The Electronic Supervisor: New

Technology, New Tensions

September 1987

NTIS order #PB88-156351
Recommended Citation:

U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, The Electronic Supervisor: New

Technology, New Tensions, OTA-CIT-333 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, September 1987).

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 87-619855

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents

U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402-9325

(order form can be found in the back of this report)
Foreword

The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions, deals with the

use of computer-based technologies to measure how fast or how accurately employees work. New computer-based office systems are giving employers new ways

to supervise job performance and control employees’ use of telephones, but such

systems are also controversial because they generate such detailed information

about the employees they monitor. This assessment explores a broad range of

questions related to the use of new technology in the workplace and its effects

on privacy, civil liberties, and quality of working life.

This study was requested by the House Committee on Government Operations and the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the House Committee on the Judiciary. A second report resulting from the same request,

Defending Secrets, Sharing Data: New Locks and Keys for Electronic Information, will discuss how important developments in computer security are converging with technologies and policies for communications security. It also explores

the past and future role of government policies in the evolution of information

security technology —particulary cryptography—for safeguarding communication

in government and the private sector.

OTA wishes to thank the many people and organizations that contributed

to this assessment through advisory panels, interviews, reviews, and other means

of sharing their information and experience with us. The final responsibility for

the study, however, rests with OTA,

GIBBONS
Advisory Panel-The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Granger Morgan, Ph. D., Chairman

Carnegie Mellon University

Peter Arment Gary T. Marx, Ph.D.

Division of Telecommunications Professor of Sociology

State of New York Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Robert R. Belair, Esq. Robert Morris, Ph. D.*

Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Chief Scientist, NCSC-C

Jerry J. Berman

National Security Agency

Chief Legislative Counsel Susan L. Quinones, Esq.

American Civil Liberties Union Condello, Ryan, Piscitelli

H. W. William Caming, Esq. Virginia du Rivage

Consultant Research Director

Robert H. Courtney, Jr.

9 to 5 National Association of Working

President

Women

RCI Forrest Smoker

Harry B. DeMaio

Director, Data Security Program

IBM Corp.

John Harris

Special Assistant to the President

American Federation of Government

Employees (AFL-CIO)

James M. Kasson

Vice President, R&D

Rolm Corp.

Steven Lipner

Digital Equipment Corp.

*Ex officio

Director

Corporate Telecommunications

North American Phillips Corp.

Willis H. Ware, Ph.D.

Corporate Research Staff

The Rand Corp.

Fred H. Wynbrandt

Assistant Director

Criminal Identification and Information

Branch

State of California

NOTE: OTA appreciates and is grateful for the valuable assistance and thoughtful critiques provided by the advisory panel members. The panel does not, however, necessarily approve, disapprove, or endorse this report.

OTA assumes full responsibility for the report and the accuracy of its contents.

iv
Project Staff—The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

John Andelin, Assistant Director, OTA

Science, Information, and Natural Resources Division

Fred W. Weingarten, Manager

Communication and Information Technologies Program

Project Staff

Charles K. Wilk, Project Director

Karen G. Bandy, Principal Author

Jim Dray, Research Analyst*

Robert Kost, Legal Analyst

Mary Ann Madison, Analyst

Joan Winston, Analyst**

Administrative Staff

Elizabeth A. Emanuel, Administrative Assistant

Audrey D. Newman, Administrative Secretary

Sandra Serbinoff, Secretary

Contractors

Sandra Albrecht, University of Kansas

Emanuel Donchin, University of Illinois

Steven Deutsch, University of Oregon

Paul Faerstein, Hay Group, Inc.

Gary T. Marx and Sandford Sherizen

Data Security Systems, Inc.

Michael J Smith, University of Wisconsin

Sharon H. Strom

Alan F. Westin, Russell Pipe, and Elaine J. Eisenman

Educational Fund for Individual Rights
Reviewers and Other Contributors

David Alexander

George Meany Center for

Labor Studies

Robert Arndt

University of Wisconsin

Nicholas Ashford

Massachusetts Institute of

Technology

Jordon Barob

American Federation of State,

County and Municipal

Employees

Joe Blanding

United Auto Workers

Bobbette Bond

United Food and Commercial

Workers

Andrew Clement

York University

Bill Cunningham

AFL-CIO

William Daddio

Marvin Dainoff

Miami University

Ben DiSylvester

Robert E. Nolan Co.

Richard Dwyer

George Meany Center for

Labor Studies

David Eisen

Newspaper Guild

Donna Euben

9 to 5 National Association of

Working Women

Louis Feldner

Federal Communications

Commission

Benjamin H. Friedman

General Services Administration

Lisa Gallatin

Office Technology Education

Project

H. Stephen Gordon

National Federation of Federal

Employees

Judy Gregory

AFL-CIO

Dick Greenwood

International Association of

Machinists and Aerospace

Workers

Henry Guzda

U.S. Department of Labor

Chris Higgins

University of Western Ontario

George Kohl

Communications Workers of

America

Jack Landers

General Services Administration

Charlotte LeGates

Computer and Business

Equipment Manufacturers

Association

David LeGrande

Communications Workers of

America

Jenny Luray

Office Technology Education

Project

Walter Lypka

Graphic Communications

International Union

Charles Miller

AT&T

Robert E. Nolan

Robert E. Nolan Co.

Leslie Nulty

United Food and Commercial

Workers

Karen Nussbaum

Service Employees

International Union

Dorothy Paleologos

Aetna Life & Casualty

Connie Pond

American Federation of

Government Employees

Charla Rath

American Society for

Information Science

Barton Reppert

CBR International

Karen Ringen

American Civil Liberties Union

Diana Wickes Roose

Oberlin College

Jacquelin Ruff

Service Employees International

Union

James Rule

State University of New York

Hedva Sarfati

International Labor Organization

David Shamanski

Philip Shellhaas

IBM Corp.

Donald Sheridan

General Services Administration

Donald E. Soeken

Association of Mental Health

Specialties

Jay Spechler

American Express Co.

Ken Stavenjord

U.S. Department of Defense

Ronnie Straw

Communications Workers of

America

Paul Trause

General Services Administration

Gwen Wells

Office and Professional

Employees Union

James Woodford

Nayyar Zaidi

C&P Telephone Co.

OTA Reviewers

Lawrence Miike, Senior

Associate

Neil Holtzman, Detailee,

Johns Hopkins

Priscilla Regan, Analyst

Denise Dougherty, Analyst

Benjamin C. Amick, Analyst
Contents

Page

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Chapter 2. Using Computers To Monitor Office Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Chapter 3. Telephone Call Accounting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Chapter 4. Electronic Work Monitoring Law and Policy Considerations . . . . . . 85

Appendix A. Notes on Computer Work Monitoring in Other Countries . . . .121

Appendix B. Privacy and Civil Liberties Implications of

Testing Employees in the Workplace . . . . . . . . . . 128
Summary

Introduction

Computer technology makes possible the

continuous collection and analysis of management information about work performance and

equipment use. This information can be useful to managers in managing resources, planning workloads, and reducing costs. It can be

advantageous to employees as well, by providing timely feedback on performance and an objective basis for evaluation. Despite these possible advantages, however, there is controversy

about computer-based monitoring on grounds

that it invades employees’ privacy, causes

stress, and can be used unfairly by some employers.

Tools for Supervising Office Activities

“Computer-based monitoring” or “electronic

monitoring” systems automatically record statistics about the work of employees using computer or telecommunication equipment in their

jobs. Such statistics might include number of

keystrokes made, types of transactions completed, or time spent for each transaction, for

example.

‘‘Service observation’ refers to the practice

of listening in on an employee’s conversation

with a customer to check on courtesy, correctness of information, or other factors. Service

observation is not automatic; it requires a human supervisor. However, it is often used in

conjunction with computer-based systems that

collect information about the duration of the

telephone call or the types of transactions the

employee performs during the call. New technology has made service observation completely silent, so neither the employee nor the

customer may know a supervisor is on the line.

‘‘Telephone call accounting” refers to automatic, computer-generated records of the time,

duration, and destination of telephone calls.

It is generally used to manage telephone costs

rather than to supervise the work process.

Some employers use telephone call accounting

to help reduce their employees’ personal use

of office telephones.

Computer-Based Work Monitoring

Computer work monitoring is affecting a

small but growing segment of the office work

force. It is estimated that around 6 million office workers have part or all of their work evaluation based on computer-generated statistics;

for many others, such statistics may be collected but are not currently used for evaluation. The number of monitored workers can be

expected to grow as computers begin to be used

in more office jobs. In addition, computer work

monitoring is also affecting people in non-office

jobs, for example retail sales, as computers are

introduced in a greater variety of workplaces.

Privacy.—Although many workers have expressed a feeling of privacy invasion when they

are “constantly watched” by a machine, computer-based monitoring usually does not raise

issues of privacy infringement in the strict legal sense. The workplace activities that are

monitored by computer are primarily inherently public activities, many of which were subject to counting or supervision in other ways

before computers became available. Privacy

and access questions may arise, however, related to employees’ ability to see or challenge

records concerning their work.

Fairness.—The central workplace issues

raised by monitoring are labor relations questions of fairness, dignity, autonomy, and control, and are greatly influenced by the labormanagement relations climate of a given firm

or industry. The effects of computer-based

monitoring depend on how it is used. Allegations of “unfair” or “abusive” monitoring usually focus on questions like high or increasing

quotas, inappropriate work standards or punitive use of monitoring information by supervisors. Computer-based monitoring appears

most likely to be opposed or resented by employees when they perceive that it is used unfairly or when it is imposed without their understanding or participation. Conversely, in

some workplaces employees accept electronic

monitoring as a tool that helps them get control of their own work and ensures that their

supervisors evaluate them on the basis of fair

criteria.

1
Stress.-An additional issue is the possibility that monitoring contributes to employee

stress by creating a feeling of being watched

or by creating pressure to work at high speed.

There is some research on effects of computerbased monitoring, but it generally fails to separate the effects of monitoring from those of

job design, equipment design, lighting, workload, machine pacing, and other potentially

stressful aspects of work in offices where computmized equipment is used. This area deserves further research.

Service Observation

Monitoring the content of messages raises

a related set of issues. Some employers say that

service observation (listening to or recording

the content of employees’ telephone conversations with customers) helps assure quality

and correctness of information and protects

all parties in case of dispute. However, service observation also impacts the privacy of the

customer, and workers and labor organizations

have argued that it contributes to stress of the

employee, and creates an atmosphere of distrust. Service observation is legal when part

of a formally established program of evaluation. In the Federal Government, employees

must be informed that such a program is in

effect, but do not need to be informed precisely

when a supervisor is listening.

Telephone Call Accounting

Telephone call accounting (computer-generated records of the time, duration, destination,

and cost of calls) gives employers a powerful

tool for allocating costs to different projects,

settling billing disputes with telephone companies, and discouraging nonbusiness use of

telephones. Other technologies, including call

blocking, authorization codes, and levels of

service, can be used to limit nonbusiness uses

of telephones, either instead of or in conjunction with call accounting.

The Federal Government has collected detailed call accounting data on long-distance

calls for at least 10 years, but new technology

would make this information easier for agencies to use on a regular basis. Privacy questions are raised when accounting records,

which are not required to be protected, are used

to track the calling habits of individuals. If call

accounting is going to be used by the Federal

Government, development of better guidelines

on acceptable levels of personal use of telephones, procedures for tracing patterns of major abuse, and guidelines for protecting call

records from unauthorized use are necessary

to minimize intrusions on Federal workers.

Privacy and Fairness in the Workplace

The uses of technology discussed so far are

controversial because they point out a basic

tension between an employer’s right to control or manage the work process and an employee’s right to autonomy, dignity, and

privacy. This same tension is also evident in

the use of other technologies for surveillance

and testing in the workplace. For example,

Controversy over polygraph testing, drug testing, genetic screening, and emerging brain

wave testing illustrates the tension between

employers’ rights to manage their enterprise,

reduce costs and reduce liability, and the employees’ rights to preserve individual privacy

and dignity. Fairness questions relate to the

accuracy of the tests themselves as well as to

the criteria for deciding who is to be tested.

Privacy issues include employers’ acquisition

of personal information not related to work,

and the protection of records generated by

testing*

Legal and Policy Implications

There are no legal requirements in U.S. law

that monitoring be “fair,” that jobs be well

designed or that employees reconsulted about

work standards, except insofar as these points

are addressed in union contracts. Less than

20 percent of the office work force is unionized,

and even where unions are involved, their effectiveness has been limited because technology choice and productivity measurement are

often considered “management rights” under

the contract. Similarly, workers are not currently protected bylaw against stressful working conditions, although stress can be a compensable injury under-Worker

statutes.

Compensation

2
Chapter 1

Introduction
CONTENTS

Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Monitoring and the Legal Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Monitoring and the Labor Relations Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Findings of the Report. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Historical Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Monitoring in History.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Privacy in the Workplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Policy Options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sources of Information for This Report. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Organization of the Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Figure

5

5

6

7

15

15

18

20

23

24

Figure No. Page

l. Categories of Behavior Subject to Monitoring, Measurement,

or Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Chapter 1

Introduction

BACKGROUND

This study addresses the capabilities of new

computer and communication technologies for

monitoring employees’ activities in the workplace. New communication technologies such

as digital private branch exchanges (PBXs,

local area networks (LANs), and digital telephony in the switched network provide more

capability to monitor calling patterns as well

as content of telephone calls. Equipment and

software for telephone call accounting (tracking the time, destination, and cost of calls)

make up the fastest growing segment of the

telecommunication industry.

The networking of computers, either through

LANs or sometimes through the telephone system, provides abroad capacity to monitor work

that is performed at a computer terminal. Computer-generated statistics provide the basis of

part or all of the work performance evaluation

for about 4 to 6 million office workers. For

many millions more, computer statistics of

some sort are collected every time they use

their terminals, even though these records are

not currently used for performance evaluation.

Most of the employees subject to computerbased work measurement are in clerical occupations, or in other jobs where work is largely

repetitive. Ultimately, as electronic mail and

other computer-based technology become more

pervasive in the office, it is likely that computer-based monitoring will affect a large number of workers at all organizational levels.

Managers say that computer-based monitoring is very useful to employers. Computer monitoring of productivity can help them enhance

productivity, maintain production standards,

spot bottlenecks, and plan personnel and equipment needs. “Service observation, ” the capability to listen in on telephone conversations

between employees and customers, helps them

make sure that customers receive correct information and courteous service. Telephone

call accounting can be a powerful management

tool for allocating telephone costs, checking

the correctness of telephone bills, and reducing personal use of employers’ telephones. The

Federal Government, through a recent audit

of call accounting records, found that about

33 percent of off-network long-distance calls

on the Federal Telecommunications System

were personal calls.

On the other hand, there are concerns about

these practices as well. There are strong arguments that computer-based monitoring can be

abused and that monitoring has potential for

invasions of employee privacy, as well as assaults on their autonomy, personal dignity, and

health. Computer monitoring of performance

provides continuous minute-by-minute records

of employee performance and could be used to

speed up the pace of work or enforce unfair

work standards. Service observation, when

done without notice or warning, can contribute to a feeling of being spied upon, and may

have implications for the privacy of customers

as well as employees. Telephone call accounting could conceivably be used to build a‘‘profile” of an employee’s personal or professional

telephone contacts which might be used to harrass him or her. In general, the concern is that

these new information technology tools might

give employers powers of surveillance and control in the workplace that might be abused–

used simply for the sake of control, beyond

what is necessary to organize the work process.

Monitoring and the Legal Context

In general, the law has recognized the employers’ interests in organizing work, selecting technology, setting production standards,

and managing the use of facilities and resources. Although some aspects of working

conditions may be subject to collective bar5
6 • The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

gaining, the vast majority of office workers in

the United States are not represented by unions. Thus, employers have had considerable

latitude in making use of new monitoring technologies; they have generally been considered

merely extensions of traditional management

prerogatives.

On the other hand, the law also provides certain protections to employees, such as the right

to join unions, to bargain collectively, or to

work in a safe and healthy workplace. One

question that may appear before Congress is

whether employee health, or the quality of

working life, or employees’ rights to privacy

or personal dignity need protection against

possible abuses of work monitoring.

It is possible that the present extent of computer-based monitoring is only a preview of

growing technological capabilities for monitoring, surveillance, and worker testing in the

workplace. If this is the case, then there may

Photo Courtesy of C&P Telephone

Computerization is transforming jobs like customer

service and order processing.

be need for a new balance between workers’

rights to privacy or autonomy in the workplace

and management requirements for information to efficiently control their resources. A major decision for Congress is whether the present

balance between worker rights and management requirements is reasonable, and, if not,

if it can be satisfactorily accommodated

through stakeholder agreement, e.g., negotiation between labor and management in government and the private sector. If the use of

new technology is seen as weakening the voice

of employees in such negotiations, Congress

may choose to take action to ensure a reasonable balance.

Monitoring and the Labor

Relations Context1

Monitoring is an integral part of a larger system of management, labor relations, industrial

competitiveness, and ethical and legal systems.

Much is undergoing rapid change in the United

States and the issues of who is working, where

we work, what jobs we do, and how we do them

today may markedly differ even from the immediate past. Technology is a significant factor in these changes; so are international developments, changing labor-management

relationships, and cultural values. Some specific changes follow:

●

●

The American labor force has changed dramatically in recent decades, primarily due

to the major influx of women, who now

constitute close to one-half of all working

Americans. It is a labor force that is better educated and includes more non-white

workers.

The shifts away from goods- to serviceproducing industries has accelerated in

the past two decades. The United States

is predominantly a white-collar, serviceV. goods-producing society.

1This section summarizes work in Steven Deutsch, “The

Context for Exploring Workplace Monitoring, ’ contract paper

prepared for OTA, September 1986.
Ch. 1—Introduction ● 7

●

●

●

Early automation in the 1950s and 1960s

was largely restricted to manufacturing,

but there has been an enormous growth

of office automation in the past decade and

investment per employee by 1990 maybe

comparable in office and factory settings.

Computers are commonplace in office, and

in retail sales.

There has been a large growth of clerical

employees: from 5 million in 1940 to 20

million in 1980, from 1 out of 10 to 1 out

of 5 employees in the United States. Only

6.3 percent of males are in clerical jobs

while over one-third of all women workers in this country are clericals. Since clerical work is increasingly being done on

computer terminals, women are disproportionately affected by the microelectronic

technology in the office environment.

The growth of office employment and the

rise ‘in office automation makes for a

greater proportion of the American work

force in settings where computerized work

monitoring is possible.

● Collective bargaining affects only about

20 percent of U.S. workers, and most of-

●

fice workers in the private sector are not

unionized. A higher proportion of Federal,

State, and local government employees

are unionized. For union workers, there

have been efforts to address the new technology, including workplace monitoring,

in collective bargaining agreements and

through quality of work-life committees.

A parallel activity has included efforts to

pass State legislation protecting workers

on visual-display terminals (VDTs) and addressing worker privacy issues. Such reforms at the State and local level may well

accelerate in the near future.

The challenge for meeting international

competition has pushed many in government, management, and unions to adopt

a more cooperative labor-management

stance and to work towards cooperative

approaches for making best use of new

technology. While this trend does not affect all firms, where greater labor management cooperation does exist it has allowed

better resolution of many issues related

to technology, job protection, training and

retraining, and quality of working life.

FINDINGS OF THE REPORT

Finding #l

Computer technology makes possible the

continuous collection and analysis of management information about work performance and equipment use. This information

is useful to managers in managing resources, planning workloads, and reducing

costs. When it is applied to individual employees, however, the intensity and continuousness of computer-based monitoring

raises questions about privacy, fairness, and

quality of work life.

Information about the progress and status

of work is vital to managers of most organizations. Whether their output consists of manufactured goods, services, or information-based

products, managers want reliable knowledge

about what has been done, how long it took,

what remains to be done, what people and resources are available to work with, the status

of partially completed products, and so forth.

This type of management information helps

them to decide if staffing levels are appropriate, if more equipment is needed, if bottlenecks

need to be relieved, etc.

In an office, the computer is often now the

chief tool for carrying out the work process.

