. Each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday workers all over the country wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast and go to work. But the notion that the majority of the workforce should keep these hours is based on nothing more than an idea put forth but the Federal government almost 70 years ago. To be sure it was an improvement in the lives of many Americans who were at the time forced to work 10+ hours a day, sometimes 6 days of the week. So a 40 hour work week was seen as an upgrade in the lives of many of U.S. citizens. 8 is a nice round number; one third of each 24 hour day. In theory it leaves 8 hours for sleep and 8 hours for other activities like eating, bathing, raising children and enjoying life. But the notion that we should work for 5 of these days in a row before taking 2 for ourselves is, as best I can tell, rather arbitrary.

Mr. Newton then goes on to offer Sixteen Reason Why this is an Idea Whose Time has Come. This post is a “must read” for HR Professionals whose businesses may be evaluating the 4-day workweek option and looking for supporting reasons. The key downsides to the four-day week are losses in employee productivity and customer service. Comments challenging the 4-day workweek appear at the Oil Drum, which reprinted Newton’s post.

We have also outlined some legal limitations on the four-day concept in previous posts as it continues to garner a lot of media attention:

Four-Day Work Week Wave is Coming and Energy Expenses And Gas Prices Motivate Employers To Move To Four Day Workweek: What Are The Legal Issues?

 

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