Biometric Scanners in the Workplace

by clorenz1 | January 23, 2007 at 11:21 am

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Is this the future of work place commonplace, where you would be tracked every step of the way. It seems interesting that these new technologies, emerging everyday, are generating faster than unions can mobilize against them. Will unions be able to protect worker rights to privacy or will the use of technologies continue to whittle away both.

The use of new tracking technologies has been contentious at more and more workplaces. At Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn, nurses carry radio-frequency identification tags that allow their movements to be tracked, a practice the nurses protested in an arbitration proceeding. A lawyer for the hospital, David N. Hoffman, said the system was used to ensure the quality of patient care and not to keep track of nurses who are on breaks.

The town of Babylon, N.Y., installed global positioning system technology last year in most of its 250 vehicles, including snow plows and dump trucks; drivers complained that the system intruded on their privacy.