The transformation of the original input data

to a final product may require many steps performed by the computer system, a human

worker, or an interaction between the two. For

example, between the time a credit card company receives a sale record, and the time it

mails out a payment to the merchant, and a

bill to the cardholder, literally dozens of processing steps are required. The credit card com-
8 • The Electronic Supervisor:: New Technology, New Tensions

pany processes hundreds of thousands of sale

records each week, so meticulous recordkeeping is necessary at each step to keep the process from going awry: most of the recordkeeping is done by the computer software itself,

because so many transactions go on inside the

computer where they are invisible to the naked

eye. Monitoring software does this by keeping

track of the time, type, and duration of every

relevant transaction. Such meticulous recordkeeping generates a great deal of information

that must be processed to produce reports

usable to human managers. The particular information and amount of detail wanted will depend on the purpose of the report and the level

of management. The president of the firm may

want to total only transactions and revenues

for the day, but line managers will want more

detailed information on which to base day-today decisions.

Concern about electronic monitoring becomes most intense when it centers on evaluating the work performance of individual employees. A growing number of firms rely on

computer-based monitoring to measure the

work of at least some employees. The information can be quite detailed: How many transactions were performed? Of what type? With

how many errors? When were transactions performed? How long did they take? What were

the longest or the shortest? How many breaks

did the employees take? When and for how

long?

Although people object to monitoring because it “invades the privacy” of employees,

the objections to electronic monitoring applied

to individual employees cannot be phrased in

terms of privacy alone. This discussion summarizes them in terms of three headings:

privacy, fairness, and quality of work life. The

effects in these areas are reviewed in greater

detail in chapters 2 and 4.

Privacy.–Privacy encompasses the right to

be left alone and to not be intruded upon. Some

workers complain that electronic monitoring

is intrusive because it is making a constant

minute-by-minute record, creating a feeling of

“being watched” all the time. This, they say,

is quite different from having a human supervisor occasionally checking their work. Privacy

can also refer to exercising one’s own autonomy; even in routine work, there is some personal variation in work style. Some people

work fast for short periods but take lots of

breaks, others work fast in the morning and

slow in the afternoon. These individual work

styles may not matter when the basic unit of

evaluation is long—say a day or a week. People

with widely differing styles might accomplish

the same amount of work in a day. However,

continuous monitoring offers management

more detailed information. If the employer uses

the information gathered through monitoring

to change the pace or style of work—regulating

the number of breaks or requiring people to

accomplish as much in the afternoon as in the

morning—then the employee loses a certain

amount of control over his or her own job.

Fairness.–Fairness is related to the way

monitoring is implemented in the workplace.

At some locations, employers and workers

alike note that electronic monitoring can be

a fairer basis for performance evaluation than

other more subjective means. On the other

hand, at other locations monitoring was viewed

by employees as an unfair practice. Chapter

2 outlines some of the factors that might be

considered in assessing the fairness of a work

measurement program and also reviews the interviews done by and for OTA that suggest

there is a range of opinion among workers

about the fairness of the way monitoring is

used in their organizations. Among the factors

included in fairness are: reasonable standards,

understanding by workers of the extent and

use of the monitoring system, ability of workers to contest or correct records, and participation by workers in the design of the system.

Quality of Work Life.–Quality of work life

is a complex area that is affected by many factors in the workplace. Two major objections

to electronic monitoring of individual performance are allegations that it contributes to employee stress and stress-related illnesses and

that it contributes to an atmosphere of distrust

in the workplace. While there has been only

limited direct research on the stress effects of

electronic monitoring, there does seem to be
Ch. 1—Introduction ● 9

— —

some evidence that it can contribute to stress,

as will be discussed below and in chapter 2.

Finding #2

Computer-based systems offer opportunities for organizing work in new ways, as

well as means of monitoring it more intensively. Electronic monitoring is most likely

to raise opposition among workers when it

is imposed without worker participation,

when standards are perceived as unfair, or

when performance records are used punitively. Worker involvement in design and

implementation of monitoring programs can

result in greater acceptance by workers, but

despite activities of labor unions in some

industries and recent progress in labor-management cooperation in others, most firms

do not have mechanisms to do this.

OTA’s report Automation of America’s

Offices discussed in detail the ways in which

computer systems can change the organization

of office work. The introduction of large mainframe computers in the 1950s and 1960s probably reinforced the tendency toward centralized control, routinization of tasks, and

assembly line organization of office work. However newer trends in office automation, allowing “end-user computing’ and communication

networks that give remote access to central

databases, allow more flexibility in work organization. While many firms still use the assembly line model, others have discovered that new

information technology is allowing them to

“reintegrate” work. This means that jobs are

made more interesting, and more effective, by

giving the individual (or sometimes a team of

individuals) a variety of tasks.

No matter how work is organized in the office, electronic monitoring can be applied to

the computers and their users. Whether the

work in question is that of a directory assistance operator, performing a very few tasks

in a repetitive cycle, or an insurance company’s

legal case analyst whose work encompasses

dozens of different activities, each transaction

can still be computer monitored. In interviews

with supervisors and workers, OTA found a

range of opinion about the fairness and suitaPhoto Courtesy of C&P Telephone

Computerization of directory assistance helps operators

perform their jobs more efficiently and also provides

means to supervise work electronically.

bility of the performance evaluation systems

in their firms.

Employee Participation. -Only a small proportion (about 20 percent) of U.S. workers are

unionized. Among office workers this percentage is even lower. About 12 percent of technical, sales, and administrative support workers are represented by unions and 17 percent

of managerial and professional specialty workers. 2 In most workplaces, therefore, labor

organizations do not play a role in representing employee views about monitoring systems.

Even when unions are involved, technological

choice, such as the decision to introduce computer equipment with monitoring capability,

may be considered a management right that

is not subject to bargaining, although some

union contracts do require employers to bargain over changes in work technology or performance standards. The monitoring issue has

served as a spur to union organizing in some

previously unorganized firms.

‘Statistical Abstract of the United States, Table No. 713

“Union Membership of All Workers and Median Usual Weekly

Earnings, ” 1986, p. 424. The category of managerial and professional specialty includes school teachers, many of whom are unionized.
10 . The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

On the other hand, there is a growing trend

in the United States, according to some analysts, toward greater labor-management cooperation in making decisions about new technology and how it is used. This trend is affecting

both unionized and nonunionized organizations.

While the actual number of firms involved is

small, observers are encouraged that some of

them are very large firms and leaders in their

particular industries.3

Work Monitoring in Other Industrialized

Countries. -In a number of other industrialized countries, where the power of employees

and their representatives in making workplace

decisions is greater than in the United States,

there appears to be greater use of the collective bargaining process to limit the use of electronic monitoring of individuals. In some countries, legislation ensuring employees a good

quality of work life has been interpreted to preclude individual monitoring as an insult to individual dignity. In Norway, Sweden, and

West Germany for example, electronic monitoring is generally used to measure the performance of groups rather than individuals. In

Sweden, individual monitoring is sometimes

used in cases where the union and management

agree there is an overwhelming need, or occasionally for nonunionized temporary workers.

In addition, in some countries, electronic monitoring runs counter to other norms for enforcing work discipline. In Japan, for example, electronic monitoring of individuals goes against

the tradition of teamwork and peer pressure

as a means of encouraging good work and is

therefore not used. One Japanese executive

stated that introducing it would offend both

managers and workers. Many Western European countries also have strong data privacy

laws governing the use of computer-based files

about individuals, but OTA did not find that

these laws were a major factor in limiting electronic monitoring. In general, electronic monitoring practices were covered by quality of

work life legislation and by labor-management

negotiations. Monitoring in other countries is

discussed in more detail in appendix A.

Finding #3

There is reason to believe that electronically monitoring the quantity or speed of

work contributes to stress and stress-related

illness, although there is still little research

separating the effects of monitoring from

job design, equipment design, lighting, machine pacing, and other potentially stressful aspects of computer-based office work.

Some research suggests that there are a

number of possible health problems related to

the use of computer terminals or VDTs in general, including vision, muscular-skeletal, psychosocial, and possible reproductive health

problems.’ Many of these problems can be

ameliorated or eliminated through good equipment design, proper job training (e.g., allowing frequent breaks or scheduling duties away

from the terminal for part of the day), and

proper training (instructing workers in proper

adjustment of screens, lights, and furniture).

In the United States, the way that office automation systems are implemented and used is

almost entirely at the discretion of employers,

and there is a wide variation in their adherence to good practice in these areas.

Review of the psychological and physiological literature suggests a number of reasons

why monitoring could be stressful, and a number of studies have shown a higher level of

stress experienced by monitored workers.

These studies are discussed in more detail in

chapter 2. The particular stress problems

raised by electronic monitoring are very difficult to separate from other job design or equipment design factors. For example the job of

3see for exmple, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of

Labor-’Management Relations and Cooperative Programs, U.S.

Labor Law and the Future of Labor-Management Cooperation,

BLMR 104, Washington, DC, 1986; and Nicolas Ashford and

Christine Ayers, “Changes and Opportunities in the Environment for Technology Bargaining, ” Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, prepared for the Assistant Secretary for Policy,

U.S. Department of Labor, no date.

‘For a summary, see, Jeanne Stellman and Mary Sue

Henifin, Office Work Can Be Hazardous to Your Health (New

York, NY: Pantheon, 1983); Bob DeMatteo, TerminaJ Shock–

The Health Hazards of Video Display Terminals (Toronto: NC

Press, 1985); and U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Automation of America Offices, OTA-C IT-287 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, December 1985).
Ch.1—Introduction • 11

the directory assistance operator is often used

as an example of a job where monitoring leads

to stress. However, this job is often both monitored and paced by the computer; that is the

computer not only measures the amount of

time it takes an operator to handle a call, but

it also automatically sends the next call as soon

as the line is free. In determining why this is

a high-stress job, it is difficult to separate the

effects of lack of control from the effects of

monitoring, and for this reason it is also hard

to generalize the experiences of these operators to other types of work.

Photo Courtesy of AT&T

Finding #4

Monitoring the content of messages raises

a different set of issues. Some employers

say that service observation (listening to or

recording the content of employees’ telephone conversations with customers) helps

assure quality and correctness of information and by protecting all parties in case of

dispute. However, service observation also

impacts the privacy of the customer, and

workers and labor organizations have argued that it contributes to stress of the employee, and creates an atmosphere of distrust. Monitoring the content of electronic

mail messages or personal computer (PC)

diskettes also raises privacy issues.

Many telephone systems are designed so

that certain users, usually supervisors or qualit y control workers, can listen in on telephone

conversations. Service observation is considered an important aspect of quality control in

many firms and public agencies that have a

lot of telephone contact with the public. In

some cases, employers may be liable for misinformation given out by their employees; they

therefore want to make sure that all employees follow guidelines. Service observation,

when part of a formally established program

of evaluation, is legal. There is currently no

requirement that employees know precisely

when they are being monitored, although, at

least in the Federal Government, they must

be informed such a program is in effect. Some

workers and unions have objected to “secret

service observation. They argue that the practice is sometimes used for control or intimidaSupervisors regularly check courtesy and accuracy of

telephone operators like these through “service

observation,” that is, listening in on calls

with customers.

tion of workers rather than to protect the customer or the firm. The “secrecy” is removed

if the employee and the customer can hear a

“beep” tone or other cue when a supervisor

is on the line.

Listening in on or recording employees’ personal calls or calls outside of a regular service

observation program have been considered

eavesdropping by the courts. Service observation is discussed in more detail in chapters 2

and 4.

OTA interviewed several employers about

their policies regarding the privacy of PC diskettes used by employees. All believed they

had a right to search employee diskettes for

personal material or unauthorized company information and would do so if they had cause

to believe inappropriate material was being

stored on the diskettes. Such audits of PC diskettes have taken place in the Federal Government to ensure that computers were used

for official business and to check seccurity procedures related to confidential information.

Finding #5

Telephone call accounting (computer-generated records of the time, duration, destination, and cost of calls) gives employers

a powerful tool for managing the costs of

telephone systems. However, it raises privacy questions when accounting records are
12 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

used to track calling habits of individuals.

Other cost control technologies can be used

to limit nonbusiness uses of telephones, either instead of or in addition to call accounting. Establishing a policy for use of these

technologies will be especially important for

the Government as it builds a new Federal

Telephone System.

Call-accounting equipment and software represent the fastest growing segment of the telecommunication industry in the past few years.

Divestiture and deregulation of the telephone

industry, along with the falling costs of computer equipment, have made it possible for

many firms to take closer control of their telephone costs. Call-accounting software can generate not only a listing of all calls, but can

produce reports that highlight calls made on

particular phones, to particular destinations,

charged to particular accounts or for a certain

length of time. All of this information can be

useful for telephone systems managers in allocating costs and planning new facilities, but

as discussed in chapter 3, they raise questions

of privacy and fairness. Many employees use

their employers’ telephones for some personal

calls, and some firms have used call accounting to track and prevent unauthorized telephone use, especially for long-distance calls.

Call accounting has become an issue particularly in the Federal Government, where personal use of long-distance lines is illegal. A recent audit performed by the General Services

Administration, under the auspices of the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency,

found that personal use represents 33 percent

of the off-network long-distance calls sampled.

Privacy concerns are also raised by telephone

call accounting. A great deal of information

about a person’s personal and professional

activities can be derived from analysis of a

complete record of his or her telephone calls,

even though gathering of such information was

not the objective of the call-accounting system. Thus, what happens to those records and

who has access to them are important considerations. Some observers have expressed fears

that call records could be used to identify or

harass whistleblowers, union organizers, or

other dissidents within a firm or agency.

There are a variety of technological and

administrative techniques that can help businesses and government agencies cut down on

waste calls. Some of these can be implemented

without using call accounting while others are

more effective if used in conjunction with call

accounting. These are discussed further in

chapter 3.

The Federal Government is preparing to create a new long-distance telecommunications

network, and many individual agencies are now

planning the purchase of new telephone equipment, including switching equipment with callaccounting capability. Now, as these new systems are coming into place, is a good time for

the government to assess the effectiveness of

its current policies and determine if more workable guidelines on personal use of telephones

might be developed. These options are discussed further in chapter 3.

Finding #6

Electronic monitoring is only one of a

range of technologies used in today’s workplace to gather information about the work

process or to predict work quality based on

personal characteristics of the workers.

Many applications of technology, including

polygraph testing, drug testing, genetic

screening, and, possibly, brain wave testing,

illustrate the tension between employers’

rights to manage their enterprise, reduce

costs, and reduce liability, and the employees’ rights to preserve individual privacy

and autonomy. Recent concerns of employers, labor unions, civil liberties groups, the

courts, and individual workers suggest that

a range of workplace privacy issues are in

need of resolution.

Interest in the privacy and stress effects of

electronic monitoring, while of long standing

in some industries such as the telephone industry, are only now reaching the awareness

of the general public. At the same time, some

other hotly contested issues related to workplace privacy are also receiving public attention.

Figure 1 shows a range of types of monitoring and testing that raise questions of privacy

and civil liberties in the workplace. Some types
Ch. 1—Introduction ● 1 3

Figure 1 .—Some Categories of Behavior Subject To Monitoring, Measurement, or Testing

output

Keystrokes, etc.

r I

Use of resources

Computer time, call accounting

Performance Communications contents

Service monitoring or “eavesdropping”

Location

Cards, beepers, TV cameras

Behaviors

Concentration, mental activity

Brainwave

Personal Predisposition to error

characteristics Drug testing

SOURCE Off Ice of Technology Assessment, 1987

of monitoring seem primarily directed toward

measuring work performance or work-related

activities in the workplace. OTA has called

these “work monitoring” or “work measurement. Other types of monitoring and testing

seem to focus more on measuring the worker

himself or herself–investigating activities outside the workplace or personal characteristics

that might or might not have a bearing on work

performance. OTA has called these “worker

monitoring’ or “worker testing. ”

Counting the number of keystrokes someone performs in a day seems on its face to be

an example of work monitoring. It is an objective measure of how much work is being done

(leaving aside, for the moment the question of

whether keystrokes are an appropriate measure for a given job). On the other hand, performing a blood or urine test to determine

whether an employee has been using cocaine

seems clearly to be a measurement of personal,

individual characteristics-a case of worker

testing. The test reveals the presence or absence of certain chemicals in the body—it does

not show current impairment or measure job

performance. This type of testing could be considered predictive-it is used to determine

whether a person has potential for poor job performance as a result of drug-induced impairments.

While the terms “work monitoring” and

“worker testing” may have some value as
14 . The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

terms of analysis, it appears that all these

information-gathering techniques are on a continuum with no clear boundaries. It is not always possible to make a distinction between

work monitoring and worker testing. Even the

most extreme examples seem to have at least

some elements of both. For example, even a

keystroke-monitoring system impinges on the

worker as an individual if it reveals when or

for how long he or she takes breaks, or if the

way the monitoring information is used causes

stress-related illness. By the same token, if a

worker’s job requires a high degree of coordination, good judgment, or trustworthiness—

e.g., law enforcement or air traffic control—

evidence of drug use could be said to be an objective measure of unfitness to do that job.

There is a huge gray area between the extremes. Service observation, the practice of

listening in on employee’s telephone calls with

customers, has elements of monitoring both

the work process and the worker. It appears,

however, that the intensity of the privacy debate increases as we move from techniques that

focus on the work to those that focus on the

worker.

Although this report is about electronic monitoring technologies, most of which appear to

be on the “work performance” end of the continuum in figure 1, OTA looked briefly at several technologies from the “worker testing”

end to see the sorts of questions raised through

their use. These technologies are discussed in

more detail in chapter 4 and appendix B. They

are:

Polygraphs. —The polygraph is not a new

technology. It has had limited use in law

enforcement for 60 years. Now, however,

its dominant use is in personnel screening;

of 2 million polygraph tests given annually,

about 98 percent are given by employers

to job applicants and employees.5

Substance Abuse Tests.–Medical screening for drug or alcohol use, formerly used

primarily as a diagnostic tool in clinical

‘Harrison Donnelly, “Privacy in the Workplace, ” Editorial

Research Reports, Mar. 21, 1986, p. 214, citing figures from

the American Polygraph Association.

●

●

settings, was used by the Department of

Defense in the 1970s to identify returning Vietnam soldiers with drug problems.

Now nearly all military personnel, millions

of private employees, and a growing number of government employees find that

their jobs depend on passing such tests.

Genetic Screening. -This is still an emerging technology for predicting a person’s

likelihood of developing diseases. It is now

used only in a few workplaces, usually to

identify workers who may be hypersusceptible to chemicals found in those workplaces. However, researchers expect that

tests for many common diseases will eventually be commercially available; employers or insurers may want to include them

in preemployment physicals.

Brain Wave Testing. –Still in the research

stage are a number of tests based on brain

waves. Currently under study is the possible use of brain wave analysis in monitoring the level of concentration, detecting

lies or “guilty knowledge, ” and predicting certain illnesses. A computer-based

system to detect drug use by measuring

brain waves is already on the market.

In addition, OTA looked at brain wave research, which in the view of some experts promises improved systems for testing for drug use,

honesty, and susceptibility to disease. (See ch.

4 and app. B for a more detailed discussion.)

Serious questions have been raised about the

accuracy and reliability of all these tests, as

is discussed in more detail in appendix B. Polygraph tests have not been shown to have any

validity in employment screening situations,

and research shows that they give a high rate

of false positive results (innocent people identified as deceptive.) Nor has there been research

indicating that use of polygraphs reduces pilferage and other crimes in the workplace. Drug

tests can be unreliable due to poor handling

of urine specimens, sloppy lab work, or poorly

calibrated test equipment. Regulation of commercial labs is spotty, and there are few mechanisms available to enforce high-quality work.

Employers who use polygraphs or drug

tests, the types of testing now common, as-
Ch. I—Introduction ● 1 5

sert that testing is necessary to protect their

businesses and to maintain a safe environment

for employees and customers. On the other

hand, civil libertarians and others argue that

these gains, to the extent they are actually

achieved by testing, have a heavy cost: undue

intrusion into private lives of employees; creation of an atmosphere of fear and intimidation in the workplace; and false accusation and

denial of job opportunities for many innocent

people.

Privacy.—Drug testing by urinalysis is

clearly intrusive in that it requires the subject

to produce a urine specimen under observation.

Genetic tests require removal of a blood specimen. Both the polygraph and brain wave testing require the subject to wear electrodes attached to the skin. Beyond these physical

intrusions, however, is another privacy problem. Privacy also encompasses the ability to

withhold certain information about oneself,

and some of these tests reveal information that

is not only personal but is arguably not relevant to the employment situation. Drug testing by urinalysis cannot determine when the

drugs were used or whether drug use actually

impairs job performance. Polygraph testing

especially has raised controversy because some

employers’ tests include personal questions—

particular questions on religion, sex life, political beliefs, or union affiliation. A further

privacy question relates to the privacy of the

records generated by the tests, both within the

firm and outside. Such records, once released

to insurance companies, employment clearinghouses, or others, might follow a person

throughout his or her career.

