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 Orlanth wrote:

 Eilif wrote:

She needs to be reachable that's fine. Even if the job requires her to be able to reach the work within a certain time, then that's still no reason for the off-clock GPS. If she gets the call and can't make it in time then she get's punished/fired/fined, etc. However, making continual monitoring of personal time a condition of employment is probably not going to stand up in court.

Ok, lets make it easier to understand. Say she doesnt work in Intermex but at a mnuclear power station...

Except she doesn't.

 treslibras wrote:
And your private life may not be monitored around the clock, unless ordered by a court.

Excellent point.

Considering the kind of business this is, the tracking may be more for the phone itself than the actual employee. Being able to track the employee that is in physical possession of the phone could just be incidental to that.

She might not like being tracked (heck I don't like it and I'm a big privacy advocate and I think a business can get fethed when it comes to your free time), but disabling the tracking on the companies phone could present a major security and monetary risk if it happens to be lost. The business has a real and understandable interest in being able to track and recover a piece of hardware that they own which could be used to breach their system.

Good point about the phone. She should of just returned it maybe.

It sucks that she was tracked, I don't disagree there.

If she didn't like it she could have done a number of things: talked to her boss, see if she can work out a deal where she carries it 24/7 while turned off and turns it on when she gets a message on her personal phone, take a pay cut and transfer to a position where she is no longer required to carry it.

But disabling an important security feature on company property without talking to anyone because you don't like it should be an offense she could be fired for.

Eadartri wrote:
Good point about the phone. She should of just returned it maybe.

Thats not how Life (TM) works though.

Perhaps I missed it in the article, but didn't it say that she disabled an app, not the GPS itself.

Presumably GPS still worked (and with everyone's love of Google maps, I'd be shocked if she killed it entirely), meaning it would still be trackable in the case of getting lost or stolen?

But not as easily as "hey, so apparently someone had a bit of a lead foot last night!" that this app apparently provided.

Edit: and as noted earlier, if it were just a security precaution that might be one thing.

But they made a bloody game out of it and made their knowledge of her whereabouts public (to her, at least, if not others). That in and of itself, if not illegal, is highly distasteful.

A worrying thought enters my brainbox, what if it were possible with this "technology" to somehow monitor Dakka use while at work?

I fancy the frequency of posts here would reduced.

What was her jerb again?

I can imagine it being a good idea to be able to track all employees in various military or money type jobs in case reasons.

But in any case with 7k a month if i was in her shoes i would just get a second personal phone to have it forwarded to.

 notprop wrote:
A worrying thought enters my brainbox, what if it were possible with this "technology" to somehow monitor Dakka use while at work?

I fancy the frequency of posts here would reduced.

Your company's IT department already has the ability to know every site that you've entered. There is nothing special about it.

Well, she worked in money transfers, there is an enormous amount of security in any job that handles money on that scale. And, as pointed out, this was laid out to her before she took the job. So it is pretty clear to me, but then again this is th einternet and anything to do with this kind of monitoring is likely to crush in the court of public opinion.

She's lucky. If she had attempted to remove her chip, it would have automatically exploded.

In all seriousness, the cell phone belongs to the company. If she doesn't want it to track her location after hours, she needs to leave it at home and carry a cell phone she owns instead (perhaps giving that number to her colleagues if part of her job entails them reaching her after hours).

 Manchu wrote:
She's lucky. If she had attempted to remove her chip, it would have automatically exploded.

But Money transfer? feth no she shouldn't be allowed to disable or remove that program.
The company still needs to be able to track all gak. especially if money is some how lost. that way they have a record of activity to cross check.
the manager is still a donkey cave though.

feth's sake we had nuclear power stations and computer technicians before mobile phones, let alone GPS tracking and people got their jobs done.

Companies should not take the risk of employing critically important staff they don't trust.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
feth's sake we had nuclear power stations and computer technicians before mobile phones, let alone GPS tracking and people got their jobs done.

Companies should not take the risk of employing critically important staff they don't trust.

Or people need to cover there ass. even if its inconvenient to some. it saves many many people the headache of having to deal with issues later.

Edit: (what im saying is if it was fully written in there contract that this will be a thing then there is no case as its part of the job. and its 100% understandable why companies will do such a thing.)

 d-usa wrote:
Considering the kind of business this is, the tracking may be more for the phone itself than the actual employee. Being able to track the employee that is in physical possession of the phone could just be incidental to that.

She might not like being tracked (heck I don't like it and I'm a big privacy advocate and I think a business can get fethed when it comes to your free time), but disabling the tracking on the companies phone could present a major security and monetary risk if it happens to be lost. The business has a real and understandable interest in being able to track and recover a piece of hardware that they own which could be used to breach their system.

You can remotely brick it w/o the need to enable GPS tracking.

