Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), a member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, is urging the Labor Department to monitor and regulate how companies use invasive technology to monitor their employees during work hours.
In a letter to Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, Casey called on the agency to provide greater oversight, accountability and transparency over how these surveillance technologies are used in the workplace and how they affect employee privacy.
“The application of new technologies to monitor, control, manage and punish workers is growing because of the imbalance of power in the workplace and the lack of legal protections or regulatory restrictions,” Casey wrote in the letter.
“Without monitoring, more and more intrusive technologies will be implemented in the workplace,” he said.
Casey listed examples of how workers are constantly monitored and sometimes punished or fired for low productivity scores, driven by algorithms and automated systems with “little or no meaningful human oversight.”
For example, he cites some Amazon workers who are punished for taking breaks to go to the bathroom or expressing breast milk.
In late July, a female Amazon employee filed a lawsuit against the tech giant for not providing employees with reasonable breaks and appropriate breaks, Reuters reported.
The senator also mentioned how some companies use technology to monitor and pre-empt workers’ right to organize, or use bots to fire workers via email.
“Employees who are disciplined or terminated under these systems are left with few options to challenge these decisions or to engage with their supervisor to understand how these decisions were made,” Casey said.
Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission announced it was looking at ways to crack down on harmful commercial surveillance and lax data security.
“Companies now collect personal information about individuals at an alarmingly high rate,” FTC Chairwoman Lena Khan said in a statement.
Casey added that the Department of Labor should follow suit to address workplace surveillance.