Fairness. -In this context, the concept of

fairness encompasses both the accuracy of the

tests and the concept of ‘due process’ within

the testing program. Serious doubts have been

raised about the accuracy and validity of all

the tests discussed above. There is also controversy about how testing programs are to

be constructed: should tests be given on a regular basis to all employees or randomly selected

employees, or should they only be given to

those who have shown by their behavior that

there is reason to think they have been using

drugs. A number of court decisions have struck

down testing programs that have not relied

on probable cause, or at least a reasonable suspicion, that the person to be tested is using

drugs. However these cases have all involved

State, local, and Federal Government employees who are protected by the fourth amendment against unreasonable searches. Employees do not have this protection from private

employers.

Work or performance monitoring tends generally to raise debate about stress, fairness,

and the quality of work life, including questions of privacy and autonomy. Worker testing, which tends to be more intrusive and extensive, very clearly raises controversy over

individual rights of privacy (i.e., employer and

employee rights to know and control certain

personal information) and also questions about

the accuracy and reliability of the test results.

In all cases there seems to be some question

of balancing the need of employers to gather

information and the desire of employees to

keep personal control over some aspects of

their work and/or private lives.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Monitoring in History seems clear that work monitoring has been an

Work monitoring is not new. Employers

integral part of industrial development; in

have tried, since the earliest days of organized many ways work monitoring seems to have inhuman endeavor, to keep track of how well tensified as industrialization has progressed.6

their employees were working or how much

they produced. The organization and supervi- 6This s=-tion draws on Sandra L. Albrecht, “Historical Background to the Electronic Monitoring of Office Work, contract

sion of work have changed over time, but it paper prepared for OTA, August 1986.
76 . The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Industrialization in the United States has

largely been characterized by a separation of

planning or organizing the work process from

the actual work itself. Organizational structures have evolved that rely on division of labor

and place primary knowledge about the

production process in the hands of managers

rather than individual workers. This gives rise

to a need for coordination, control, and standardization of work. The search for greater control leads to a need for more intense monitoring, whether of processes, or work groups, or

individual workers, in order to give management feedback to make future decisions.

At the same time, new technologies have

been adopted which incorporate certain skills

in the equipment, with a corresponding “deskilling” of work and workers over time.7 A

less skilled work force is one which is easier

to manage through intensified monitoring.

This is not to say that de-skilling is always the

inevitable outcome of technological change. It

is important to look at this long-term trend,

which may be obscured by unevenness in industrial development. As certain occupations

undergo de-skilling others newly created may

require skills heretofore unknown. Case histories of individual occupations, however, show

that over time these new occupations can also

undergo a de-skilling process.8 This trend

may underlie growth in the use and intensiveness of monitoring over time. These trends are

illustrated by the history of work organization

in the United States dating from colonial times.

The Early Factory .-Although the American

Industrial Revolution dates from the mid1800s, a pre-industrial system of home-based

production, known as the “putting-out systern, ” already employed home workers for piece

rate wages by the late 1700s. Such diverse

products as shoes, furniture, lace, and textiles

7See Andrew Zirnbalist (cd.), Case Stud”es on the Labor Process (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1979), both his discussion of Braverman’s thesis in the Introduction and subsequent chapters on case studies of the de-skilling process.

“Sandra L. Albrecht, “Historical Background to the Electronic Monitoring of Office Work, contract paper prepared for

OTA, August 1986.

were produced under this system.9 Textile

production employed the largest number of

home workers, primarily women and children,

to do spinning, weaving, and production of

hand cards for combing cotton and wool.10

Putting-out is a transition stage between

craft production and factory labor, the precursor to mass production. It coexisted for some

time with the early mills and factories, but it

disappeared by the mid-19th century except

in the the garment industry where home workers continued to be employed. This industry

is currently seeing a resurgence in what has

typically been seen as a pre-industrial work

form.ll

For the most part, deficiencies in the puttingout system gave rise to the factory system.

One factor in the development of the factory

was the issue of work monitoring. With the

putting-out system, workers set the pace of

their work day and control of the work process

was in their hands. The factory system can be

seen as a social control mechanism, where

workers were collected together and could be

monitored (watched) by supervisors or overseers, both to increase work discipline and to

discourage theft.

Some view the social control of workers by

employers as the primary reason for the development of the factory. Others focus on the

inability of the putting-out system to effectively utilize newly developed machinery that

required a central power source. 12 This integral interconnection of social control, organizational structure, and technology is a defining

characteristic of industrial development.

gAlfred D. Chnder, Jr., The Visible Hand: The M~ageri~

Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 1977), pp. 19 and 53.

IOEdith Abbott, Women in Industry (New York, Ny: D. APpleton, 1910), ch. 2; and Victor S. Clark, History of Manufacturers in the United States 1607-1860 (New York, NY: McGrawHill Book Co., 1929), pp. 163 and 539.

1] Sandra L. Albrecht, “Industrial Home Work in the United

States: Historical Dimensions and Contemporary Perspective,”

Econon”c and Industrial Democracy, vol. 3,1982, pp. 413-430.

12 See discussion in Dan Clawson, Bureaucracy and the Labor Process: The Transformation of U.S. Industry, 1860-1920

(New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1980), ch. 2.
Ch. 1—Introduction ● 1 7

The factory system collected workers together under one roof and joined them through

a cash nexus: labor power was a commodity

sold by workers and bought by employers.

Monitoring increased, in that overseers could

count the output and enforce working hours

of each individual or group, but the early factory maintained a mixture of traditional and

new work forms. New patterns of work hours,

work pace, and discipline were instituted; but

supervision, though often despotic, was primarily indirect. Management was small in size

compared to contemporary standards and less

knowledgeable about the actual nature of the

work process. “Inside contractors, ” skilled

workers who understood how to produce the

product, were often responsible for hiring employees and overseeing the process. 13 In certain ways, inside contracting carried on the traditions of craft production and brought old

styles of personal relations into the factory.

But, as industry expanded and employers

looked to greater rationalization, efficiency,

and intensity of labor, this indirect monitoring of work was seen as an obstacle to increased

productivity. Managerial philosophies soon underwent change.

Scientific Management and the Assembly

Line.–Frederick W. Taylor, known as the father of scientific management, began what he

defined as the scientific study of work in the

1880s, but it was not until the 1910s and later

that his work began to be adopted. Taylor was

not the first person to scientifically study work;

craft workers had historically valued the

knowledge of the labor process as well as its

production. Taylor’s work, rather, was the scientific study of the management of work, and

represented the culmination of managerial

ideas developing in Great Britain and the

United States throughout the 19th century.”

l:31bid Ch. 3; ~d, Graeme Salaman, (%iSS and the corporation (Gr~at Britain: Fontana Paperbacks, 1981), pp. 37-41.

14 For ~~~ digcusgion, S= Han-y Braverman, Lakr ad Mo*-

opoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1974), chs. 4 and

5. Frederick W. Taylor describes his ideas in The Principles of

Scientific Management (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co.,

191 1).

The significance of scientific management

is its extension of the control of work by management. Prior to scientific management, the

overall setting of the workplace and workers

were monitored: they were concentrated together and supervised, work hours were determined, and discipline used to ensure production quotas. But, the actual performance of

work was left in the hands of workers. The central core of Taylor’s management philosophy

was the idea of the “separation of conception

from execution.”15 Decisions about the everyday performance of work were removed from

workers, and centralized in the hands of management, who in turn would determine the

most rational and efficient method of performance. This brains/hands dichotomy makes

management the depository of all knowledge

about the work process, capable of determining in minute detail the tasks to be carried out.

Workers, divested of this knowledge and control over determining work, were responsible

only for carrying out the designed tasks.

With this new managerial approach, work

monitoring intensified. Every task within a job

came under scrutiny, and elaborate tally sheets

and production forms were developed to record each detail in the operation. Measures of

hand and eye movements, spacing between

worker, machine, and product, time per task,

level of efficiency through the day, and the effect of rest periods on production were some

of the many new calculations performed in an

effort to monitor production more closely. In

addition to the information collected on work

tasks and worker performance, there was increased emphasis on developing new tools and

machinery that would conform to the growing detailed division of labor tasks. This new

technology bore a design influenced by employers’ interest in increasing control over

work and productivity. Jobs became more subdivided and fragmented. This detailed division

of labor which separates various job aspects

into distinct parts and assigns them to different workers diminishes both the skill and cost

‘~Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoljr Capital: The Degradation of W’ork in the Twentieth Centur~r (New York, NY:

Monthly Review Press, 1974), p. 114.
18 . The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

.- — — .

of labor.l6 Scientific management, by separating knowledge from performance, increased the

ability of employers to monitor the workplace,

not through overbearing surveillance, but by

investing them with the knowledge and determination of how work was performed.

The development of the assembly line provides a good example of the changes that were

occurring during this period.17 The Ford Motor Co., established in 1903, began with the

employment of highly skilled workers, former

bicycle or carriage mechanics, who built entire

automobiles. As the demand for the Model T

rose, Ford introduced full assembly lines.

Rather than skilled mechanics, unskilled and

semi-skilled workers performed small operations in stationary positions along the endlesschain conveyor. This system greatly increased

management ability to control and monitor

both the pace and intensity of work. Introduction of the assembly line, with its skill reduction and corresponding wage leveling, met

worker resistance even at its earliest stages.

In 1913, Ford had a labor turnover rate of 380

percent, and a unionization drive began.l8

Scientific Management in the Office.–The application of scientific management greatly increased the volume of information to be transferred from the plant level to the office. The

result was a rapid growth in the number of office workers, both managerial and clerical. Scientific management, originally conceived for

factory employment, was also introduced into

the office.

Many offices were restructured according to

a more “industrial’ style of organization: jobs

were broken down into more detailed tasks,

skilled aspects of the job were separated from

lesser skilled operations, and the tasks were

distributed among differentially paid employees. Such firms as insurance companies, where

work was repetitive and easily measured, began to incorporate an assembly-line approach

to the flow of work through the office.

Most measures of work production depended

on paper and pencil tallies of items completed.

However, there were also mechanical aids.

Clock-driven “time stamps” were used to record precisely when clerks received and returned measured batches of work. Devices attached to typewriters for counting keystrokes

or lines of typing were first used in the early

1900s. 19 The practice of posting charts or tables with each clerk’s performance statistics,

“to excite the emulation of others, ” was considered a useful tool for increasing productivity. 20

While scientific management as a basic orientation of management philosophy continues

today, there have been other philosophies of

management with impact on U.S. industry.

One was the “human relations” approach

fostered by E. Mayo and colleagues at Harvard Business School in the 1930s and 1940s.

This philosophy emphasized the social aspects

of work and the importance of social support

from fellow workers in helping determine

worker productivity. Variations on this theme

continue to the present. The human relations

approach did not replace scientific management, and by the 1950s, the issue of power and

real differences between managerial and employee interests were accepted in many managerial theories. The challenge was to integrate

work organization goals-harmony, productivity, profits—with those of the employees.

Privacy in the Workplace

The idea that a worker should have some expectation of privacy in the workplace is a new

one, one that is only beginning to develop in

American law. Only a little more than a century ago, the employer-employee relationship

was viewed as analogous to the master-servant

relationship; the master had some paternalistic responsibility for the welfare or moral development of the servant; the servant owed

obedience and good service. Owners of early

IGIbid., pp. 72-83.

171 bid., pp. 146-151; and Melvin Kranzberg and Joseph Gies,

By the Sweat of the Brow (New York, NY: G.P. Putman’s Sons,

1975), ch. 13.

‘“Keith Sward, The Legend of Hem-y Ford (New York and

Toronto: Atheneum, 1948), p. 32, cited in Braverman, p. 149.

‘

gSee, for example, William H. Leffingwell, “This Plan More

Than Doubled Our Typists’ Output, ’ System, vol. 30, November 1961; and William H. Leffingwell, “What ‘Scientific Management Did for My Office, System, vol. 30, December 1961.

‘“William H. Leffingwell, “What ‘Scientific Management’

Did for My Office, ” System, vol. 30, December 1961.
Ch. 1—iItroduction ● 1 9

—

factories believed they had the right, indeed

the responsibility, to strictly control many

aspects of their employees’ lives, on and off

the job. In the factories of the 1800s, work rules

governing church attendance, place of residence, and nightly curfews were not uncommon. Even as late as the 1910s, the Ford company employed a group of 50 social workers

to investigate employees’ neighborhoods,

home conditions, finances, and habits to determine if they were worthy of profit sharing

bonuses.”

Gradually over the course of the 1800s, U.S.

courts began to view the employment relationship as analogous to a contract between equals,

with the employer buying the labor that the

employee wished to sell. This view gave rise

to the notion of “employment at will. ” Each

party was free to enter or refuse the contract

for any reason; if either was later displeased

for any reason, either was free to break it; the

employer could fire, or the employee could quit.

The contract analogy does not recognize the

very large differences in bargaining power that

often exist between a single individual and a

corporation. The National Labor Relations Act

of 1935, which obligated employers to bargain

with workers’ representatives over hours,

wages, and working conditions, marked one

early action of the Federal Government to modify the employment-at-will doctrine.

The concept that an employee has a right

to privacy—either to be free from intrusion or

to keep certain information private—is a relatively new one. Throughout the previous century and up through the 1950s, the right of

employers to inquire into any aspect of an employee’s life was virtually undisputed. Employers could choose their employees in any

way they wished, and were quite free to say

“We want only this kind of person working. ’22 Worker testing has gone through at

least two periods of popularity in the United

21 Robert Ellis Smith, Workrights (New York, NY: Dutton,

1983), pp. 13-16. Also, Stephen Meyer III, The Five DolZarDay:

Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908-1921 (Albany, NY: State University of New York

Press, 1981), pp. 34-35.

‘

2 Citing Alan Westin in Harrison Donnelly, “Privacy in the

Workplace” Editorial Research Reports, Mar. 21, 1986.

States, once in the 1920s and again in the 1950s

when employers compiled psychological profiles, employment histories, and other files of

personal data quite unrestrainedly .2’

During the changing social climate of the

1960s and 1970s, court decisions and worker

protection legislation gave employees some

protections in how their employers could use

information about them and placed a greater

burden on employers to demonstrate scientific

validity of employment tests. Other legislation,

like the Occupational Safety and Health Act,

gave employees certain protections as well as

rights to information about hazards in the

workplace. Antidiscrimination legislation began to limit employers’ right to discriminate

on the basis of race, sex, religion, age, and (in

some States) union activity. A number of

States have passed “mini-privacy acts” to provide some protection of workers records. In

addition, a number of court decisions in the

past two decades have further eroded the doctrine of employment at will, limiting employers’ freedom in firing employees.

The changes in legislation and in social values in the 1960s and 1970s gave some measure

of additional power to the individual in an employment relationship, and led people to the

expectation that they had certain rights, including the right to privacy. Workplace privacy is a new right, however, and probably a

tenuous one. It will be tested on two fronts:

by the drive toward higher productivity, which

encourages employers to use electronic monitoring, and current social concerns, such as

drug abuse, that encourage employers to

gather more and better information about the

people they hire. Although employees are now

beginning to feel a right to privacy in the workplace, these pressures to gather information,

along with availability of the technological

means to collect that information, may weaken

the development of this emerging right.

The field of players involved in labor relations questions is broadening. Traditionally

the parties involved were the employer, em2:]’’ Can You Pass The Job Test, ” IVewsweek, May 5, 1986.
20 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

ployees, and, if it existed, a union. Government

involvement has been limited to establishment

of guidelines for union contracts. Government

has also become involved through laws that

cover all workers and workplaces regardless

of the union or the collective bargaining agreement. These include laws on child labor; minimum wage; nondiscrimination on the basis of

race, religion, sex, and age; and finally protection of health and safety on the job. In addition, a number of laws have been passed in the

past decade at the State level governing the

privacy of employment and medical records

and the use of polygraphs in employment.

Such laws were enacted because of heavy lobbying by a range of groups including unions,

civil rights advocates, women, environmentalists, community-citizen alliances, health pro

fessionals, and others. This move to the legislative area to deal with workplace issues has

accelerated in recent years, particularly at the

State and local level. The coalition among labor, women, and environmental organizations

has strengthened around the introduction of

VDTs into the workplace, and on related issues such as computer monitoring. Working

together, these groups are largely responsible

for the generation of legislative efforts in at

least 22 States to explore VDT standards.

While most of these have not passed, some

have resulted in advisory guidelines, as in New

Mexico. In a few States these same coalitions

have pushed for laws concerning electronic

monitoring and service observation.

The declining proportion of the labor force

represented by unions is one of the factors influencing the move toward legislative solutions

to worker and workplace problems. There is

persuasive evidence that efforts to establish

expanded employee rights through State and

local legislation will continue, both in the areas

of electronic monitoring and in worker testing.

Legal and policy questions are summarized below and discussed in greater detail in chapter 4.

POLICY OPTIONS

Before addressing the problem of how Congress might act, it is first necessary to consider whether and when action may be appropriate. Some factors suggest that a “wait and

see’ posture may be appropriate; uncertainty

about whether monitoring causes stress, the

lack of judicial precedent, the possibility of privately negotiated restraints on monitoring,

and marketplace checks on monitoring are

among these. Other factors indicate that Congress may want to act now to alleviate growing concern about monitoring in the workplace.

These include the lack of union representation

in the bulk of the monitored work force, the

inadequacy of current law to address concerns

over health, privacy, and dignity, the difficulties of legislating against powerful economic

interests at the state level, and the increasing

sophistication of the technology itself. Several

possible directions of Federal policy are described below.

Option 1:

Take no Federal action concerning work

monitoring at this time.

Questions of the fairness of work monitoring practices would be left, as they are at

present, in the hands of stakeholders, employers and employees. In industries where labor unions are active, collective bargaining

with regard to technology change, monitoring,

and methods of evaluation would continue under the current practices.

Although many unions have adopted positions opposing electronic work monitoring,

their bargaining strength with respect to it,

whether by informal negotiations or by formal

collective bargaining or arbitration, is probably not great. However, the monitoring that

does take place varies between industries and

companies. An argument can therefore be

made that, pending the development of a
Ch. 1—Introduction ● 2 1

—

longer history of negotiations between labor

and management on this issue, monitoring is

best addressed at the company or union level.

The parties concerned are most familiar with

the specific problems, and contracts, rather

than national policy, may be the best way of

approaching what appears to be situationspecific problems (see ch. 4). Under these circumstances, Congress may want to avoid legislating on the issue of monitoring per se, and

instead make monitoring an item for compulsory arbitration or collective bargaining under

Federal labor law.

This, of course, does not necessarily ensure

an outcome that is satisfactory for the majority

of monitored workers, who are not unionized

and are therefore powerless to negotiate fair

monitoring practices, or any other aspects of

the quality of work life, through the collective

bargaining process. Furthermore, an increasingly large segment of the work force is made

up of temporary workers, who, since they come

and goon a weekly or monthly basis, have little

ability to improve the quality of work life.

There is the argument that natural “market forces” may tend to limit unfair monitoring and preclude the need for congressional action even on behalf of nonunionized workers:

employee backlash, low morale, and high turnover should dissuade employers from monitoring practices that their workers find onerous.

If monitoring is indeed stress-producing, then

employers who use it will inevitably see the

effects of stress on diminished quality and output of its product or service. The response to

this is that many monitored jobs are routine

work that is subject to and indifferent to a high

turnover rate, and in many instances, high attrition works to the employer’s benefit (by

lowering the costs of pension, salary increases,

etc.). Thus it is not clear that “natural” checks

will be sufficient to ensure that monitoring is

not abused.

If natural checks are not sufficient, political action is still available. Unions and other

interest groups have worked to pass State-level

legislation on monitoring, service observation,

or VDT health and safety. These activities will

probably continue. Some of these attempts

may be successful, giving rise to a variety of

legislative or regulatory approaches to dealing with the issues related to electronic monitoring. Some may serve as models for Federal

action at some later time, should the need for

the harmonizing effect of national legislation

be seen more clearly in the future.

Option 2:

Establish whether stress effects of electronic monitoring are an occupational health

hazard; if they are, consider creating Federal legislation or regulations governing the

use of electronic monitoring.

