Freedom Socialist • Vol. 28, No. 5 • October-November 2007Invasion of the privacy snatchersSpying in the workplace by Henry Noble Government invasions of privacy are big news. Exposure of the Bush admin’s vast and warrantless domestic wiretapping and data mining was followed by the vote in the Democrat-controlled Congress endorsing them. This led a Newsweek columnist to announce that the government had “shredded the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution,” which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure. But little is said about employer spying on workers, which in the electronic age is running amok. Pervasive surveillance on the job. A 2005 American Management Association study found employees’ website visits were reviewed by 76 percent of the businesses surveyed, email by 55 percent, and computer files by 50 percent. Some companies even track all computer keystrokes. Workers are now commonly monitored through tapped phone calls, video recordings, fingerprint and voice recognition systems, electronic ID badges, and global positioning technology on company-issued cell phones and vehicles. Newly affordable miniaturized equipment is making covert surveillance easy and prevalent. Management also peers into workers’ union and political activities, health, and personal lives. It’s estimated that every 23 seconds a worker is disciplined or fired for union activity — although employers claim they spy to ensure safety, productivity, and protection from discrimination complaints. Protections abroad, but not in the U.S. According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, European employers “are bound by comdata protection acts that limit and regulate the collection of personal information on workers.” Japan also has such laws. A Workplace Surveillance Act in New South Wales in Australia outlaws covert monitoring via video cameras, email, phones, or tracking devices, unless reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing is demonstrated to a court. Activists can find language to adapt at www.austlii. edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/wsa2005245. However, open surveillance is allowed, if the information is not “misused.” People are often surprised to discover that the U.S. Constitution only protects privacy from government intrusion. The rights of employers are enshrined in the 19th-century doctrine of “employment at will,” which means employers can fire workers for any reason. This concept opens the door to invasions of privacy, among other abuses, except where union contracts impose limits. The only freedom from spying recognized by courts is “where a reasonable person would expect privacy,” such as in locker areas or bathrooms! Before 9/11 in 2001, constitutional privacy protections limited the spying government could do on its own employees. Now the “war on terror” gives officials carte blanche. In 2004, Homeland Security issued Presidential Directive 12 requiring a “Government-wide standard for secure and reliable forms of identification.” This unleashed massive “security” investigations of all employees of the government and its contractors, most of whom do nonclassified work. The dragnets include fingerprinting workers and collecting facts about their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, finances, medical history, and organizational affiliations, as well as names of relatives and neighbors. In the December 2006 Freedom Socialist, Jen Laverdure wrote a letter about losing her job as a computer analyst with a contractor at a Bureau of Land Management office by refusing to fill out the “voluntary” form providing this data. Monitoring private lives. In 1991, Sandy Nelson, a reporter at the Tacoma News Tribune, was reassigned after campaigning off-duty for gay rights, even though the paper found no bias in her work. She sued on the basis of her free speech rights, but the newspaper was upheld. As media has consolidated into fewer corporate hands, such rules governing journalists’ beliefs and personal lives have become widespread. Now many businesses assert a right to control employees’ private behavior to preserve company “image.” Threats against workers because of the content of personal blogs and invasions of privacy in job applications are frequent. Compulsory, invasive questionnaires on diet, exercise and health are required annually of employees of King County, Wash. Those who opt out are charged punitively high medical copayments. Such “wellness programs” are becoming popular as medical costs rise. Privacy invasions are often politically motivated. Rightwing commentators have relentlessly attacked the new Khalil Gibran International Academy, New York City’s first public school of Arabic language and culture. In August, its principal Debbie Almontaser was questioned by Fox News about T-shirts saying “Intifada NYC,” made by a girls’ empowerment organization. Instead of condemning the use of the word, she explained that it literally only means “shaking off” in Arabic. The resulting firestorm forced her to resign. Cheapskate Wal-Mart stalked two employees all the way to Guatemala to try to catch them “fraternizing.” One had openly criticized conditions in Central American factories supplying Wal-Mart. A Target store in Chino, Calif., used CIA-style interrogation techniques against teenaged employees accused of wrongly giving a discount to another employee. Security refused to let them call their parents or go to the bathroom for hours, bullying them into signing dictated confessions. All were arrested for theft. Ronald Reagan started mandatory drug testing for federal employees in 1989. It was rapidly adopted by most employers. While many workers protested this drastic intrusion into their off-the-job conduct at the time, unions caved in on the issue. Today, many young workers accept drug testing as a foregone conclusion. The lesson is that if we don’t fiercely contest invasions of privacy, things will get worse. We must fight these attacks now! And workers are rebelling, including 28 NASA Jet Propulsion Lab scientists working for the California Institute of Technology. Threatwith firing unless they fill out the new “voluntary” Homeland Security forms, they filed federal suit in August, charging invasion of privacy. New York City taxi drivers struck for two days in September over a plan to equip their cabs with GPS tracking devices (and credit card readers, whose charges will come out of their income). An Employee Privacy Act is proposed in Washington state. It would prohibit employers from holding coercive meetings dealing with religion, anti-unionism or politics. (See page three of the downloadable file dev.iam751.org/aero/Sept_07_Aero.pdf.) If the National Football League can fine the coach of the New England Patriots $500,000 for videotaping an opponent, then surely unions can fight for privacy protections in the workplace! Rank-and-file workers need to pressure the labor movement to take militant action on the national and state levels. The time to stop Big Brother is before he gets any bigger! Freedom Socialist Party National Secretary and veteran labor organizer Henry Noble can be reached at hjnoble@igc.org. |
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