WCBSTV.com – Fingerprint Scanners Help Companies Track Workers
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Manufacturers say these biometric devices improve efficiency and streamline payroll operations. Employers big and small buy them with the dual goals of keeping workers honest and automating outdated record-keeping systems that rely on paper time sheets. The new systems have raised complaints, however, from some workers who see the efforts to track their movements as excessive or creepy.
“They don’t even have to hire someone to harass you anymore. The machine can do it for them,” said Ed Ott, executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council of the AFL-CIO. “The palm print thing really grabs people as a step too far.” Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies, a leading manufacturer of hand scanners based in Campbell, Calif., said it has sold at least 150,000 of the devices to Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s franchises, Hilton hotels and to Marine Corps bases, who use them to track civilian hours.Protests over using palm scanners to log employee time have been especially loud in New York City, where officials are spending $410 million to install an automated attendance tracking system that may eventually be used by 160,000 city workers. “Psychologically, I think it has had a huge impact on the work force here because it is demeaning and because it’s a system based on mistrust,” said Ricardo Hinkle, a landscape architect who designs city parks. He called the timekeeping system a bureaucratic intrusion on professionals who never used to think twice about putting in extra time on a project they cared about, and could rely on human managers to exercise a little flexibility on matters regarding work hours.
“The creative process isn’t one that punches in and punches out,” he said.
Coming soon to a workplace/supermarket/bank/toll booth/etc., near you!
Nothing suprising here, I have actually used these systems and liked them. Plus comming from one of my previous jobs it helps keep your supervisors honest. (Read: Supervisor would ask to be clocked in and then show up 5 hours later)
Aww… The poor idiots don’t want to have to actually be there themselves to clock in.
Seriously, thats the only real difference we are talking about here.
The next step will be an add-on option to the biometric fingerprint time clock. That option will allow the company to easily check on the employee’s blood pressure each day.
The company can then take appropriate measures, ranging from: employee participation in a medical assistance program to reduce the blood pressure, or raising their medical insurance premium, or simple termination due to the high risk.
This is unfortunately nothing new. I see palm readers in my supermarket just like the one I used to have to “palm in” with as a conslutant for Republic National Bank in the late ’90s. We tried photocopies of our hands just because we were geeks and wanted to test the system. It didn’t work.
The palm readers cost the bank a fortune though. On a team of 70 with 45 conslutants (hey it was the 90s), all of a sudden, everyone was counting every minute. Previously, 8:45 – 5:15 with a 45 minute lunch break would have been 7 hours. After the reader was installed, that became 7 hours 45 minutes. Multiply such changes by 45, 5 days a week for 2 years at late 1990s consluting rates … Yikes!
Time clocks of any form are a really bad idea for professional staff.
My wife was a programmer for GHI earlier than that. They had regular time clocks with which to punch in. Most programmers don’t watch the clock so carefully. At GHI, at 4:57 one or two people would get up and wait. By, 4:59, there was a line. At 5:00, kathunkita, kathunkita, kathunkita, don’t get swept up in the eddy currents as everyone blows out the damn door.
In general, treat people as adults and they will behave accordingly.
fuck that
it’s purely a power trip – I’ve been my most productive when given impossible tasks without the micro management that most things are going to.
if they let me I do the work of three people in half the time.
these tactics only promote better gaming of these systems. seriously, metrics are meant to be busted… eventually someone will figure out the formula.
#4. “I see palm readers in my supermarket”
Scott, its time to fire your “supermarket” don’t you think? I buy shit there, everything else is none of their fucking business.
Christ on a pony, 1984 was not an instruction manual.
#6 – The only way to avoid it is to pay with cash. If you use a debit or credit card at the grocery store or the Super Wal*Marts or Super Targets, it is easy for management to cross-tabulate your previous purchases. They develop a very specific customer identity based on your purchases for their marketing purposes.
I use this system everyday and it’s ok. At least the boss doesn’t have to ask you at which time you came. Everybody in the company uses it, not only small employees like me.
#8. I ONLY pay cash, every time they try to force a “loyalty” card on me, I lecture them why I dont want them. And with a blank stare they nod a lot. There is no brain activity going on.
#10 – Thank you for tilting at the windmills 🙂
There’s nothing wrong with this at all, and the only thing it prevents is the manipulation and cheating of the payroll system.
The people complaining about it are the people who cheat the timecard system, plain and simple.
#11. “Tilting at windmills is an English idiom which means attacking imaginary enemies, or fighting otherwise-unwinable battles.”