The effect of monitoring on stress and

health-issues which might provide the policymaker with the most direct and least valueladen approach to acting on monitoring—is in

a state of scientific uncertainty. There exist

few authoritative studies on the effects of electronic monitoring on health. Some studies and

informal polls of workers have suggested that

monitoring has stressful effects, and there is

a certain common sense appeal to the idea that

working in fast paced, highly monitored environments may be highly stressful. However,

there is no research separating the effects of

monitoring from other office stressors, nor is

much known about the types of monitoring

that are stressful, how stress might be reduced,

or how stress due to monitoring manifests itself (if at all) in physiological symptoms. Until more is known about the effects of monitoring on health, policy action under a “stress”

rationale may be premature. The policy maker

may consider it appropriate, therefore, to initiate studies on stress in the workplace, and

on the role that monitoring plays in such stress.

The National Institute of Occupational

Safety and Health would seem to be the logical agency to supervise or carry out studies

of stress as a workplace hazard. Specific

studies of monitored workers would have to

be done with an eye to separating the effects

of monitoring from those of other workplace

stressors, a major deficiency in existing studies. In addition, however, it would be useful

to understand more about the phenomenon of

workplace stress in general, given the rising

number of worker compensation claims and
22 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

—

other evidence of the growing importance of

stress in occupational health. Research may

reveal that other factors in the workplace are

as important as or more important than monitoring in contributing to stress-related illness,

and that these should also be covered by protective legislation or regulation.

Option 3:

Consider Federal legislation aimed at

gaps in current law. This could be in two

possible directions: general legislation aimed

at establishing certain rights for employees

within the workplace, or surgical legislation

aimed at specific monitoring practices.

There have been few, if any, court cases challenging the types of monitoring considered in

this report. Two differing conclusions can be

drawn from this. The first is that, until the judiciary acts, Congress has no way of knowing

the type of legal inadequacies it should address,

and ought therefore wait to legislate on work

monitoring. The second is that current law is

inadequate even to form the basis for a lawsuit, and that Congress must take the lead in

providing rights to monitored employees,

should it decide that certain forms of monitoring are unreasonable.

Current worker protection legislation gives

workers a variety of rights, such as the right

to a minimum wage, to organize, to bargain

collectively, and increasingly, the right to know

about health and safety hazards that form part

of the working environment. However, U.S.

law has not heretofore involved itself deeply

in quality of work life issues nor in issues of

personal privacy or dignity in the workplace.

There is no legal right to be treated with dignity or as an autonomous person. There is no

legal right to a well-designed, interesting job,

nor is there law that compels employers to consider employee input in decisions about new

technology or new monitoring procedures. To

the extent the law treats privacy in the workplace, it looks to a standard of what an employee might reasonably expect to remain private; as discussed in chapter 4, this standard

may fail as a guide for action in the face of employer’s increasing use of monitoring, surveillance, or testing technologies.

That these issues are not currently addressed

in law does not mean they could not be. As

is discussed in appendix A, a number of other

countries have quality of work life legislation.

Such legislation could give guidelines on the

rights to health, safety, privacy, constitutional

protections, or information that employees can

expect to enjoy in the workplace. As indicated

earlier in this chapter, the erosion of the doctrine of “employment at will” through antidiscrimination, health and safety legislation,

and public interest concerns, has already

marked some involvement of the U.S. Government in regulating the work environment. The

issue of electronic monitoring in offices is probably too narrow to serve as a basis for comprehensive work environment legislation. It

should be just one factor of many to be considered in determining what rights U.S. citizens have in the workplace, both as employers

and employees.

However, if blanket legislation on work life

quality is neither wise nor desirable, Congress

might address concerns over specific issues

through the use of specific amendatory legislation. If, for example, telephone call accounting is an area of particular concern, Congress

might address the problem specifically by

amending the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to comport with what it considers

“fair” monitoring practice. The guidelines developed for the audit conducted by the General Services Administration for the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency

might form a template for such legislation, or

instead, Congress may mandate alternatives

to telephone call accounting discussed in chapter 3 of this report.

Another example of an area of the law not

currently addressed, and on which Congress

may wish to act, is what might be called transactional privacy, or the collection of ‘information about information. ” For example, the

number of keystrokes, the number of visits to

the restroom, the destination of calls, etc., all

provide information about transactions, rather

than about the content of communications or
activities (see part II of ch. 4).24 Although

present law, such as the Privacy Act and the

Fair Credit Reporting Act, regulates what can

be done with transactional information once

collected, it does not forbid its collection as

such. As discussed in chapter 4, however, the

collection of transactional information, particularly if done on an intensive basis, can arouse

feelings of having one’s privacy, dignity, and

autonomy invaded. Moreover, because of the

power of computers to generate profiles and

crosshatch many transactions, transactional

information can yield informed estimates of

the substantive content of communications or

patterns of behavior—it can be, in other words,

a‘ ‘back door’ for getting at personal information that existing law regulates.

Certainly, to forbid or regulate the collection

of all transactional information would be unreasonable. Much transactional data collected

by electronic monitoring software is used to

monitor equipment utilization, to track totals

of transactions made, and to determine

‘Transactional information, it will be recalled, differs from

substanti~r.e information, in that the latter reveals the content

or meaning of communications or documents. Transactional information, in contrast, re~reals facts about communications or

documents.

Ch. 1—lntroduct;on ● 2 3

whether security systems are working properly. The collection of transactional data becomes most subject to controversy when it is

collected about the performance of an individual worker. It may be that Congress would

choose to treat electronic monitoring as a

‘‘right to know” issue for workers; that is, employers could have the right to collect whatever kind of transactional data they wish about

employee performance, but would be required

to give employees access to, and if need be,

correct, this information.

As this report indicates throughout, however, the issue of work monitoring cannot be

adequately understood, nor appropriately addressed, in isolation from larger labormanagement, privacy, and health and safety

contexts in which it is embedded. Nor will specific policy actions taken with respect to particular forms of monitoring necessarily end the

controversies arising out of the application of

new forms of technology to the workplace. The

policymaker should therefore be aware that an

exclusive focus on the forms of monitoring considered in this report will at best form the basis for a series of patchwork solutions to what

has been a perennial issue between workers and

employers.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION FOR THIS REPORT

In compiling this report, OTA used a number of major sources of information in addition to published literature cited in the footnotes throughout the report.

One major OTA contract, completed by Alan

F. Westin of the Education Fund for Individual Rights, includes the results of site visits

and interviews of 110 public and private offices

in 1983 and 1985-86 to examine their use of

monitoring and telephone call accounting, A

subcontractor to the Westin project, Dr. Elaine

J. Eisenman, provided a paper summarizing

her 1984-85 research on employee perceptions

of monitoring at six private sector sites (three

unionized and three nonunionized). Her findings are based on questionnaires and group

workshops conducted with 365 employees and

27 supervisors.26

office automation including electronic work OTA also participated in a survey on office

monitoring .25 The Westin report also summa- automation equipment use that was conducted

rizes some of the legal implications of work ‘bElaine J. Eisenman, “Employee Perceptions and Supervisory Behaviors in Clerical VDT Work Performed on Systems

‘iAlan F. W’estin, “Privacy and Quality of Life Issues in Em- that Allow Electronic Monitoring, prepared as part of contracployee Monitoring, ” contractor report for OTA, 1986. tor report for OTA, April 1986,
24 • The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

by Hay Management Group in 1986.27 In

that survey of 45 large New York area firms

OTA inserted several questions to determine

how many of the firms make use of electronic

monitoring for purposes of planning or individual evaluation.

OTA staff conducted semi-structured interviews that encompassed 35 work locations in

private industry and in the Federal Government to discuss the use of work monitoring

and the reactions of managers and workers to

it.

In addition to the staff interviews, OTA contractor Dr. Michael J. Smith, of the University of Wisconsin, conducted semi-structured

interviews of 41 monitored workers at 5 work

sites.28 These interviews were in support of

his report to OTA on behavioral and psychological implications of monitoring.

An ad hoc group of representatives from a

number of labor organizations working under

the auspices of the AFL-CIO provided a set

of 34 case examples highlighting employee reaction to the use of monitoring at a variety

of unionized and nonunionized workplaces in

the United States.29

Information about the use of electronic monitoring in other countries came from a report

by Russell Pipe and Alan F. Westin of the Education Fund for Individual Rights, and one by

Dr. Steven Deutsch, of The Center for Work

and Society, University of Oregon. Dr. Deutsch

also provided a paper on the context of labor

management relations in the United States.30

Information on historical evolution of work

monitoring came from a paper by Dr. Sandra

Albrecht, University of Kansas31 and contributions of Dr. Sharon Strom.

Information on telephone call accounting, in

addition to published sources, came from OTA

staff interviews of approximately 12 communications managers and 3 telecommunications

consultants. Staff also used a mini case study

of the State of New York telephone system,

based on interviews and documents provided

by the State telecommunication office. Staff

also interviewed officials of the General Services Administration and a number of Federal

agencies. In addition, staff interviewed two experts on whistleblowing.

‘THay Group Inc., “1986 Office Systems Survey, ” September 1986.

~~Michae] J. Smith, pascale Carayon, and Kathleen Miezio,

“Motivational, Behavioral, and Psychological Implications of

Electronic Monitoring of Worker Performance, ” contractor report prepared for OTA, July 1986.

~citi ~ t~s report as “AFL-CIO Case Examples, November 1986.

‘]OSteven Deutsch, “The Context for Exploring Workplace

Monitoring, ” contract paper prepared for OTA, September 1986.

Slsmdra L. Albrecht, “Historic~ Back=ound to the Electronic Monitoring of Office Work, ’ contrac~ paper prepared for

OTA, August 1986.

ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT

Chapter 2 of this report discusses the technology of computerized work measurement,

some of the jobs in which it is used, and the

workplace issues raised by its use. Chapter 3

focuses on the use of telephone call accounting in both government and private firms,

along with the use of other technologies to

manage telephone costs. Chapter 4 presents

a discussion of the legal aspects of privacy and

quality of work life issues as well as a discussion of policy alternatives related to work monitoring and telephone call accounting.

In addition, this report has two appendixes:

appendix A discusses policies toward monitoring in some foreign countries while appendix

B summarizes the issues raised by worker

testing.
Chapter 2

Using Computers To

Monitor Office Work
CONTENTS

Page

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

What Kind of Work Gets Monitored? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

How Widespread Is Electronic Work Monitoring?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Work Monitoring in the Private Sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Work Monitoring in the Federal Government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

How Technology Assists Selected Business Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Workplace Issues Related to Work Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

What Is Fair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Standards of Performance . . . .

Quality of Work. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Job Design and Work Process .

Supervision and Evaluation . . .

Personal Computer Monitoring

Monitoring and Stress . . . . . . .

Computer Pacing and Stress . .

Feedback and Motivation . . . . .

The Future of Work Monitoring .

Figure No.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Figures

Page 3

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

- Example of a System Status Report for an Automatic Call Distribution

System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Example of a Supervisor’s Display in an Automatic Call Distribution

System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Example of Agent Statistics From an Automatic Call Distribution

System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Two Models for Electronic Work Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Example of Individual Work Monitoring Report {Performance

summary). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ● . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Example of a Work Monitoring Report for a Group (Volume of Work

Accomplished by Group in One Week). ... , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Example of Individual Work Monitoring Report (Hours Summary) . . . . 43

Tables

Table No. Page

1. Some Office Jobs Currently Subject to Electronic Work Monitoring . . . 29

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

8.

Conditions Most Favorable to Electronic Work Measurement . . . . . . . . . 29

Workplace Issues Related to Work Moontering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Key Issues and Problem Areas in Monitoring Worker Performance . . . . 39

Comparison of Monitored and Nonmonitored Workers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Rates of Frequent Health Problems Related to Computerized

Monitoring of Work Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Rates of Frequent Health Problems Related to Production Quotas or

Productivity Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Review of Oregon Worker Compensation Claims Involving Mental

Stress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ........4 53
Chapter 2

Using Computers To Monitor Office Work—

INTRODUCTION

Electronic work monitoring is the computerized collection, storage, analysis, and reporting of information about employees’ productive activities. Within this broad definition, the

primary focus of this report will be on obtaining data about employees directly through

their use of computer and telecommunication

equipment. 1 This type of information gathering has been called ‘‘electronic monitoring,

‘‘electronic work measurement, ” or “telephone

monitoring. “2 This chapter will also include a

discussion of “service observation, ” the practice of listening in on conversations between

employees and customers to evaluate the employees’ courtesy or competence. Service observation is often used in conjunction with

electronic work measurement for telephone

operators and customer service workers.

Some people have warned that use of electronic monitoring leads to creation of electronic

sweatshops. ‘‘Electronic sweatshop’ ‘–the term

conjures up images that combine the worst features of both the factory and the office: boring, repetitive, fast-paced work that requires

constant alertness and attention to detail, all

done under the pressure of constant supervision and demands for faster work. Worst of

all, the supervisor isn’t even human. Employees must labor at top speed under the view of

unwinking computer taskmasters that record

every item of work completed, along with every

mistake, rest break, and deviation from standard practice. A person’s job depends on the

computer’s comparison of performance to the

standard. Interaction with fellow workers is

‘This definition is very similar to one found in: Andrew Clement, “Electronic Management: The New Technology of Work

Place Surveillance,” Canadian Information Processing SocietJ’

Session W Proceedings, Calgary, Alberta, May 9-11, 1984, pp.

2.59-266.

‘In this chapter, ‘‘work measurement” is used to include the

whole process of developing procedures and standards for jot)

performance, collecting data on actual performance and comparing actual performance to standards. “Work monitoring”

refers only to collection of information about actual performance

impossible because of the pace of work; job

satisfaction is low, and stress and stress-related

health problems are the inevitable result of

having to work under such conditions.

Electronic work monitoring is already a daily

reality for millions of U.S. workers. They seem

to be having varied experiences with it. Some

view electronic monitoring as a useful tool that

helps them get better control of their work,

ensures that their supervisors give objective

evaluations, and helps their company be more

productive. Others believe they indeed do work

in electronic sweatshops as described above,

and that monitoring is an unfair surveillance

used to control them. Still others have mixed

feelings: they may not mind monitoring per

se, but they feel it isn’t being used in the fairest

or most effective way.

Electronic monitoring is usually used in conduction with a work measurement system. Work

measurement systems usually do four things.

First, they set standards for the time it should

take to produce certain units of work. Second,

they monitor the actual time it takes to produce each unit of work. Third, they analyze the

variance of the actual time from the standard.

And finally, they provide data for use in planning, cost estimates, and productivity improvement.3 As more employees use computers in

their jobs, computer software is increasingly

used to monitor actual performance, compare

performance to standards, and provide planning data.

As more capabilities of the computer and

telephone are being explored for office work,

it is probably natural that some of the same

capabilities are found useful in supervising

work as well. Both work and supervision are

becoming automated. Work done- on a comSEW U.S. Department of Defense, Office of The 1 n.specter

General, W-ork Measurement b:ystems and li’ngineer~d Labm-

.Standards (Lf’ashington, IX: October 1986).

27
28 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

— —

puter is very abstract. Many information workers no longer handle concrete items like documents, file folders, paper clips, orders, invoices,

rubber stamps, or checks. Those physical objects have disappeared into the computer and

have become abstract analogs of their former

selves. The various stages of work that transform raw materials into final products take

place inside the computer, too. A supervisor

who could only observe the physical activity

of people at their computer terminals, without knowing what was going on inside the computer, would know little about the work being

done.

The tool that gives a picture of what is happening inside the computer is the computer itself. Computers’ capacities for recording and

storing information make it possible to keep

detailed records about all aspects of the production process. And their ability to sort that

information in different ways means that the

information can be put to many uses.

Computer records can give a picture of the

total performance of a work group, or a department. Statistics on historical patterns of production can be used to estimate future workloads, to plan for new personnel, or to justify

new equipment. Performance statistics may

also be compared with budgeted costs to determine the cost-effectiveness of an operation.

Such complete and up-to-date information is

necessary in a cybernetic model of management that requires immediate feedback to

managers about current activities to be used

as the basis of future decisions.

Computer work monitoring can also give information on individual performance. The focus of this chapter is computer monitoring of

individual performance. Computer-generated

statistics can be used as a tool to increase or

maintain levels of employee performance. They

may be used in individual personnel decisions

—pay, promotion, retraining, and discharge.

They can be a feedback tool to help employees

gain more control of their own work; conversely,

they can be used to limit employee decisions

about the work process. Like most technological tools, work monitoring per se is neither bad

nor good. Its effects depend on how it is used.

WHAT KIND OF WORK GETS MONITORED?

Most of the electronic monitoring found by

OTA and other researchers affects office workers with short-cycle “production” jobs, that

is, jobs where a limited number of standardized tasks are performed repeatedly to produce

some information-based end-product. Most

such jobs are considered clerical, for example

data entry or insurance claims processing.

However, monitoring can also be applied to

professional jobs with a quantifiable output,

for example computer programmers or insurance underwriters.

Data-entry jobs are perhaps the epitome of

routine, standardized information-processing

work. The operator reads information from a

paper source and enters it on a keyboard or

keypad to be recorded on computer tape or

disk. Most key-to-disk and key-to-tape dataentry systems are equipped to count operator

keystrokes, and in these high-production jobs,

counting keystrokes is an obvious way to

measure performance.

However, key entry is not the only job where

production can be monitored electronically

using computer counts. Table 1 lists some of

the office jobs that are often subject to work

measurement from production data gathered

through electronic monitoring. The list is by

no means exhaustive. The table summarizes

a few of the aspects of work that can be electronically monitored for each job.

What do all the jobs in table 1 have in common? Why is it that they lend themselves to

computer monitoring? Jobs that are subject

to electronic monitoring are generally those

that are subject to work measurement techniques. In work measurement systems, man-
Ch. 2—Using Computers To Monitor Office Work • 29

—

Table 1 .—Some Office Jobs Currently Subject to Electronic Work Monitoring

Job

Word processors . .

Data-entry clerks ... . ,

Telephone operators . . . . .

Customer service workers .

Telemarketing/other sales

Insurance claims clerks

Mail clerks . . .

Bank proof clerks . . . .

What is measured

speed, errors, time working

speed, errors, time working

average time per call

time per customer

number and type of transaction

time per customer; sales volume

number of cases per unit time

letters or packages per unit time

checks processed per unit of

time

SOURCE Off Ice of Technology Assessment ;967

agement sets standards of production and then

makes records of actual performance in order

to compare them to the standard. For many

kinds of work, manual recordkeeping systems

or physical counts of completed work are used

to gather performance information, but the

growing availability of computer-based systems in offices has led many employers to collect this information electronically.

Table 2 identifies some of the work conditions most favorable to the application of work

measurement. The first set of conditions is that

the work be routine and require the repetitive

performance of a small range of tasks. When

this is the case it is possible to time those tasks

and establish a standard amount of time in

which a competent worker can be expected to

Table 2.—Conditions Most Favorable to Electronic

Work Measurement

Routinized work:

● smalI number of tasks performed by each employee

● large volume of work

. relatively continuous supply of work

Interchangeable workers:

● relatively low training requirement

Ž relatively smalI difference in the productivity of experienced and inexperienced workers, or short time needed

to bring inexperienced workers to full capability

Ž tolerance for turnover

● ample labor supply

Simple data collection:

● employees use information technology as part of their work

. information about transactions is already being CoIIected

for other purposes

● data collection is transparent to the users, and making use

of it is simple for supervisors

SOURCES Adapted from Robert E Nolan, “W;rk Measurement, ’:ln Robert N

Leherer, White Co//ar Producflwty (New York, NY McGraw Hill, 1983),

also personal communication from James Rule, August 1986

How obtained

keystrokes counted by computer

keystrokes counted by computer

each call timed by call distribution system

each calI timed by call distribution system,

transactions counted by computer

each call or transaction timed. sales tabulated by

computer

time spent on each form tabulated by computer

collected by letter of package sorting machines

collected by proof machine

perform them (more about work measurement

standard setting below). Measurement is also

easier and more meaningful when there is a

large volume of work from which to draw, or

a relatively continuous flow of work.