Your job may ask you to be contactable at all times, but tracking your whereabouts is entirely unnecessary. It serves not purpose other than being nosey and generally suspicious about your employees. How about employers show some trust or not employ someone?

Why is it always 'if she doesn't like it get a different job?' Because once one employer is allowed this more will follow, and then there won't be so many places to go without changing your profession. You Americans bend over to big business, giving them the right to sack people without warning on the spot without explanation, it's the same attitude as when employers wanted people to hand over access to their Facebook during interview so they could poke through what you don't make public. Where do you draw the line?

It's not good enough to say 'work somewhere else' because every job can find someone desperate enough to sign away their rights. As a society you have to draw the line as to what is acceptable. A job is a job, your employer shouldn't have the power to spy on your private life, to monitor your whereabouts and more, when you are outside work. The more the public give in to these ridiculous demands the more companies will push them and the jobs where you won't have to jump through these hoops will diminish. And you can't turn every job down, food has to get on the table somehow.

Heh... Xora app.

I have that app on our company phone as well. It didn't bother me too much until my boss swung by one day to shoot the gak for awhile and bragged about how he was on his phone looking up the locations of everyone else in real time.

After that, I didn't disable the app, just the GPS on the phone. The difference is that it's not in my contract to be monitored by GPS at all times, and I'm just a security guard so they don't really care anyway.

I agree with the notion that the chick agreed to whatever the company asked of her upon hiring her, and regardless of how unethical or whatever it is, once she agreed to those procedures being fired is justified if she broke them. If she didn't want to monitored via GPS, and that was mandated in her contract, then she should have quit or not taken the job.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
After that, I didn't disable the app, just the GPS on the phone.

Nice one!

I would be interested to see the employee manual for places that require these things.

 Manchu wrote:
She's lucky. If she had attempted to remove her chip, it would have automatically exploded.

In all seriousness, the cell phone belongs to the company. If she doesn't want it to track her location after hours, she needs to leave it at home and carry a cell phone she owns instead (perhaps giving that number to her colleagues if part of her job entails them reaching her after hours).

It sounds like her job required that she be reachable on the company phone at all times (perhaps there is info that the company wants to communicate only on company phones), but then they require the installation of a GPS-using app that reports her position. It's a catch-22.

Company's can't require unnecessary conditions of employment just because they want to. It sounds like in this case they're coercing an unnecessary amount of personal info from their employees. Even if she "signed up for this" when she got the job, in most places the court will require the company to prove that they are not unduly imposing on their workers privacy. If the company can't prove to the court that such tracking is necessary then they'll probably lose.

Consider it this way, a company can't just say "if you want a job here, we get to open all your (paper) mail first." or "if you want to work here we need to see your child's school grades". These -like 24/7 GPS tracking, IMHO- are illegal and unnecessary infringements on privacy.

Course there are those of us who were hired before cell phones...

Yeah, the clock-in / out should have been enough and to disable GPS.
Sounded like the boss got more of a "kick" out of it than a legitimate business use.
Borderline stalker material on this.
Interesting that for uninstalling the app she is automatically fired: can't have the other slaves trying to ditch the collar.
Laws better be clear on eradicating this kind of infringement.

 treslibras wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

Ok, lets make it easier to understand. Say she doesnt work in Intermex but at a nuclear power station.
There is an incident. <snip>

It seems clear that you have no clue how things work around a nuclear plant. They are always manned on-site, 24/7.

General correct that I am not a nuclear physicist. But I have a clue about fireteam managing. You have your staff on site 24/7, true, but you also need backup staff in radius. Personnell would be enormous if you have full response on site 24/7, not even the government can do that.

 treslibras wrote:

If things need to be monitored around the clock, and it is absolutey crucial for someone to be at a certain site to be able to fix things, and work needs to be done all the time, then you let them sit there. That is called a night shift or a weekend shift.

Correct. And units that cant cause radiation leaks need this too, my example of a major newspaper for instance. Just not so scary.

 treslibras wrote:

If that is not the case, you keep people on call. Being on call means that you agree to have your private life disturbed in cases of emergency or for special assigments. How often that can be done and how long you need to rest afterwards is normally defined by law.

Actually with exception of areas where overwork can cause problems on emergency call means on emergency call. There is little actual limit.

 treslibras wrote:

In any case, being on call does not mean that you revoke your right to a private life.

No one is saying otherwise. In fact people on these sorts of contracts have a much enhanced private life. Most are underworked because the criris team employed needs be far larger than the regular operating team.

 treslibras wrote:

And your private life may not be monitored around the clock, unless ordered by a court.

If the contract says GPS and you agree to the terms and renumeration, so be it.

 treslibras wrote:

That might be different in China, and one might say between NSA and Google, there is not much privacy left anyway. But most western democracies grant some measure of legal protection of the private life.

