If the Workplace Technology Accountability Act is successful, it will be one of the farthest reaching pieces of worker surveillance legislation in the country, forcing employers to tell employees when they are being surveilled.
If the Workplace Technology Accountability Act were successful, it would be one of the far reaching pieces of worker surveillance legislation in the country. Workers today are subject to more monitoring and tracking on the job — often without their knowledge — than ever before, advocates say.
The Workplace Technology Accountability Act, or AB 1651, would create a set of privacy standards for employer workplace monitoring tools.It would require employers to give workers advance notice and explain how, when and why monitoring technology is being used on the job. It would prohibit employers from monitoring workers off duty or on their personal devices, and it would allow workers to view and correct data about them.
“And yet they also, at the same time, are being asked more and more to be under surveillance and to be under the control in many ways technologies that are designed to squeeze out every single ounce of productivity from them, without giving them the empowerment to have much say in their work environment.”
Similarly a 2021 UC Berkeley Labor Center report showed workers across various industries – including retail, hospitality, construction and healthcare – were subject to increased surveillance with little oversight from the government. Work included hours of repetitive lifting and twisting at a fulfillment center in Kent, Wash. The department said Amazon’s productivity tracking technology forced workers to overextend themselves to meet quotas with little time to recover without penalty.
The number of workers being surveilled in California remains unknown, because there is no requirement that employers report this information. In addition, the state’s Labor Commissioner would create an advisory committee by next March to recommend the best — and least harmful — uses of data-driven tech in the workplace.
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