Routine tasks can be performed by interchangeable workers. Individual employees

may come and go (turnover) but the work still

gets done. These jobs do not require a worker

to have rare personal qualities, extensive

professional training, or highly specialized

skills. The training required for most routine

jobs is minimal, and the amount of time needed

for a newly trained worker to reach full competence is usually short, Training for some

types of data-entry jobs, or for such jobs as

proof machine operators in banks, can be accomplished in as little as a few days. Other routine jobs, however, require more skills and

longer training. For example, training for telephone customer service representatives at

firms interviewed by OTA ranged from a few

days to 6 weeks, depending on the firm and

the complexity of the services offered.

Although work measurement is most easily

applied to less skilled jobs, it is increasingly

being directed to higher level, more skilled technical, professional, and managerial positions.

Even the most complex work has its routine

elements, and given sufficient analysis, those

elements can be identified, grouped together,

and counted. The jobs of commodities broker,

computer programmer, and bank loan officer,

for example, could lend themselves to monitoring. They all have a high proportion of routine elements. But these jobs also require
30 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

higher levels of training and experience. Work

measurement and electronic monitoring can

be used in jobs like these, but if workers resent them, the costs of resistance might be unacceptably high for the employer. A firm’s perception of the interchangeability of certain

types of workers, the ampleness of replacement

labor, or their own tolerance for turnover are

all relative. They can change over time with

variations in corporate goals, job markets,

managers’ personalities, or internal corporate

politics.

As was pointed out in OTA’s earlier report

on office automation, the change in work process that takes place when certain types of

professional or technical workers start making use of computers, sometimes leads to

greater standardization or routinization of

their work.’ Some researchers hold that the

increased use of computers to assist professional and managerial work will lead inevitably to the de-skilling of mental work and the

creation of “intellectual assembly lines.“5

Many employers are greatly concerned with

getting higher performance from highly paid

professional and managerial workers—the

“last great frontier” of productivity improvement. Computer monitoring can offer a way

to make them more accountable and to measure their performance against performance

goals. There will be further discussion on electronic monitoring of professional, managerial,

and technical workers later.

In table 2 the final group of characteristics

typical of monitored jobs is “simple data collection. ” As noted below, performance statis-

‘U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, ALztornation of America Offices, OTA-CIT-287 ( Washington, DC: U.S.

Government Printing Office, December 1985), p. 105.

‘

)Judith A. Perrolle, “Intellectual Assembly Lines: The Rationalization of Managerial, Professional, and Technical Work, ’

paper presented to the American Sociological Association, Washington, DC, August 1985.

tics can be collected about many routine office jobs that are not computerized, usually by

having the employee or supervisor keep paper

records. Care must be taken to design a means

of data collection which does not unduly burden workers or supervisors–otherwise the

measurement system may decrease productivity because it takes too much time or reduces morale. Further, a work-measurement

system that requires people to take an extra

step to keep performance records maybe subject to error or fraud. With electronic monitoring, manual recordkeeping can often be reduced or eliminated, even while much more

detailed measurements are being made.

Jobs involving telephone contact with the

public are often subject to “service observation, ” that is, having a supervisor or quality

control specialist listen in on employee telephone calls to evaluate courtesy, accuracy, or

compliance with company guidelines. Service

observation is a common practice in telemarketing firms, direct sales outlets, market research firms, companies with large customer

service departments, and of course telephone

companies. Service observation is not new; telephone companies have been practicing it for

over 80 years, as have many other firms. Service observation is also not automatic. It requires a human listener to make judgments

on the content of a call.

However, new information technology has

been transforming service observation by developing systems that integrate service observation with other, more automatic, monitoring techniques and also by improving the

quality of new equipment. In older telephone

systems, for example, a drop in volume or a

click might be heard when an observer came

on the line. Most modern service-observation

equipment is perfectly silent and does not interfere with the operation of lines.

HOW WIDESPREAD IS ELECTRONIC WORK MONITORING?

Work Monitoring in the Private Sector puter use as part of computer security programs,

audit trails, or cost allocation programs. Thus,

It should be noted that many computers re- in nearly every organization that has a maincord information about individual workers’ com- frame, minicomputer, or integrated word proc-
Ch. 2—Using Computers To Monitor Office Work . 31

essing system, computer-generated records are

made when a terminal logs on or off; when a

database is accessed; when a file is created, revised, or deleted; or when a remote computer

is accessed through telecommunication lines.

Some privacy implications of computer security systems will be addressed separately in

a companion report. G However, for the purposes of the present report, such records are

not considered to be work monitoring.

There are no reliable figures on how extensively employers are applying computer-based

software to monitor individual employee performance, or to what extent they are using it

to make judgments on individual pay, promotion, or discipline. No one has such figures, and

no available basis for calculating them is at

hand.

Before trying to estimate how many office

workers are subject to work monitoring by

computer, it is important to clearly define work

monitoring. In this report, work monitoring

will refer to the computerized collection of

transactions on performance statistics used in

individual work evaluations. Based on this definition it appears, as will be discussed in this

section, that only a minority of office workers

are monitored.

According to one work-measurement expert

in the health insurance industry, some sort of

statistics are collected about the computer

transactions of nearly everyone who uses a

computer—about 80 percent of the people in

the industry. However, he estimated that only

for about 20 percent of the people were these

statistics actually used to measure individual

performance.7 This 20 percent represented

primarily the low-skill end of the clerical work

force.

Some information on monitoring was collected in the 1984 National Survey on Women

and Stress, conducted by 9 to 5 National Association of Working Women. This survey re-

‘See Office of Technology Assessment, “Federal Policy on

Fllectronic Information Security: Emerging Issues and Technological Trends, ” forthcoming, 1987.

‘Fred Friedman, Director of Operations Strategy, Blue Cross

Association, interview, hlay 23, 1986.

ceived responses from 40,000 readers of four

major women’s magazines— Working Woman,

Ms., Glamour, and Essence. Of the 4,500 responses randomly selected for analysis, 43 percent reported that they used visual-display terminals (VDTs), cathode-ray tubes (CRTs), or

personal computers (PCs). Of these users, 25

percent were in managerial jobs, 30 percent

were professional and technical workers, and

44 percent were in clerical jobs. The clerical

category combined secretarial, customer service, data entry, and similar job titles.

One question on the survey asked:

Is your work measured, monitored, “constantly watched” or controlled by machine or

computer system.

Seventeen percent of all office automation

users answered “yes” to this question. When

broken down by occupation, 20 percent of clericals answered “yes,” compared with 15 percent of managers and professionals and and

13 percent of technical workers.

Some critics have noted that the sample in

this survey is self-selected, and that the results

may not be representative of all women in the

U.S. work force. On the other hand, the positive replies to the question on monitoring may

be lower than the actual incidence of electronic

monitoring in the United States. In the course

of doing this study, OTA staff and contractors often found it difficult to ask about work

monitoring with a simple yes or no question.

Some people simply did not understand the

question without further explanation. Workers in some locations did not know that they

were being monitored. In other firms, computer

use information was collected but not used for

but individual evaluation.

One small survey of office automation use

at 45 large New York firms, conducted for

OTA, suggests that electronic monitoring is

still not widespread at those firms. Only eight

firms (18 percent) reported using information

collected through electronic monitoring as a

basis for individual performance evaluations,

and six firms (13 percent) used it for team or

work group appraisal. Fourteen firms (31 per-
32 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

cent) used automatically collected data for

planning work force requirements.8

On the other hand, another survey of 110

organizations in 1982-84 found that the great

majority of firms (80 to 90 percent) collected

individual performance statistics for at least

some of their workers.9 Most of the jobs affected were the clerical jobs, but some were

professional or technical. About one-quarter

of the firms collecting performance statistics

said they did so only for assessing group performance, to plan for peaks and valleys of work

demand, and to cost-justify their use of the office systems. The remaining three-quarters

were using individual operator statistics to

make some sort of individual evaluation—

whether for base pay, incentive pay, promotion, or training-for some of their work force.

In some cases, machine statistics were “almost

the entire basis” for such judgements, and in

others it was ‘‘one factor in five or six factors

used to evaluate performance. ”

A survey of the same 110 organizations in

1985-86 revealed no increase in the percentage of employers using computer measurement

for personal evaluation. However, a majority

of the firms now reported that they had created a‘ ‘more formal system’ for setting work

standards and letting employees see the results

of monitoring if they wished.l0

Those organizations not collecting statistics

at all were usually either:

1. organizations using older word processors

or microcomputers that did not have software for measurement;

2. organizations with new applications in

early implementation;

3. non-profit organizations or universities

who “just don’t do that”; or

4. State and local government agencies which

“saw no need to compile those records. ”

“Hay Group, Inc., “Analyses of Customized Items for the Office of Technology Assessment, ” 1986 Hay Office Systems Survey, September 1986.

‘Alan Westin: “Privacy and Quality of Work Life Issues in

Employee Motoring,” contractor report prepared for OTA,

1986.

‘“ Ibid.

Service observation, which is usually done

for jobs where employees have a great deal of

telephone contact with customers, is often

combined with electronic measurements of

productivity as well. As mentioned above, service observation is a standard practice in the

telephone industry, and most of the Nation’s

226,000 operators and service representatives

are evaluated in this way. In addition, the great

growth of telemarketing and telephone customer service in the past decade means that

an increasing number of employees are affected

by service observation. A few firms interviewed by OTA reported that they had serviceobserving capabilities in their telephone systems but did not use them.

Westin estimates that the great majority of

clerical employees working on computer terminals-in the 65 to 80 percent range-are not

currently being monitored by computer and

evaluated for pay, promotion, or discipline on

that basis.11 Further, most professional, technical, and managerial workers—95 percent or

more—are not currently evaluated based on

computer statistics. However, if 20 to 35 percent of clerical employees are being monitored,

this means that 4 to 6 million employees are

being evaluated in this manner. The addition

of professional, technical, and managerial

workers could add another million or two to

the total, and this number could grow steadily larger over the next 5 to 10 years. To this

total also should be added retail sales workers

and grocery clerks, whose speed and sales volume are sometimes monitored via electronic

cash registers.

The clerical work force is predominantly female, and the low-skill end of the clerical work

force has a disproportionate number of minority women.l2 Similarly, women are more

likely to be employed in the lower levels of

professional work, such as routine computer

programming or routine insurance underwriting, rather than in higher levels of those professions. Because monitoring is most likely to be

‘‘ Ibid.

IW. S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Automation of America Offices, OTA-C IT-287 (Washington, DC: U.S.

Government Printing Office, December 1985), pp. 300-304.
Ch. 2—Using Computers To Monitor Office Work . 33

applied to precisely these lower level jobs, work

monitoring is a topic that especially affects

women and minorities.

Work Monitoring in the Federal

Government 13

The work-monitoring practices in the Federal Government tend to follow some of the

same patterns as the private sector. There are

no reliable statistics on how many Federal employees have their work monitored by computer.

In general, Westin’s survey, combined with

interviews by OTA, found the same sort of distribution in the use of work monitoring in the

government as in the private sector. Some

agencies, or specific work groups within agencies, used performance statistics only at the

aggregate level and only for planning or budgeting purposes. Some used monitoring statistics as part of individual evaluation of some

workers, usually clerical workers. Some, especially small agencies and those with older

equipment, did no monitoring at all.

The following are a few specific examples of

applications of work monitoring in the Federal

Government. For example, performance statistics are automatically collected for data transcribers at the Department of Agriculture’s

National Finance Center. Statistics include a

total time on machine, keystrokes per hour,

and errors. Supervisors get daily, weekly, and

monthly reports; operators get feedback

monthly and some also maintain manual

records of their own performance. 14 Similar

performance criteria are used for data transcribers at the Bureau of the Census, but because of the design of the computer system,

keyers must record the time manually. When

a new system is installed in 1988, all information will be collected automatically. ”

I :lThi~ section is based on a survey performed by Westin ‘n

1984 of 44 Federal agencies. See Alan Westin, “Privacy and

Quality of Work Life Issues in Employee Monitoring, ” contractor report prepared for OTA, 1986, pp. 39-63. In addition, OTA

staff interviewed a number of Federal agency managers and

union officials.

14 Based on OTA interviews.

‘sBased on OTA interviews.

The Department of Labor’s Office of Workers Compensation monitors the work of claims

examiners and bill examiners. For claims examiners the statistics include time elapsed

from case creation to case adjudication, number of adjudications, number of wage loss

claims processed, and elapsed time from receipt

of claim to decision. Bill examiners statistics

include number of bills paid per day, time

elapsed from receipt of bill to payment. Claims

examiners are in the GS 5- I 1 range; bill examiners are typically GS 4-6. 16

The Internal Revenue Service, which has recently implemented its Automated Collection

Service, employs about 2,300 contact representatives who speak with delinquent taxpayers by telephone, negotiate payment schedules, and update taxpayer files. Performance

data is collected by computer (time per transaction, time logged on and available for work);

in addition supervisors are required to listen

in on calls to monitor for courtesy and correctness of information. Employees know that

service observation is performed, but do not

know specifically when they are being listened

to. According to IRS sources, service observation is fairly infrequent and used primarily

for training of new employees.

At the Social Security Administration’s Teleservice Centers, service observation capability of the new telephone system has become

a matter of dispute between SSA and the union

representing 1,500 teleservice workers (American Federation of Government Employees).

The union is attempting to negotiate specific

time periods during which service observation

will be used. At present it can be applied at

anytime and employees do not know whether

they are being monitored.

Given similar levels of computerization in

the Federal Government and the private sector,17 it seems likely that the number of monitored office workers in the Federal work force

is similar to the private sector—20 to 35

percent.

16 Based on OTA hIkrVkWS.

‘iSee OTA, Automation of America Offices, op. cit.
34 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

HOW TECHNOLOGY ASSISTS SELECTED

BUSINESS APPLICATIONS

The technology used in computerized work

measurement is not especially esoteric. Most

people whose work is electronically measured

are working on mainframe or minicomputers

or are using telephone systems controlled by

minicomputers. Stand-alone personal computers generally do not have the power to maintain sophisticated work-measurement software

while also carrying out the desired application.

[See later section on “Personal Computer Monitoring. Office systems that interlink a number of computers may sometimes have one

computer dedicated to monitoring and measuring workflow.

Some work-monitoring software systems are

available commercially, but in many cases,

firms with large data processing departments

develop their own work-monitoring software

in-house, or with the help of work-measurement

consulting firms. Commercially available systems in common use include those associated

with key-to-disk data-entry systems, automatic call distributors, and “back office computers” for travel agents, which will be discussed later.

Individual work-measurement statistics can

be developed using information that is already

being collected for some other purpose. Developing work-measurement statistics from this

information is simply a matter of being able

to retrieve some or all of this information, store

it in a separate file, and perform statistical

analyses.

Because it is based on analysis of readily

available information, work monitoring can

even begin “accidentally,” without a specific

management plan to introduce it. For example, in one Midwestern bank, the data processing department installed a “black box” to

record the time, type, duration, originating terminal, and user for every inquiry or transaction

in on-line databases. The purpose was to monitor the speed of computer response time and

to make sure other departments were getting

the level of service promised by the data processing department. Itemized reports were sent

to managers, who found that these reports

were useful for other purposes, such as planning personnel schedules, justifying requests

for new staff or equipment, and measuring the

time it took individual employees to complete

transactions. 18 They are now being used as

work-monitoring tools in at least some of the

participating departments.

In most locations, work-measurement tools

were developed explicitly for the purpose, but

the idea is still the same. They collect and reanalyze information that is already being

recorded about computer utilization or business transactions. For example, travel agents

at some large agencies work on terminals connected to a network that includes a nearby

minicomputer and a mainframe computer at

some central location. The applications software in the mainframe allows them to check

schedules and make or cancel reservations. The

minicomputer, called in some organizations the

“back office computer, ” records details about

computer utilization. It notes who logged on

to which terminal at which time, and it also

makes records of the time, type, and amount

of each transaction that the agents perform

on the mainframe. Thus the back office computer provides a local audit trail and sales record for the whole office. This information can

be used in a number of ways, for example, it

allows the local printing of tickets and itineraries for customers. It also can be used to develop individual performance histories, since

it has a complete record of all the computer

activities of each agent.19

In other firms interviewed by OTA, work

monitoring software was an integral part of

the application software. That is, the same

computer software package that helps an insurance claims examiner to key in client information and calculate the amount of a payment,

180TA interview with Senior Vice President for Operations,

a rnidwestern bank, May 1986.

190TA interview with three travel agency managers, June

1986.
also automatically tallies the number of claims

of each type that each examiner completes in

a day. In several cases these tallies were then

transferred to another computer program, perhaps in a personal computer, which does statistical analyses, compares performance to

established standards, and prints reports for

supervisors.

Collection of data about employee performance can in many cases be made transparent

to the user, that is, information can be collected

without interfering with the work that is being done. From the viewpoint of the user, an

automatic call distributor (ACD) simply routes

incoming calls to individual telephones. In actual fact, however, the distributor is also automatically recording the type of call (inside or

outside line), the time the call arrived, the identity of the employee to whom it was routed,

the number of seconds before the employee

picked up, the time the call started, the time

the call ended, the number of times the caller

was put on hold and for how long, the extension to which the call is transferred, the number of seconds before that person picked up,

and so on. In addition, it can show the supervisor at any moment which operators are busy,

which are waiting for work, which are on break.

At the end of the day it can provide summaries

of individual and group activities.

Properly organized, this can be very useful

management information. For example, an

ACD can report the number of seconds customers were “delayed” before someone was

available to help them or the number of customers that “abandoned” calls-hung up without speaking to anyone. If these figures get

too high it may indicate the need for more telephone lines and more customer agents. AnalCh. 2—Using Computers To Monitor Office Work ● 3 5

— — . —

ysis of daily or monthly work volumes can help

managers better understand cycles in their

business so they can predict busy periods when

they must hire temporary workers or offer

overtime.

The example in figure 2 shows such a status

report. Service level (“serv level’ is the percentage of incoming calls that were answered

within the specified time (typically 20 seconds).

Calls offered is the total number of calls, including those that were lost, delayed, or

diverted as shown in the following columns.

Positions manned (“pos manned”) means the

number of agents jacked in and ready to work;

the following columns indicate whether the

agents are on incoming or outgoing calls. Average delay is the average time in seconds for

a call to be processed, whether answered, delayed, or lost. The next columns show the number of calls waiting (CW), the maximum number of calls that were waiting at any time in

this period, and the number of seconds that

the current longest call waiting has waited.

Here again, reports about individual performance are fairly simple to develop based on

information that must be collected in any case.

In order to route calls, the computer controlling an automatic call distributor must keep

track of which telephones are busy, which are

available, and which are unattended at any

given time. However, this information must

be sorted and averaged in order to be of use.

A supervisor could make no sense of all the

detailed information that a computer collects

about each call. The work-monitoring software

sorts, totals, averages, and summarizes the information so that a supervisor can see activities of the entire work group, or totals and averages of each individual’s activities for a given

Figure 2.— Example of a System Status Report for an Automatic

Call Distribution System

Serv Calls Calls Calls Calls Pos. CalIs Calls Avg. Max Odly

Gate level offrd. dlyd. Lost div. manned in out delay CW CW time

1 47 “ 15 8 7

- 1 6 0 2 1 0 1 0-

2 43 7 4 4 0 3 1 2 2 3 3 91

4 67 6 2 1 1 6 0 0 7 0 1 0

52 28- 14 12 2 15 1 4 ‘3 3

SOURCE Ada-pled from Sold State Syslems I nc ‘Tie Smart Tele~hone System ACD Supervisor User s Gultie Mar;etla

Genrqla 1982
36 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

timed period, or exception reports, that show

particular calls or particular employees that

are far out of the average range.

Figure 3 shows the type of information typically available on the VDT screen of the supervisor of a group of telephone customer service

workers using an automatic call distribution

system. Status options here include vacant

(“vent”) or on break, talking (“talk”) or available for calls (“avlb”).” Work” means the agent

is doing other work related to a previous call,

perhaps updating the database or preparing

a letter to the customer, and is not accepting

calls. The agent named Joe is talking and has

signaled for ‘help, ” requesting the supervisor

to come on the line. The time column shows

how long (in minutes) the individual has been

in the current status. The last column shows

that three agents have calls waiting for them

on other lines.

The example in figure 4 shows the sort of

information that might be included in productivity reports summarizing periods of a few

hours, or a day, or a week. This example reports

the number of calls, the total handle time

(“hndl”) in minutes (the sum of “talk time”

and “work time’ ‘), and the total time available

and waiting for calls, in minutes. In addition

the report shows the average handle time, talk

time, and work time per call in seconds.

