Electronic devices keep track of workers

New technology both helps and hinders employees

Earlier this spring, officials at the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) expressed their concern over the pervasive use of BlackBerry wireless devices in the public service of Canada. An auditor’s report showed that in one department, close to one-fifth of employees issued the wireless devices had no job-related reason for having one. PSAC executive vice president Ed Cashman said that in the next round of bargaining negotiations, his union will introduce the issue of pay for having to carry a BlackBerry outside regular working hours. He added, “We are telling workers you don’t have to answer your e-mail at night.”

But BlackBerry technology is not the only way employees feel they are too much at the beck and call of their managers. The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference recently posted an article from the Detroit-based grassroots organization Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) about how sophisticated technology is changing the workplace for American truckers, warehouse workers and rail employees.

For example, a Global Positioning System (GPS) can tell a company where their drivers are when they scan a package and get a signature and how long the stop took. As well, new sensors on package cars can tell whether the seat belt is done up, whether the bulkhead door is open while the vehicle is moving and even how hard the brakes have been applied on a stop.

In warehouses, many workers are now given headsets rather than a written list for the orders they gather. They listen as a voice selection system tells them which items to place on each pallet and in what order to do so. Then it directs the warehouseperson to the next item to pick. In addition, the system decides how much time is to be allotted to pick each order.

Railway workers in switching yards are also affected by new technology. Here, employees are no longer annoyed by being overly supervised: they may be out of a job altogether. The TDU article describes how trains in the yards are operated by remote control; the process eliminates two jobs, the engineer’s and the conductor’s, as “no one sits in the train.”
The Teamsters doesn’t expect the pace of technological change to slow down “anytime soon.” Bargaining has included both restrictions on the degree of discipline allowed as a result of more acute surveillance and also more consultation with the union on changes in production standards in warehouses. The TDU expressed its concern that changes in the number of employees in switching yards could also be applied to trains en route outside the yards.

However, BlackBerries and other high tech devices aren’t always seen as detrimental by unions. A newsletter published in 2002 by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) noted their usefulness during a strike. The president of the OPSEU Local at the E. C. Drury School for the Deaf, herself deaf, “needed to find a way to contact and communicate” with deaf and hearing impaired picket captains during the 54-day work stoppage. Leasing several BlackBerries proved to be the answer.

On the lighter side, as of February 2008, if a cell phone disrupts a meeting of the Prince Edward Island Union of Public Sector Employees (PEIUPSE), the offending user will be fined $5.00, with the money going to charity.

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