Just thought I’d clarify….had to look it up.
Try working at a casino. You have to swipe your ID badge not only at the time clock but just about any door. Unique ID badge / hash of a fingerprint, what’s the difference?
On the other side of it, in a previous job as a “salaried professional” I was pretty much expected to work 50 hour weeks or more. At the casino, since it was recorded, all I had to do was officially hit 40.
I have two loyality cards, Vons and Ralphs. Both are not tied to my identity. I asked for blank activated cards and they complied.
#12 – Wow Brian… Now I am being accused of cheating the payroll system because I object to having biometric identification systems.
Biometrics used for payroll is of only questionable value, and is certainly invasive if only because our corporate citizens have proven over the past several years that they cannot be trusted with personal data.
Biometrics for grocery loyalty cards transcend the definition of unethical.
It isn’t a matter of what these companies do with the data today. It’s a matter of what they will do tomorrow… what new data they’ll want… and how they’ll use that… most assuredly against us.
While it is true that we have to draw a line in the sand against the coming police/surveillance state… it is also true that as long as people buy the bullshit reasons in favor of things like this “it’s good for payroll” that they won’t… and like post war Eastern Europe… like Stalinist Russia… like Red China… we too will become a nation of prisoners to our own government.
One reason I believe in the slippery slope is because I have learned from history. Not because I cheat on my timecards.
#13 – Thanks for that… I always took it to mean fighting battles you couldn’t win, but I think you are right and I am wrong, thus I accidentally mis-characterized Panic’s post.
Sorry Panic. I did not mean to imply that your enemies are imaginary. Indeed, they are very real.
What a great way to spread germs in the winter.
Do the companies offer sanitizers for each user?
Never mind, I think I know the answer.
#18, jbenson2…
We just had a memo go out last night where I work to remind everybody to flush the toilets when they are done and not throw any other debris in there.
Of course, this also coincided with a VIP visitor to the office.
Put a chip in my ass wile I’m bent over.
On loyalty cards: I estimate I have saved more than $400US in the last year with one of these. If you don’t want them to know who you are, fill out the card saying you are “Puddin’ Tane of Mockingbird Lane, ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.”
This is nothing new Wooolworths supermakets in Australia have been using thumb print sign ins for years now. Keeps everyone honest. The job I had before that one it was nothing for the manager to show up hours late and think nothing of it.
I’ve been using one of these at the supermarket I worked at for my first job. It’s easy and fast, and usually fairly reliable. I like it, it simplifies things. I don’t see why anyone would object to saving money and making things simpler.
So what? Strictly there is nothing different from punching a card … providing it is actually you who punches your card.
The only caveat is that there is no “paper record” that both the worker and the manager can use if a complain arises, and that is easily solved bay printing a paper receipt the worker keeps.
Why not just implant a chip up my rectum and that way they can track me in and out of the office, my social habits my spending habits my voting habits my thuoght patterns, my blood preasure ,my Mastr card, AMX, Visa driving habits what I eat how i sleep and who I sleep with. Where I shop ,what I buy, how i buy it , they can read when I’m angry, sad, joyful, and every other emotion you can think of, they can read my endorfphine level when I get pleasure out of what ever I get pleasure out of….. Hey I know…They can call it BIG BROTHER Vs 1.01
Ziet Geist is correct there tracking us already
Brian said, on March 28th, 2008 at 1:57 pm There’s nothing wrong with this at all, and the only thing it prevents is the manipulation and cheating of the payroll system.
The people complaining about it are the people who cheat the timecard system, plain and simple.
It is painfully obivous that Brian is the typical brain washed citizen that both the U.S. and Canadian governments pray for. will blindly go along with things like readers, retinal hand scannars, finger print readers, and the like. So that one day he and many like him will wake up with “Big Brother” running there lives and dictating how they should think, what they should do and how they should do it, all because they agreed to little things like print readers that stream line things like payroll.
Its just another way to control what you do, and eventually dictate who you are.
i think it is a joke dont we have rights any more what is the next stage of shafting us it is now a step to far we are not slaves we work to make a living why dont they start chipping us at birth we need to make a stand agains this sort of thing as it will only affect the little man i dont trust any body with my details as they only put it on a disk and loose it any way with all our details on it soon they will have cameras in out tv in every home big brother is starting and we need to put a stop to it NOW
So if you have a perfectly fine swipe clock in card system thats located near the managers office…….why exactly would you need one of these?