Figure 3.— Example of a Supervisor’s Display in an Automatic Call Distribution System

AGENT AGENT STATUS TIM E 10:32 5/10/87

SUPERVISOR GATE NO NAME SUPVS 1

1 1

1

1

1

2

2

2

3

513

512

514

560

570

510

513

512

SAM

JANE

JOE

BILL

FRED

SUE

SAM

JAN E

VCNT

TALK

HELP

WORK

AVLB

TALK

VCNT

TALK

6.3 CW 4

0.3

1,2

4,7

6.3

1,2

6.3

0.3 CW 1

SOURCE Ad t~~ t W ‘ I I IrII S I I j SI ate S} St F rTIs I r+ The Smart Tel! phor]e Svsterr ACD Supervisor Uwr s Guide Mar!etta

Gt( r [] I d 1 ’102

Figure 4. —Example of Agent Statistics From an Automatic Call Distribution System

14:32 10/14/82 AGENT STATISTICS

AGENT NO. HNDL TALK WORK AVLB AVG AVG

GROUP 4 GATE CALLS TIME TIME TIME TIME HNDL TALK WORK

GEORGE 454 1 0 0,0 0.0 0.0 0.0

HARRY 455 1 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

JERRY 582 1 6 8.4 8.4 0.0 6.9 84 84 0

SUPV1 580 1 5 3.5 3.5 0.0 5.7 53 53 0

SUSANNAH 501 1 5 10.0 10,0 0.0 5.3 120 120 0

BILL 503 1 4 3.6 3.6 0,0 3.2 54 54 0

SOURCE Adapted from Solld State Systems Inc ‘The Smart Telephone System ACD Supervisor User’s Guide, ’ Marietta

Georgia 1982

WORKPLACE ISSUES RELATED TO WORK MONITORING

People in some organizations perceive work ment at all levels to put out a good product.

measurement and service observation to be At other organizations, use of the same techuseful tools that help employees and manage- nologies is resented and feared as “Big Brother
UNION

MODEL

TAYLOR

PRODUCT ION

MODEL

Indlvldual

performance

sampling

Constant

machine

montoring

Figure 5.– Two Models for Electronic Work Monitoring

All data

available to

employee

Data not

readiIy

available

PRIVACY-RELATED ISSUES

intrusiveness ” and Subject Access’”

Known procedure for

ChalIenglng

record

Employee can

pace work

Machine paces

work

Group production quotas

Individual

quotas

No procedure

for challenge

— — I

i

— —

Quality/problem

factors

recognized

Quantity/speed

standard

I Standard pay

Piecework pay

or bonus

Individual short

fall leads to

 training or group

I discussion I

 Individual short

fall leads to

discipline

—

SOU R( c A I ah F West I n Prlvdc y and Qual!ty of Life ISSUPS n Employee Mnn Itor!ng contractor report for OTA 1986

LABOR RELATION/EMPLOYEE RELATIONS ISSUES

‘Fair Work, “Fair Pay. “Fair Performance Evaluation” I

I —.

I
38 . The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Table 3.—Workplace Issues Related to Work Monitoring

—

Privacy and Labor relations Health/quality

access related or “fairness” of life

Is monitoring constant or intermittent? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x x

Can employees see their own records? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x

Can the employee challenge, explain, or correct records?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x x

Does the employee or the machine pace the work? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x x

Do employees understand performance criteria and use of information? . . x x

Are quotas set on an individual or group basis? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x

Are quotas fair, allowing work at a reasonable pace? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x x

IS pay standard or based on performance? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x

What happens to employees falling short of quota? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . — x x

SOURCE Off Ice of Technology Assessment, 1987

surveillance. ” The difference seems not to be

so much in the specific measurement technology, but in the politics of how it is introduced,

how it is used, and what is done with the information collected.

Although many workers’ complaints about

monitoring focus on its intrusiveness, a closer

look shows that privacy is only one of a complex of issues raised by electronic work monitoring. Table 3 outlines some possible characteristics of a work-monitoring program and

indicates the kinds of issues that are raised

by them. Privacy and access issues cover such

questions as whether employees know they are

being monitored and whether the employees

have access to records about their own performance. The second set of issues relates to

the perceived fairness of the monitoring system and the way the employer uses it in evaluating and rewarding employees; these are questions of employee relations. The final set of

issues, overlapping the other two, relate to

stress, health, and the quality of working life.

Whether the effect of monitoring is perceived

as intrusive, unfair, dehumanizing, or unhealthy often depends on how management

structures the work-monitoring program, what

it does with the data it collects, and how those

actions are perceived by employees.

What Is Fair

Westin used some of the same elements discussed in table 3 to construct two models of

work monitoring shown in figure 5.20 Westin

‘“This section draws heavily on Alan Westin, “Privacy and

Quality of Work Life Issues in Employee Monitoring, contractor report prepared for OTA, pp. 103-112 (draft).

chose to call the first model the “union’ model,

since it represents a blend of features included

in model contract language suggested by some

U.S. and international unions. The second he

called the “Taylor production” model; it is

based on an extreme form of an industrial engineering approach to work measurement, one

which places virtually all information and

power in the hands of management. In applying these models to the organizations interviewed for OTA, no pure examples of the “union

model” were observed. The “Taylor production model” in its pure form was observed in

action in a few government and private sector

organizations. Most organizations used methods representing a blend of the features of the

two models, with about two-thirds of the organizations interviewed by Westin tending toward

a modified version of the “Taylor” model.

In most cases, employers introduce electronic

monitoring unilaterally, only informing employees of the change after all decisions have

been made. Often, too, monitoring is only one

of a number of changes in work process or job

design that take place when new office equipment is purchased. As was discussed in detail

in OTA’s report, Automation of America Offices, employee participation in design and implementation is often a key to successful implementation of new office systems.

Ensuring employee participation can require

effort on the part of managers, as few U.S.

workplaces have mechanisms for employee input in areas of technological change or evaluation procedures. Nevertheless, Westin found

that the difference between employees protesting over “Big Brother surveillance” and employees perceiving work measurement as rea-
Ch. 2—Using Computers To Monitor Office Work ● 3 9

-— —

sonable, often depends on whether they agree

on: 1) the fairness of the standards set; 2) the

fairness of the monitoring process employed;

and 3) the fairness of the way measurements

are used in employee evaluation. This agreement was usually made through worker-management discussions before monitoring was

implemented. Such agreements are possible

where there is genuine involvement of employees—either through joint labor-management

committees in unionized organizations, or

through employee involvement techniques in

nonunion settings. Where management started

with the trusting assumption that almost all

employees were ready to put in a fair day’s

work for a fair day’s pay, and where topics such

as work standards, work measurement, and

productivity recognition were matters for open

discussion, introduction of monitoring was

usually relatively painless.

One impression that emerged from OTA’s

interviews is that the way managers and employees deal with monitoring often closely

parallels the way they deal with other workplace issues. Firms whose “corporate culture”

tends toward authoritarianism tend to use

monitoring in an authoritarian way. In organizations where relations between employees

and managers are antagonistic, the monitoring system is a source of antagonism, but only

one of many. In organizations where cooperation is the norm, people worked together to de

velop a fair system.

Recognizing that employee involvement in

the design, testing, implementation, and continuing adjustment of work monitoring is crucial to a successful process, it is also necessary

to deal with the substantive issues, to be considered in designing such a program. Table 4

shows some of the issues to be considered. The

main categories, and the specific questions in

this chart represent recurring themes in a number of interviews with monitored workers and

their managers.

Westin’s sample found that only about onethird of the firms in his sample using electronic

work monitoring for individual evaluations

were following what he called ‘fair work evaluTable 4.—Key Issues and Problem Areas in

Monitoring Worker Performance

Key issues/problem aspects

Fairness of work standards:

● Do standards fairly reflect the average capacities of the

particular work force?

. WiII they create unhealthy stress for many employees?

● Do they take into account recurring system difficulties and

other workplace problems?

. Do they include quality as well as quantity goals?

● Do they represent a “fair day’s pay’” for a‘ fair day’s work?’

. Do employees share in any productivity gains achieved

through introduction of new technology?

Fairness of the measurement process:

●

●

●

●

●

●

●

Do employees know and understand how the measurements are being done?

Can the measurement system be defeated easily, thereby

impairing the morale of those willing to “follow the ru!es?”

Do employees receive the statistics on their performance

directly, and in time to help them manage their work rate?

Is the relation between quality, service measures, and work

quantity communicated by supervisors when they discuss

problems of performance levels with employees?

Do supervisors communicate clearly that they are taking

system and workplace problems into account?

Are group rather than individual rates used when particular tasks make such an approach more equitable?

Is there a formal complaint process by which an operator

can contest the way work data has been used by the supervisor?

Fairness in applying measurements to employee evaluation:

● Are there meaningful recognition programs for these employees?

. Is work quantity only one of a well-rounded and objective

set of performance criteria used for employee appraisals?

Ž Does the employee get to see and participate i n the performance appraisal?

. Is there an appeal process from the supervisor’s performance appraisal?

● Is there a performance-planning system that identifies employee weaknesses in performance and identifies ways to

remedy such problems?

SOURCE Alan R West In, “Privacy and Quallty of L14e issues I n E mploym

Monitoring, ” contractor reporl for OTA, 1986

ation policies’ along the lines of a positive answer to most of the questions in table 4.

Of the 34 case examples submitted to OTA

by unions, 28 dealt with electronic monitoring of office workers (unionized and nonunionized) like the ones studied by Westin. In nearly

all the case examples, employees had little input concerning the monitoring system, and in

only a few cases was it clear that they had access to information about their own performance or the ability to contest wrong information. In nearly all these cases the workers were
40 . The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

described as considering the monitoring system unfair.21

Standards of Performance

Work measurement systems are usually applied to jobs for which standard end products,

or surrogates for end products, can be clearly

identified. That end product might be “customers served, ” “claims paid, ” “programs

written, “ “interviews completed. ” Generally

speaking, electronic work monitoring primarily measures the quantity of work performed.

Other methods, discussed in the next section,

measure quality.

An important element in measurement of

almost all kinds of work is time. In almost

every case in table 2, the purpose of measurement is to measure the time it takes the employee to do something, and then to compare

the result to a standard. Robert Nolan, an expert in developing work-measurement systems,

defines a work-measurement system in this

way:

In the most simple terms, it is a means of

establishing what a fair day’s work should be.

It has two main components, a measure of the

volume of work, and a measure of the employee

time used up. These two factors can be expressed in their only common denominator:

the time required to produce one unit of work,

or what we call a standard.22

Thus, measurement alone is often of little use

as a management tool, unless its purpose is

to compare the individual or group performance to a standard.

Standards may be established in a number

of ways. Many are arrived at rather informally

or arbitrarily, perhaps based on supervisors’

or managers’ estimates of how long it ought

to take to complete certain tasks. In some cases

standards are set based on historical performance levels; managers may take an average of

some past period, and expect that it be maintained as an average in the future.

‘*’’AFL-CIO Case Examples, ” November 1987.

‘*Robert E. Nolan, “Work Measurement, ” in Robert N. Leherer, White Coflarl%ductivit.y (New York, NY: McGraw Hifl,

1983), p. 111.

Sometimes “standards” are really goals or

ideals. In one firm interviewed by OTA the

standard of 50 completed transactions per

agent per week had recently been established

by the national office. The standard was developed by dividing the average revenue per

transaction into the total revenue the firm

hoped to generate at each branch office.23 The

new standard was not related to past performance levels or analysis of the best way to do

the job, but rather to the amount that must

be sold in order to meet revenue projections.

In this case, 50 transactions per week was far

above past performance; office managers

hoped that introducing incentive programs

would inspire agents to achieve the new goals.

A more formal method of standard setting

is the “engineered standard. ” The MethodsTime Measurement (MTM) system or the Advanced Office Controls (AOC) system have

been used in many office settings. In these

methods, a trained analyst, usually an industrial engineer, observes a work task, selects

the most efficient method of performing the

task, and then will time the actions of average

people performing the task under average

working conditions. General MTM and AOC

standards have been developed for nearly every

imaginable motion in an office workplace. For

example, the MTM standard for fastening

sheets of paper with a table model stapler is

41 time measurement units (TMU), or about

2.9 seconds. Opening an envelope and removing the contents takes 198 TMU or 14.2 seconds. A trained analyst can combine a number of these general standards, develop new

ones, and adapt them to the special circumstances of spacial arrangement, work process,

or equipment use in a given office.24

A well-designed standard, according to experts, is not one that makes people work as

fast as possible, but one that encourages good

average work. It should include time for personal breaks and allow for personal variabil230TAi~~rviews, ~SiSt~t manager, Washington office! ‘ational travel firm, June 1986.

24 ExmpleSfrom Robert E. Nolan, “Work Measurement,

in Robert N. Leherer, White Collar Productivity (New York,

NY: McGraw Hill, 1983), pp. 142-146.
Ch. 2—Using Computers To Monitor Office Work . 41

— —

ity — working a little faster at some times and

slower at others. Fair standards must be realistic, taking into account system downtime,

slow response time, varying levels of complexity of different tasks, and so on. When standards are not realistic, or when they are not perceived as fair by employees and managers, they

can easily lead to declines in morale, increased

turnover rate, and ultimately a decrease in productivity.

Since AOC, MTM, and other “predetermined

time’ systems provide a standard time for the

completion of each task, an employee’s actual

performance can be compared to that standard. If the standard time for examining a certain type of insurance claim is 10 minutes, then

an employee who completes 6 of them will have

done 60 standard minutes or 1 standard hour’s

worth of work. An employee who completed

48 such cases in an 8-hour day would be said

to be working at 100 percent of the standard,

that is, his or her paid hours would exactly

equal standard hours. Faster employees might

work at 110 or 120 percent of standard, while

slower ones work at 80 or 90 percent of standard. The determination of an “acceptable’ pace

depends on the firm, but a well-designed standard is one where most trained, experienced employees will work in the range of 85 to 100 percent of standard most of the time. 25

Figure 6 shows part of a weekly work monitoring report for an insurance employee working under a‘ ‘predetermined time’ work-measurement system. The report lists the types of

tasks done, the standard time to do the task

once, the number of times the employee actually completed the tasks, and a calculation of

the “earned’ hours. Figure 7 summarizes work

of a group of insurance employees. Figure 8

integrates the work monitoring system with

a time and attendance report. It shows the

number of hours each employee was available

for work (’‘avail work”). The time available for

measured work (“avail meas’ ‘—employees may

have other duties that are not captured by the

system) and the number of earned hours (’‘earn

hrs”) worth of work completed. Note that there

~~see Robert E. Nolan, “Work Measurement, ’ in Robert N.

Leherer, White Collar Productivit.v (New York, NY: Mc(~raw

Hill, 1983), p. 121.

Figure 6. —Example of Individual Work Monitoring Report (Performance Summary)

RUN NUMBER ARM1B140 WORK MANAGEMENT PROGRAM

DATE OF RUN - 10/09/84 INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE REPORT

TIME OF RUN -18:00

WEEK ENDING 10/6/84

EMPLOYEE EMPLOYEE D

DIVISION : G CLAIMS AND SERVICE

DEPARTMENT: GB CLMS PROC

---------------------------------------------------------------------------CALCULATION OF EARNED HOURS -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -

KVI DESCRIPTION UKVI AVERAGE TIME ITEMS EARN ED

DV DP CODE NAME FLAG TO DO ONE ITEM x COMPLETED – HOURS

G GB

G GB

G GB

G GB

G GB

G GB

G GB

G GB

G GB

G GB

G GB

0040

0050

0070

0080

0140

0150

0175

0176

0190

0210

0185

EOB STUFF

SUBSCRIBER PREP

SUBSCRIBER CODING

PROVIDER CODING

MEP ADJUDICATION

VISION ADJUDICATION

PRIMARY GSCR ROSTER

GSCR CHK-ADJUDICATOR

COB PROCESSING

COB RETURN LETTERS

PULLING CLAIMS

00 MIN 16 SEC

01 MIN 48 SEC

03 MIN 54 SEC

01 MIN 03 SEC

02 MIN 47 SEC

02 MIN 33 SEC

00 MIN 10 SEC

00 MIN 08 SEC

04 MIN 57 SEC

00 MIN 49 SEC

03 MIN 00 SEC

148

2

2

8

482

68

621

454

20

50

8

0 6

0,0

0.1

0.1

22.4

2.9

1.8

1,0

1,6

0.6

0.4

TOTAL EARNED 32.0

SOURCE Adapted from James S Hogg Manager Professional Producttwty Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Maryland

63-982 0 - 87 - QL: 3 ‘- 2
42 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Figure 7. —Example of a Work Monitoring Report for a Group

‘(Volume of Work Accomplished by Group in One Week) “

RUN NUMBER - ARM1B130 WORK MANAGEMENT PROGRAM

DATE OF RUN 10/09/84 VOLUME SUMMARY FOR WEEK ENDING 10/06/84

TIME OF RUN - 18:13

DIVISION: G CLAIMS AND SERVICE

DEPARTMENT GB CLMS PROC

UNIT x x x

SECTION YYY

KVI

CODE

0010

0020

0040

0050

0051

0060

0070

0080

0090

0100

0110

0120

0130

0140

0150

0160

0175

0176

0180

0181

0182

0183

0185

0190

0195

0200

0210

KVI

DESCRIPTION

MAIL SORT

PROCESS IN COMPLETES

EOB STUFF

SUBSCRIBER PREP

PROVIDER PREP

MEDICARE CLAIMS PROC

SUBSCRIBER CODING

PROVIDER CODING

SUBSCBR DATA ENTRY

PROVIDER DATA ENTRY

VISION PREP & CODE

VISION DATA ENTRY

PAF REPORT UPDATE

MEP ADJUDICATION

VISION ADJUDICATION

PHONE INQUIRY

PRIMARY GSCR ROSTER

GSCR CHK-ADJUDICATOR

ADJUSTMENT CODING

PROC. CODED ADJUSTMTS

HND. PROC ADJ/NO FILE

ART COMP-HANDLG REFD

PULLING CLAIMS

COB PROCESSING

WRITTEN CORRESPONDENCE

PROC OCC DELETES

COB RETURN LETTERS

VOLUME

1938

219

2105

216

425

391

457

1496

293

1072

164

168

232

846

70

382

1740

926

15

14

14

15

8

36

21

43

55

PERFORMANCE

REFERENCE

0,0068

0.0085

00046

00280

00045

00385

0,0657

00179

0,0224

0.0185

00246

00236

00100

0.0466

0,0426

01015

00030

0,0023

0.0927

00454

00102

01284

0.0496

00823

0.3801

01054

00135

EARN ED

HOURS

132

19

9.7

6 0

19

151

300

268

6.6

198

4 0

4 0

2 3

394

3 0

388

5 2

21

14

0 6

01

19

0 4

3 0

8.0

4 5

0 7

is a wide variation in effectiveness (“eff %"),

which calculates the earned hours as a percentage of measured hours. This particular firm

does not use an incentive system so all employees are paid for their regular hours despite

these differences. The report also shows totals

for the whole group.

The work process-the set of procedures that

govern what tasks are done and how tasks

interrelate—also has a major impact on many

predetermined-time work-measurement systems. Because the “standard” for each task

or set of tasks depends on a close study of the

work performed, any changes in the work require a change in the standard, if the standard is to be fair. Changes in the work might

arise when a new product is introduced (say,

in an insurance company, a new kind of policy), or when regulations change (e.g., requiring a change in the kind of information banks

must supply to customers), or when the technology changes. Work-management specialists

at firms using predetermined-time systems

note that “maintenance” is a major need if

work measurement is to be applied conscientiously. Work must be periodically re-analyzed

and standards must be adjusted.

Standard setting is often combined with job

design, work simplification, or procedural

changes, because it is difficult to establish a
Ch 2—Using Computers To Monitor Office Work ● 4 3

.

o

1- 0

3 w

u

w

n
44 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

set time for performing a task if everyone is

free to do it in a different way. Some ways are

better than others, whether faster, less fatiguing, or more reliable. Experts in productivity

and work measurement usually counsel that

employees should be included in the process

of changing procedures and establishing standards. They argue that employee involvement

not only short-circuits resentment to standards that are imposed from outside, but usually leads to the creation of better procedures

and fairer standards, since employees understand the work that needs to be done better

than anyone, including their managers.