You are generally right, in most industries there is a lot of legal protection. However in some parts of the nuclear industry, not so sure.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Eilif wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

 Eilif wrote:

She needs to be reachable that's fine. Even if the job requires her to be able to reach the work within a certain time, then that's still no reason for the off-clock GPS. If she gets the call and can't make it in time then she get's punished/fired/fined, etc. However, making continual monitoring of personal time a condition of employment is probably not going to stand up in court.

Ok, lets make it easier to understand. Say she doesnt work in Intermex but at a nuclear power station...

Except she doesn't.

Point missed, just giving a clearer example of why someone might be in a role where they must be constantly contactable and proven within response range.
Even if you might not understand the need for a tech support person to be there ASAP, you will understand the need for a reactor technician.

The hypothetical reactor tech needs to be reachable 24/7.

The reactor tech's boss doesn't need to know where that person is 24/7.

As was pointed out earlier, this is also generally (by my understanding) considered "on call". And there is a lot to being 'on call' for extended amounts of time, including compensation for the massive pain in the ass that it can be to ones life to have to be ready to drop everything at a moment's notice.

No one is arguing that there aren't jobs with unusual specifications and requirements.

Knowing where that person (or even just their work phone) is 24/7 is unreasonable and unnecessary.

She signed up for a job. Not a spot on Big Brother.

 Forar wrote:
The hypothetical reactor tech needs to be reachable 24/7.

The reactor tech's boss doesn't need to know where that person is 24/7.

The hypothetical reactor tech has a piece a piece of equipment that can connect to the reactor remotely and control it as well as other critical infrastructure.

The hypothetical reactor tech needs that equipment to do her job.

The hypothetical nuclear power plant needs to be able to track the security of the equipment that could be used to control the reactor remotely.

She disabled a security feature on a piece of property that she did not own, that was stupid and she deserves to be fired for it. There are a lot of other steps she could have taken other than tampering with the security of a piece of property that belonged to her employer.

Hypothetical reactor tech will be called out for a major event as often as a major leak. Last one in the Us was Three Mile Island in the 70's.

Hypethetical reactor tech might think it ok to bunk off to Canada to watch ice hockey, because she is rich enough to travel long distancs in her three days off.

Hypothetical reactor tech might be right that it is very unlikely to be called out on any given weekend, a major incident might even be once per career or less.

Hypothetical reactor tech might say she is within 50 miles of the reactorwhenever she is not on holiday, yet frequently goes to Canada because noone tracks her.

Hypothertical reactors techs boss doesnt have a GPS because of a lawsuit about another on call worker and so he he is never aware that his critical cover, well paid for I might add in hypothetical dollars is not in range to do squat if the board redlines and the on site staff are not enough to assist.

Hypothetical reactor techs boss might lose his job is the oversight gency for hypothetical reactors finds out he hasn't got the backup the legislation requires.

And hypothetical reactor town will be real pissed if the hypothetical reactor has an accident and key reactor staff are too far away to help in time.

Hypothetical reactor tech works in an industry providing a public service. Hypothetical reactor tech endangers lives when they do not respond to calls.

This lady does not. Do you see the difference Orlanth?

But she does work in an industry handling lots of money and tampered with the security features on a piece of property that did not belong to her.

Being tracked 24/7 is BS, I agree with that. But she chose a very dumb way to deal with it and is paying the price.

Hypothetical reactor owner decides to save money on salaries by employing too few on-site reactor techs to deal with an emergency before it becomes a disaster.

Hypothetical reactor owner puts the safety of everyone within range of their potential disaster at risk by creating a system where an employee saying "screw it, I'm too tired to come in" when their on-call phone rings (or gets into an accident driving to the reactor and dies) is a safety hazard instead of ensuring that safety will be maintained regardless of off-site employees showing up.

Hypothetical reactor owner takes full responsibility for any unfortunate consequences of their stupidity.

 Peregrine wrote:
Hypothetical reactor owner decides to save money on salaries by employing too few on-site reactor techs to deal with an emergency before it becomes a disaster.

Hypothetical reactor owner puts the safety of everyone within range of their potential disaster at risk by creating a system where an employee saying "screw it, I'm too tired to come in" when their on-call phone rings (or gets into an accident driving to the reactor and dies) is a safety hazard instead of ensuring that safety will be maintained regardless of off-site employees showing up.

Hypothetical reactor owner takes full responsibility for any unfortunate consequences of their stupidity.

This. This hypothetical reactor owner also apparently has zero effective failsafes in place if their whole emergency procedure apparently relies on one single employee.

The basic premise of the hypothetical reactor argument is so ludicrous that any attempt to use it to justify anything is laughable.