An example of employee involvement in

standards development is the case of legal case

analysts at an insurance firm.26 These highly

skilled workers handle correspondence and track

the progress of legal cases on a computer-based

legal diary system (LDS). Although the LDS

software created some internal statistics on

the transactions done, they had not been previously used for individual evaluation because

no standards had been developed for the case

analyst’s work. The work-measurement specialist assigned to develop standards found the

work very complex and also saw that the legal diary software was very flexible, allowing

analysts to use several different procedures for

certain tasks. Instead of trying to prescribe

procedures and standards, the work-measurement specialist held a series of 24 two-hour

seminars in which the analysts talked about

their work. They discussed different tasks,

compared their approaches, and decided among

themselves the simplest and most effective

procedures for each task. They also helped to

set the standard times for the tasks. Interestingly, the productivity of this department, in

terms of dollars recovered through legal actions, began to increase before the final work

measurement program was in place, presumably because the case analysts voluntarily began using the improved procedures as soon as

they were developed in the seminars.

‘GJarnes Hogg, “The Results of Technical and Professional

Measurement in Insurance, ” in Proceedings, 1986 AOC Users

Conference, May 15-18, 1986, Robert E. Nolan Co.; also, personal communication, May 29, 1986.

Within many organizations, introduction of

work measurement and the process of setting

standards can become a hotly contested labormanagement issue and a major source of employee discontent. Where employees are not

involved in standard setting, they may view

a new standard as an unfair “speed up, ” an

attempt by management to make them work

harder for the same pay. Similarly, work simplification or procedural changes that are imposed from outside can be viewed as removing variety and autonomy from the job, and

making it less interesting and more mechanical.

For example, the changes in work standards,

evaluation, and pay that accompanied work

monitoring for claims examiners prompted a

unionization drive at Equitable Life Assurance. With the introduction of the measurement system, pay was changed from a straight

salary to an incentive program that was based

on performance. Examiners complained that

they had to work much faster in order to make

the equivalent of their old salaries. A few accepted transfers to lower paying jobs because

they could not keep up the pace. The contract

between Equitable and District 925 of The

Service Employees International Union

(SEIU), addresses some of the issues discussed

in the section on “What Is Fair. ” Under the

contract, employees now have access to their

own performance records and a procedure for

challenging records. Evaluations are based 80

percent on computer-based statistics and 20

percent on supervisors’ judgments. In addition, the contract changed several other working conditions, such as leave policy, that had

been a subject of dispute.

When electronic monitoring allows a complete record of each worker’s performance, it

becomes easier to pay workers based on their

output. Some call this a revival of the “piecerate’ system and decry it as a form of worker

exploitation. Often, however, performance does

not translate into pay directly on a per-piece

basis. For example, “incentive” plans pay a

base rate for acceptable performance and bonuses for higher levels of performance.
Ch. 2—Using Computers To Monitor Office Work ● 45

Incentive programs appear to be fairly common in data entry, where there is a wide range

of performance.27 Operators who are very fast

can increase their income by 50 percent or more

above the base rate, depending on how the incentive plan is structured. In some firms where

standards are based on a predetermined-time

method (i.e., so many keystrokes equal one

standard hour of work), slower keyers can make

bonuses if they are willing to work for a longer

time. This also raises fairness questions and

worker protection questions, for example, should

employees feel pressure to skip lunch or breaks

in order to improve their performance?

Incentive programs have also been used by

employers to increase the performance of a

group of employees. In one bank, for example,

industrial engineers studied the work of checkproof reading operators and found that the

engineered standard was far above the current

level of achievement of the department. Rather

than insist that operators begin to work to the

new standard, management began to pay regular wages to those who met the old average

and bonuses to all whose work approached the

new standard. As departmental proficiency increases, the management expects to raise the

standard and adjust the bonus structure to encourage even faster performance. 28

The practice of “rate busting” or increasing

performance standards over time is the basis

for many objections to monitoring. Ever-increasing standards do not have to be related to incentive pay. Standards can rise due to new

technology, revised productivity goals, or for

other reasons that lead management to expect

better performance from employees. In the

well-publicized case of one data-entry center

operated by the Internal Revenue Service, employees and their union were complaining about

the stress resulting from the increased pace

of work. In this instance, workers were seasonal, and were invited back to work again each

“Data Entry Management Association, “Sixth Annual

Member Statistical-Compensation Survey, ” DE~A ~ews~etter, April 1985. The average rate for U.S. operators is 1 I ,400

keystrokes per hour, but the fastest operators can do around

25,000.

1kInterview with W’ork Nleasurement Manager of a southern

bank.

year based on their previous year’s performance. Since the number of available jobs had

declined, only above-average keyers were invited back. However, performance standards

were also raised yearly, presumably to deal

with the workload. Thus, each keyer was required to make an increasingly greater effort

to remain “above average. ”29 An annual increase in standards has also been a cause of

complaint among key entry operators in Dade

County, Florida.30

Complaints about job stress in the U.S.

Postal Service, which received a great deal of

publicity in 1984 and 1985, were directed primarily at fast pace and high work standards

rather than at automated equipment or the

presence of monitoring per se.31 Industrial

engineers have noted since the beginning of

the century that there is a limit to how much

a pace can be increased, even if incentives are

offered. Beyond a certain point the employees,

either individually or as a group, will not perform any faster on a regular basis, no matter

what the inducement. Tolerance for perceived

unfair standards may depend on many factors,

including the availability of other jobs. One

case example noted that at three Internal Revenue Service Centers (where standards have

been increased over the years), the turnover

rates for key entry operators are very high;

presumably workers left due to the heavy

workload and fast pace required. However, the

Wilkes Barre Service Center, located in an area

of high unemployment, has a low turnover rate,

but a high incidence of absenteeism.

Quality of Work

One problem with computerized work monitoring is that it focuses mainly on quantity

or speed of work. Although a well-designed

work standard should allow workers time to

do a good job, some standards require such

29Alan Westin, “Privacy and Quality of Y$rork Life 1 ssues in

Employee Monitoring, “ contractor report prepared for OTA,

1986; also John Harris, American Federation of (government

Emplo},ees, personal communication, February 1986.

j[’’’AFCIOCIO Case Examples, ” November 1987.

]’For example, Peter Perl, “Monitoring by Computer Sparks

Emplo~ee Concerns, ” M’ashington Post, Sept. 2, 1984.

‘

J4’AFI.-C10 Case Examples, ” November 1987.
46 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

a fast pace that workers feel quality must be

sacrificed, or that the pressure to maintain

both speed and quality leads to excessive

stress. In a number of cases, for example, telephone operators have objected that the pressure to complete calls within the standard time

prevents them from giving courteous, highquality service. Some customers agree. On the

other hand, because most operators are also

subject to service observation (i.e., a supervisor sometimes listens in on calls to check for

adherence to company procedures), they sometimes feel stressed because of the conflict between quantity and quality imperatives.33

In one mail order firm employee morale

dropped and turnover rose to 80 percent after

monitoring was introduced for VDT operators.

“Everything was numbers, ” one executive

recalled, with ‘‘no attention to the downtime

and slow-response-time problems of the new

system, or the changes in volumes operators

faced during peak periods, or of the different

length and complexity of customer orders. ”

In addition, the pressure operators felt to speed

up their work led to mistakes and improperly

filled orders. This productivity system was

scrapped after several years of operation, and

replaced with anew approach that still collects

individual operator statistics, but has standards geared to actual system operations and

load cycles. In addition, as part of an overall

“Quality First” campaign in this firm, the new

performance standards stress “order quality”

over “sheer numbers. Several dozen long-term

employees interviewed for OTA said that the

first productivity system was a “very bad

time” at the company, but that the new approach is “fair to both company and employees, ” and they have no trouble in meeting both

the quantity and quality standards.34

Quality evaluation often requires inspection

by a human supervisor, but even here computer

technology can be of assistance. Some office

systems allow the supervisor to view on his

or her screen whatever transactions are tak-

‘3~’’AFL-CI0 Case Examples, ” November 1987.

‘JAlan Westin, “Privacy and Quality of Work Life Issues in

Employee Monitoring, ” contractor report prepared for OTA,

1986, p. 72.

ing place on an employee’s screen. Thus supervisors can view transactions as they are

taking place to check them for correctness.

Computerized letter-sorting equipment used

by the U.S. Postal Service has similar capability, so supervisors can periodically check

each worker to be sure he or she is keying in

proper zip codes.

For telephone service workers, quality

checks are made by supervisors who listen in

on calls to check that employees are courteous, are using proper procedures, and are giving correct information. Correct information

is of interest to many firms whose representatives deal with the public, because employers

may be held liable for information their employees give out over the telephone or for actions taken as a result of telephone conversations. In some cities “911“ emergency calls or

utility company “trouble” calls are recorded

so that there will be a record of time, address,

or other information for possible future use.

In some organizations employees know when

their supervisor is listening, either because

there is a drop in volume or because a beep tone

is heard. In other cases, the monitoring equipment is completely silent. One organization

was so concerned that employees not know

when the supervisor was listening that supervisors were required to wear their headsets all

day so that employees would not be able to

guess whether they were listening or attending to other duties.

In some firms quality assurance is considered such an important function that a separate department handles it. At American Express, for example, customer service supervisors

listen in on calls on an regular basis and rate

the quality based on established criteria. In

addition, a separate quality assurance worker

listens in on calls of employees in any unit. Results are always discussed with the employee

within a short time after the call.

Some workers object to service observation

precisely because it is not necessarily objective. Some firms, in fact, do not have firmly

established criteria for how often to listen or

how to rate quality. At one government agency
Ch. 2—Using Computers To Monitor Office Work . 47

there were even stories of service observation

being used punitively –i.e., a supervisor listened to certain workers almost constantly, in

order to accumulate enough mistakes to discipline them. This would clearly seem to be an

abuse of service observation.

Service observation also invokes feelings of

invasion of privacy, even though the conversation involved is not really a private one. One

operator interviewed for OTA said, “When

they are listening to me, I’m very upset because you can’t stop it. ”35 The privacy aspect

applies more clearly to the customer’s side of

the conversation. Some people may object to

third parties overhearing their conversations.

Two States, West Virginia and California, attempted to legislate restrictions on service observation. The West Virginia law required a

beep tone when the supervisor is on the line

as well as a published notice to customers that

calls might be observed. This law was passed

in 1983 but repealed in 1986. A similar law was

passed in the California legislature but was vetoed by the Governor.

In the case of West Virginia there is evidence

that both operator productivity and customer

satisfaction remained high during the period

when “secret service observation was not permitted. 36 However, several employers, particularly AT&T objected to the legislation.

AT&T’s threat to build its new credit management center in another State was instrumental in the repeal of the West Virginia monitoring law.37

Job Design and Work Process

As discussed in greater detail in OTA’s report Automation of America Offices, new information technologies sometimes offer firms

more flexibility in the way office work is dei“Michael J. Smith, Pascale Carayon, and Kathleen Miegio,

“Motivational, Behavioral, and Psychological Implications of

Electronic Monitoring of Worker Performance, ” contract report prepared for OTA, July 1986.

‘

h

’’ Results Summary, Key Service Indicators, ” C&P Telephone Co. of West Virginia as of Sept. 11, 1985, supplied to

OTA by Communications Workers’ of America.

‘Testimony of John D. Landers, AT&T, before the Judiciary Committee, West Virginia House of Representatives, Feb.

12, 1986.

signed. While many firms use computers to

continue or intensify the assembly line working conditions of the industrial style of work

organization, some others have experimented

with new forms of organization that reinvest

the jobs of individual workers or teams with

more variety and responsibility.38

Some of these experimental organizations

make use of what is called a semi-autonomous

work group-a team of workers who are responsible for not only doing the work, but managing some aspects of their own work as well.

In these cases, work monitoring data may still

be collected, but is used by the work group as

a tool for assessing its own progress.

One well-publicized example is the HOBIS

(Hotel Billing Information System) office at

Tempe, Arizona, in an experiment worked out

jointly by AT&T and the Communications

Workers of America (CWA) in 1982.39 This

office of 100 operators was reorganized according to the autonomous work group principle.

It had no first-line supervisors and only one

second-line supervisor in the role of advisor.

Operators assumed the responsibility of supervisors, rotating through administrative duties.

The employees changed the traditional work

monitoring practices. They eliminated individual measurement and remote secret service

observation. Average work time (AWT) was

measured only for the whole group. Service observation was performed by small groups of

peers by the old-fashioned “jack-in” method,

where the observer sits beside the person being monitored, listens to a few calls and then

discusses the results with the employee.

It was generally agreed by CWA and AT&T

that the Tempe experiment was a success: total office AWT was equal to or better than that

of traditionally supervised HOBIS offices;

MU s Con=ess, Office of Technology Assessment, A uLoma-

. ,

tion of America Offi”ces, OTA-CIT-287 ( Washington, DC: U .S.

Government Printing Office, December 1985), ch. 4.

]9Thi~ description is based On Ronnie Straw and Gregory

Nichlas, “Office Automation and Autonomy: .4 Comparison of

Choices, ” Communications Workers of America, 1985; Alan

Westin, “privacy and Quality of Work Life Issues in Employee

Monitoring, ” contractor report prepared for OTA, 1986; Thomas

Taylor, Mountain Bell Telephone, telephone interview, Apr. 16,

1986.
48 . The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

there were fewer customer complaints; the employee grievance rate was lower and absenteeism was lower. In addition, there were considerable savings in management salaries, and

some of the money was spent on training for

employees. The Tempe office was closed

shortly after the AT&T divestiture for reasons

completely unrelated to the experiment. Other

joint labor-management experiments in alternative methods of work organization are being sponsored by CWA, AT&T, and some of

the local telephone companies. For example,

further experiments with semi-autonomous

work groups are being carried out among

AT&T operator groups in Columbus, Ohio, and

south-central Florida.40

In a financial services firm interviewed by

OTA, autonomous work groups were also considered successful. Workers were taken out of

“functional” areas and organized into teams

servicing the needs of certain large clients or

client groups. Employees “cross-trained’ one

another in different jobs so that each could do

a variety of work and understand the whole

process. The group met together to establish

productivity goals. Although this firm maintained a more traditional management structure within each group and still applied individual measurement to some jobs, officials and

employees believed that the reorganization,

teamwork, and greater diversity of work greatly

improved both productivity and quality of

working life.41

Supervision and Evaluation

A few researchers have attempted to compare how perceptions of closeness of supervision, emphasis on performance measures, and

job satisfaction differ in monitored and nonmonitored workers. This is a difficult task because so many other cultural, job design, and

environmental factors can overshadow the effect of electronic monitoring.

40Communications Workers of America and AT&T Communications, The Emergence of Second Generation Qud”ty of Work

Life Models in AT&T Communications: A Pilot Study, Febru-

~y 1986.

“OTA interviews, November 1985.

One researcher who studied data-entry operators, claims processors, and data collectors

(telephone interviewers and collection agents)

and their supervisors, found no significant pattern of differences between the monitored and

nonmonitored sites.42 The differences she did

notice were between unionized and non-unionized locations. The workers in unionized locations were better informed about VDT health

issues and more willing to ask questions and

state opinions during informal workshops held

after their survey forms were complete. She

found, however, their concerns encompassed

a variety of VDT health issues, including vision problems, workstation design, and reproductive hazards; monitoring did not emerge

as the major focus of concern.

Another study found that in both monitored

and nonmonitored sites, roughly half the workers (47.8 and 46.3 percent respectively) expressed satisfaction with the evaluation process.43 Among the monitored workers, 17.3

percent were not satisfied and 34.7 percent

were neutral. Among the nonmonitored workers, 28 percent were not satisfied and 25 percent were neutral (see table 5). In reviewing

the supplementary comments made by interview subjects, the authors found clear differences in the causes of dissatisfaction. At the

monitored sites, nearly all dissatisfaction was

directed at the electronic monitoring system;

at the nonmonitored sites it was directed at

a number of causes, including supervisors, lack

of standards, unfair evaluations, and the like.

This study also found that workers at monitored sites tended to believe that their evaluations overemphasized quantity and underemphasized quality, tended to see their rewards as closely tied to their evaluations, and

thought that level of supervision was too close.

The majority of workers in both groups felt

they had little participation in workplace de42Elaine J. Eisenman, “Employee Perceptions and Supervisory Behaviors in Clerical VDT Work Performed on Systems

That Allow Electronic Monitoring, prepared for Educational

Fund For Individual Rights and submitted as a contract report to OTA, 1986.

43R. H. Irving, C.A. Higgins, and F.R. Safayeri, “Computerized Performance Monitoring Systems: Use and Abuse, Communications of the ACM, August 1986.
Ch. 2—Using Computers To Monitor Office Work ● 4 9

Table 5.— Comparison of Monitored and Nonmonitored Workers

Dimension Monitored

Satisfaction:

Not satisfied ., 8

Neutral ... 16

Satisfied ., .. . 22

Tota l 46

Emphasis on performance measures:

Quantity

Underemphasize d 0

Appropriat e 19

Overemphasize d 31

Total . . . 50

Quality:

Underemphasized . . . . . . 22

Appropriat e 19

Overemphasized . 5

Total 50

Characteristics of feedback:

Amount of feedback:

Not enough . 21

Enoug h . . 22

Too much . , 6

Total . 49

Usefulness of feedback

Not usefu l 8

Adequate 13

Useful . . 26

Total ., 47

Importance of evaluation for rewards:

Not Important . . ., 2

Marginal importanc e 3

Importan t 41

Tota l 46

Closeness of supervision:

Not close ., . ., . . . 16

Acceptable . 10

Too Clos e 23

Total ., 49

Participation in evaluation process:

Low participation ... . . . . . . 30

Average ... ... . . . . . . . . . . 8

High participation ., . . . . 8

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Percent Not monitored Percent

173

347

478

380

62.0

44.0

380

8 3

428

448

124

170

276

55,3

4.3

6 5

891

326

204

469

65,2

173

173

23

21

38

82

16

45

19

80

15

45

1

74

41

41

9

91

13

20

58

91

18

8

55

81

38

36

17

91

50

11

19

80

280

25.6

46.3

20.2

56.2

23,7

20.2

56.2

1,4

45,0

45.0

9.8

142

21.9

637

222

9.8

67.9

417

39.5

18.6

62.5

13,7

237

Total

31

37

60

128

16

64

50

130

37

64

6

124

62

63

15

140

21

33

84

138

20

11

96

127

54

46

40

140

80

19

27

126

Chi-Sq

2.25

2379

15,3

0.20

0.93

8.08

1314

0.84

(df) (p)

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

p O 3247

p 0001

p 00005

p O 9048

p O 6281

p --00176

p 00014

p 0.6570

cisions. This study found little evidence that

workers opposed computer monitoring in principle; their chief problems were not with the

technology itself but with the way it was used

by management.

Personal Computer Monitoring

Most electronically monitored work is performed on workstations attached to mainframes or minicomputers. Yet personal computer (PC) use is growing rapidly, especially

among professional and managerial workers.

OTA did not find examples of production monitoring of workers using PCs, but there was

considerable interest and controversy over

privacy of an employee’s PC files and the right

of employers to inspect them.

Three primary areas of employer interest in

PC monitoring have already surfaced:
50 . The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

1. abuse of PCs (using company resources

for personal purposes),

2. confidentiality (security breaches), and

3. violation of legal/regulatory duties in use

of client or employee data.

Of the 10 firms interviewed for OTA regarding PC monitoring, none were doing any inspections or searches of PC-user disks or files.

All of them, however, said they felt they had

the legal right to do so, and would not hesitate to do so if a specific rule violation or compromise were suspected. A typical comment

by one information system director was:

We have issued a policy guide for privacy

and security compliance in PC use, and have

stated that the company reserves the right to

inspect all PC files and materials bought by

the company and used here for our business

purposes. But we haven’t felt it wise or necessary to swoop down on people and demand to

see what they have on their disks.

On the other hand, representatives of all 10

firms said their organizations audited transactions done by PCs interacting with databases on other computers. These were part of

the regular, user-password-based security procedures of mainframe/database management.

The monitoring consisted of: 1) following up

on any unusual use patterns indicated in regular audit-trail records; or 2) ad hoc inspections

of audit records to identify use levels and patterns. End users are informed (in all the organizations) that such auditing is conducted.

As for assuring end-user compliance with legal and regulatory rules governing an organization’s handling of client or employee personal

data, 4 of the 10 organizations reported they

had issued written policies to PC end-users

restating such requirements (e.g., Fair Credit

Reporting Act; State employee access to personnel records laws; confidentiality of medical information laws; etc.). However, none of

the 10 firms reported having done surprise or

announced inspections of disks or other deskheld file materials. Interviews with officials of

the Inspector General’s office of General Services Administration (GSA) indicate that inspectors from GSA and other agencies’ Inspector

Generals have inspected PC disks of government employees. These audits have been done

both to determine that computers are being

used for official purposes and to ensure that

confidential information is being properly used

and properly protected.44

Monitoring and Stress45

One area in which electronic monitoring may

have far-reaching implications is in the area

of health effects. A number of authors have

noted the likelihood of a link between electronic

monitoring and physical and psychological

stress. Many of the published stories of oppressive, heavily monitored workplaces cite the

overwhelming fear, anxiety, hatred, and loss

of self-image that workers suffer. Many

authors have stated that there must be a link

between monitoring, stress and health problems, absenteeism, and lowered productivity.46

Stress is now recognized as a major occupational health problem. Stress-related symptoms have been estimated to cost U.S. industry $50 to $75 billion per year in absenteeism,

company medical expenses, and lost time. 47

Statistics indicate that claims for worker compensation, based on disability due to gradual

accumulation of stress, have been growing rapidly during the 1980s.48 For workers under

.

~r~ew with Don Sheridm, Office of Inspector General

General Services Administration, Dec. 16, 1986.

‘sThis section draws heavily from Michael J. Smith, Pascale

Carayon, and Kathleen Miezio, “Motivational, Behavioral, and

Psychological Implications of Electronic Monitoring of Worker

Performance, ” contractor report prepared for OTA, 1986.

“See, for example, Tim Healy and Peter Marshall, “Big

Business is Watching You, ” In These Times, Feb. 26-Mar. 11,

1986; Arlene Hershman, “Corporate Big Brother is Watching

You, ” Dun Business Month, January 1984; Robert Howard,

Brave iVew Workplace (New York, NY: Elizabeth Sifton BooksViking, 1985); Peter Perl, “Monitoring by Computers Sparks

Employee Concerns, ” The Washington Post, Sept. 2, 1984; Peter

Perl, “Watching the Workplace: High Tech Methods Boost

Productivity, But at a Cost, ” The Washington Post, Sept. 3,

1984.

‘TRobert Arndt and Larry Chapman, “Potential Office Hazzards and Control, ” September 1984, report prepared for OTA

project on Preventing Illness and Injury in the Workplace, p. 30.

~~National Council on Compensation Insurance, “Emotional

Stress in the Workplace–New Legal Rights in the Eighties, ”

1985.
. . .

age 40, claims related to stress exceeded claims

related to other occupational disease in 1985.49

These claims are from workers of all kinds, including managers and supervisors, who are less

likely than other workers to file claims for

physical injuries. To the extent that electronic

monitoring is associated with stress, then it

must be viewed as contributing to an important health hazard.

According to the view most frequently cited

in the literature, the presence of stress can be

inferred in an individual from a very generalized physiological response pattern. 50 Symptoms include increases in adrenaline secretion,

the dumping of sugar into the bloodstream,

and other related physiological processes.

These symptoms can be provoked by a variety of environmental agents and situations,

such as drugs, fear, and job ambiguity. While

there is nothing wrong with physiological

arousal per se, it can, if chronic, produce serious degenerative effects due to wear and tear

on the body. Thus, stress provides a basis for

the development of various illnesses called

“diseases of adaptation, ” since they are not

a direct function of the agent or situation that

elicited the response pattern, but a consequence of the body’s adaptive reaction.

A 1982 journal article suggests that job factors can create stress and lead to chronic disorders. 51 The author states that individuals

may perceive the demands imposed by the

environment as either stressful or not stressful, depending on factors such as prior experience, current emotional status, health status,

and genetically predisposing features. If demands are perceived to be stressful, then acute

biological and emotional responses occur,

which, if they continue to occur with some consistency over a prolonged period of time, can

eventually lead to disease. Various intervening factors, which determine the potential for

disease to develop, include individual coping

“’Ibid.

“’llans Selye, The Stress of I.ife (New York, NY: hlcGrawIlill, 1956).

11,. I,e\i, “Methodology Considerations in Psychoendocrine

Research, Acta ,Ifedica Scandinatria, 1982, 191, Supplement

528, pp. 28-!54,

Ch. 2—Using Computers To Monitor Office Work ● 5 1

style, genetic predisposition to disease, and

emotional support from others.

Although there has been some research on

the health effects of office automation, there

has been little research attempting to draw a

direct link between electronic monitoring and

stress. There are theoretical grounds for

postulating a link between monitoring and

stress, and the few studies that have been done

suggest that monitoring may be stressful. Unfortunately, none of these studies have successfully separated the effects of computer-based

monitoring from the combined effects of other

stressors.

Although there is no clear scientific validation of a link between electronic monitoring

and stress, several surveys have found higher

incidence of stress among people in monitored

jobs. One survey that attempted to look

directly at stress and health outcomes of work

monitoring was the 1984 National Survey on

Women and Stress, conducted by the 9 to 5

National Association of Working Women. As

noted above, this survey includes one question

directly related to monitoring: “Is your work

measured, monitored, ‘constantly watched’ or

‘controlled’ by machine or computer system?’

When the health problems experienced by

women who answered ‘‘yes’ to this question

are compared to those of all respondents, as

shown in table 6, they show a consistently

higher experience of stress-related illnesses.

Respondents whose work was subject to computerized monitoring were also more likely to

rate their jobs as “very stressful. Forty nine

percent of them rated their jobs as very stressful, compared to 33 percent of all respondents.

Seventy-four percent of the monitored workers reported strain, stress, or pressure ‘‘often

or always” in the previous month, compared

with an overall rate of 63.5 percent for all respondents. 52

A related question in the 9 to 5 survey asked

about production quotas. Almost half (47.4 percent) of the women working under production

“:9 to 5 National Association of W’orking Women, ‘‘The 9 to

5 National Sur\ey on W’omen and Stress—Office Automation:

Addendum, ” 1984, pp. 4-5.
52 ● T h e Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

I 1-

‘ o

3

—Cn

(n E

1

.—

1
.

standards reported that their work was measured or monitored by a computer. For the

others, work is presumably counted by supervisors or by the workers themselves. Women

working under production standards were

more likely to rate their jobs as very stressful

(48.1 percent if always under standards, 41 percent if often, 29.2 percent if never). Their experience of stress-related illness, as shown in

table 7, was higher than the experience of all

respondent s.53

These results are consistent with other research suggesting that monitoring induces

pressure to perform. Some managers may feel

that this is a desirable effect, since it implies

high production. But occupational stress research indicates that excessive work pressure

is not conducive to good long-term performance and brings about adverse health consequences.” In fact, there are a range of stressful working conditions that may be related to

electronic monitoring of employee performance. These include heavy workload, especially

of repetitive or machine-paced tasks; routinized

work activities; lack of control over timing,

speed, and variety of tasks; and social isolation, including lack of peer social support, reduced supervisory support, and fear of job loss.

There are many potential causes of stress

in the workplace, and it is not clear from worker

compensation claims that work monitoring is

a dominant one. However, a review of mental

stress worker compensation claims from the

531bid.

“C.L. Cooper ~d J. Marshall, “Occupation~ Sources of

Stress: A Review of the Literature Relating to Coronary Heart

Disease and Mental 111 Health, ” Journal of Occupational Psychology 49, 1976, pp. 11-28.

Ch. 2—Using Computers To Monitor Office Work ● 5 3

State of Oregon shows that a little under onefifth of the total claims were made by people

in occupations where monitoring is common.

Worker compensation records do not release

the detailed cause of injury or the detailed job

description of the claimant, so it is impossible

to determine if electronic monitoring was actually a factor. Of the 542 cases listed, about

102 (18.8 percent) were in occupations where

electronic monitoring is fairly common. These

occupations include clerks (of various kinds),

insurance adjustors, bank tellers, telephone

operators, dispatchers, and retail sales workers. The rate of acceptance and denial of claims

is shown in table 8. The acceptance rate for

potentially monitored office occupations was

roughly the same as for all jobs, 34.2 and 35.2

percent respectively.

Other studies have found a high incidence

of stress-related illness among workers most

likely to experience electronic monitoring, even

though monitoring itself was not examined as

a variable. For example, a study by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and

Health found that secretaries had the secondhighest incidence of stress-related illness

among 22,000 workers. The Framingham heart

study, released in 1985, found that women clerical workers develop coronary heart disease at

nearly twice the rate of other women workers.” Researchers have commented that the

stress-provoking factors in these jobs are rapid

work pacing, including machine pacing, monotonous or repetitive work, and lack of discretionary control.

55Working Women Education Fund, 4’Health Hazards for Office Workers, ” April 1981.

Table 8.—Review of Oregon Worker Compensation Claims Involving Mental Stress

January 1985 Through September 1986

Number of Percent

Occupations claims Accepted accepted Denied

All occupations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542 191 35.2 351

Possibly monitored occupations:

Office a (percent of total 13.4) . . . . . . . . . . . 73 25 34.2 48

Retail sales (percent of total 5.3) . . . . . . . . . . 29 11 37.9 18

%lccupations, In order of decreasing frequency, are clerk (39), Insurance adjustor (10), dispatcher (9), admlnlstrat!ve support

(5), computer operator (4), data entry (2), bank teller (2), telephone operator (2)

SOURCE Oregon Worker’s Compensation Department, Research and Statistics Sect Ion, “Accepted and Dented Clalms In

volving Mental Stress, Oregon, 1/85.9/86 ‘
54 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Time pressure, such as having to meet deadlines, is another significant factor in stress.

Studies have shown increases in stress level

as difficult deadlines draw near.56 The experience of deadline pressure on a constant basis,

as might be the case in a fast-paced monitored

job, may be more damaging than deadline pressure experienced on an occasional basis.

Two organizational factors have been shown

to be of special significance for increased job

stress and decreased worker health. These are:

1) job involvement or participation; and 2) organizational support, as reflected by supervisory style, support from managers, and chances

for career development. Lack of participation

in work activities has been demonstrated to

result in increases in negative psychological

moods.57 In terms of organizational support,

it has been shown that close supervision and

a supervisory style characterized by constant

negative performance feedback are related to

high levels of stress and poorer worker health.58

The implication of these findings is that excessive, impersonal electronic monitoring of

employee performance that produces close supervision and constant negative performance

feedback could promote worker stress.

It has also been demonstrated that workers’

feelings of lack of involvement are related to

stress and that prolonged stress can be related

to health complaints.59 Electronic monitoring

56M. Friedman, R.H. Rosenman, and V. Carroll, “Changes in

the Serum Cholesterol and Blood Clotting Time in Men Subjected to Cyclic Variation of Occupational Stress, ” Circulation,

1958, pp. 852-861.

“B. Margolis, W.M. Kroes, and R. Quinn, “Job Stress: An

Unlisted Occupational Hazard, Journal of Occupational Medicine 16, 1974, pp. 654-661. R.D. Caplan, S. Cobb, J.R. P. French,

R.V. Harrison, and S.R. Pinneau, Job Demands and Worker

Health (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office,

1975). M.J. Smith, B.G. Cohen, and L.W. Stammerjohn, “An

Investigation of Health Complaints and Job Stress in Video

Display Operations, ” Human Factors 23, 1981, pp. 387-400.

58R.D. Caplan, S. Cobb, J.R.P. French, R.V. Harrison, and

S.R. Pinneau, Job Demands and Worker Health (Washington,

DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975). M.J. Smith, B.G.

Cohen, and L.W. Stammerjohn, “An Investigation of Health

Complaints and Job Stress in Video Display Operations, ” Human Factors 23, 1981, pp. 387-400.

‘gWorld Health Organization, Psychosocial Factors and

Health: Monitoring the Psychosocial Work Environment and

Workers’ Health (Geneva: 1984). J. Rutenfranz, W. Colquhoun,

P. Knauth, and J. Ghata, “Biomedial and Psychosocial Aspects

of Shiftwork, Scandinavian Journal of Work Environment

has a propensity for reducing worker feelings

of job involvement and may in this way increase worker distress. The chances to participate and be involved in the job process may

be diminished in work systems that are driven

by employee performance monitoring.

Reduced coworker support can also contribute to stress. Monitored workers in several

studies, and those interviewed by OTA stated

that, due to their production standards and

the electronic monitoring system, they had no

opportunity to interact with coworkers.60

One study of work monitoring in the telecommunication industry suggests that the possible connection between monitoring and jobrelated stress is through the changed structure of the work. In this study, no direct correlation was found between electronic monitoring and stress-related illness. However, a

correlation was found between monitoring and

low job control which has been found, in other

studies, to be associated with stress-related

illness. The conclusion reached by the researchers is that when jobs are redesigned to facilitate computerized monitoring of work performance, they are also reshaped in ways that

increase the degree to which management

directs both the pace and the method of work.

and Health 3, 1977, pp. 165-182. R.A. Karasek, Jr., “Job Decision Latidute, Job Design, and Coronary Heart Disease, in

G. Salvendy and M.J. Smith (eds.), Machine Pacing and Occupational Stress (London: Taylor & Francis, 1981), pp. 45-56.

R.D. Caplan, S. Cobb, J.R.P. French: R.V. Harrison, and S.R,

Pinneau, Job Demands and Worker Health (Washington, DC:

U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975). M.J. Smith, B.G. Cohen, and L.W. Stammerjohn, ‘‘An Investigation of Health Complaints and Job Stress in Video Display Operations, ” Human

Factors 23, 1981, pp. 387-400. B. Garden, “Technology Alienation and Mental Health, ” Acta Sociolo@”ca 19, 1976, pp. 83-94.

B. Margolis, W.M. Kroes, and R. Quinn, “Job Stress: An Unlisted Occupational Hazard, ” op. cit. S.G. Haynes and M. Feinleib, “Women, Work and Coronary Heart Disease: Prospective

Findings From the Framingham Heart Study, American Journal of Public Health 70, 1980, pp. 133-141. M.J. Colligan, J.J.

Smith, and J.J. Hurrell, “Occupational Incidents Rates of Mental Health Disorders, ” Journal of Human Stress 3, 1977, pp.

34-39.

bOFor example see R.H. Irving, C.A. Higgins, and F.R.

Safayeri, “Computerized Performance Monitoring Systems: Use

and Abuse, ” Communications of the ACM, August 1986. Interviews in Michael J. Smith, Pascale Carayon, and Kathleen

Miegio, “Motivational, Behavioral and Psychological Implications of Electronic Monitoring of Worker Performance,, ” contract report prepared for OTA, July 1986.
Ch. 2—Using Computers To Monitor Office Work ● 5 5 —

This lack of personal control, in turn, places

workers at significantly greater risk of ill

health.”

Computer Pacing and Stress

Machine pacing is different from computer

monitoring. The work of a directory assistance

operator offers an example of a “low control

job, ’ one that is both paced and monitored by

computer. A computer-controlled distribution

system passes a call to an operator. He or she

greets the customer, hears the name to be

looked up, and keys it into a computer terminal. Once the proper information appears on

the screen, the operator presses a key to release the call. A voice synthesizer actually

reads the telephone number to the customer.

Once the call is released, the distribution system presents another call to the operator.

The job is monitored, in that records are kept

on the operator’s performance within each

call-the time to respond to the call, locate the

proper information, and release the call (summarized as average work time or AWT). In

addition, the job is also machine paced in that

the cycle time between calls is controlled by

the computer, not by the operator. Work pressure increases if that cycle time is very short.

It has been noted that new technology has

turned the job of directory assistance operator into a literally thankless task. Not only is

the pace hectic, but because the operator releases the call before the customer receives the

needed information, the operator never hears

customers say “thank you. ” Job design factors, along with the fast pace, probably greatly

contribute to stress in this job.

Machine pacing has been implicated as a significant factor in ill-health among factory workers. Computers—which can operate at high

speeds on a continuous basis—have increased

the pacing impact on office workers. Recent

research suggests that pacing produced by

computer-driven video display systems may

‘

)

’ te\en P. Vallas and Jt’illiam Jr. Calabro, “Occupational

Conditions and F$rorker Health in the Communications Industry, ” New York Institute of Technology, Human Resources Development Center, no date.

have an even greater stress effect than traditional factory pacing.62

Feedback and Motivation’]

Perhaps the best use of information about

an employee’s performance is to give it back

to the employee. One advantage that electronic

measurement can offer to workers is accurate

and timely information about their own performance. Studies of feedback, whether related

to simple sensory feedback or to higher levels

of feedback related to knowledge of results, all

indicate that people want to know about their

performance and will seek out such knowledge

when it is absent.64

Immediate sensory feedback helps employees to exert better control over skilled actions

and to correct errors.65 For example, the feel

of the keyboard and the display of the characters on the video screen help a data entry or

word processing operator to know that data

is being keyed properly. This type of feedback

is continuous throughout the task.

A higher level of feedback, knowledge of results, occurs when a task is completed and

evaluated against some external standard, and

the results are fed back to the employee; “You

have produced 10 percent over the production

goal today, “ or “Your output had 2 percent

errors. This kind of feedback provides direction to the worker about future output.

Feedback about one’s own activities can be

‘2M.J. Smith, B.G. Cohen, and I..W. Stammerjohn, “An Investigation of Health Complaints and Job Stress in Video Display Operations, ” Human Factors 23, 1981, pp. 387-400. A.

Cakir, H. Reuter, L. Von Schmude, and A. Armbruster, investigations of the Accommodations of Human Psychic and Ph~wica) Functions to Data Displa~’ Screens in the Workplace (I?erlin: Institute fur Arbeitswissenscharft der Technician

Universitat Berlin, 1978).

‘ ‘This section draws heavily from Michael J. Smith, Pascale

Carayon, and Kathleen Miegio, “Motivational, Behavioral and psychological Implications of Electronic Monitoring of J4’orker

Pe~formance,, ” contract report prepared for OTA, July 1986.

‘tS.J. Ashford and L.L. Cummings, “Feedback as an ]ndi-

\’idual Resource: Personal Strategies of Creating Information,

Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 32, ]983, pp.

370-398.

““K.U. Smith and M.R. Smith, Cybernetics Principles of

Learning and Education Design (New York, NY: HoIt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966).
56 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

a very powerful motivator and has been found

to have a strong influence on productivity, and

in some cases on job satisfaction as well. People like to do a good job, but without information they often don’t know whether they are

doing one or not.

Because computer technology is adept at

gathering and correlating information, it can

be very useful in giving timely feedback to

workers in a useful form. For example, office

systems can be designed to give performance

information to workers as well as to supervisors. In some firms, for example, customer

service representatives can get private access

to their own recent performance by keying the

proper code into their workstations.66 Any information that is available to their supervisor

is available to the individual workers, as well

as comparisons with the group average and

the standards.

A recent study reviewed 42 case histories

and found that without exception people performed better when they were given some objective, quantitative feedback about their own

performance or output. This study did not focus on electronic work measurement, but

rather on both manual and electronic methods

in a variety of work settings, including banks,

payroll offices, reservation offices, manufacturing facilities, and health care facilities. The

form in which feedback was given also varied

from one setting to another. The three methods most commonly used were private individual feedback, public individual feedback, and

public group feedback. In some cases, objective feedback was combined with other interventions such as praise, public recognition, or

additional training; but positive results were

also noted where feedback alone was

provided. 67

Feedback may serve as both a motivator and

an instructional device. When people receive

what they perceive as objective feedback, they

can compare what they actually did to: 1) what

b61nterviews at American Express Southern Regional Operations Center.

‘TRichard E. Kopelman, Mana~”ng Productivity in Organizations: A Practical, People-Oriented Perspective (New York,

NY: McGraw Hill, 1986), pp. 163-187.

they thought they did and 2) what they are

expected to do. In some cases it may correct

misconceptions or inaccurate perceptions about

what they are doing. In one example, airline

reservation clerks were provided with profiles

of their verbal behaviors based on sample

recordings of their telephone conversations

with customers. One clerk commented on seeing the feedback:

When asked previously whether I used the

customer’s name I would have said-and

believed–”Of course, we were trained to do

that. ” I was really surprised when I saw objective evidence on how little I was actually

doing it.68

As a result of the feedback, use of the customer’s name by the clerks rose by 87.5 percent,

while the clerks’ interrupting of customers (a

habit the employer wished to discourage)

nearly disappeared.

Feedback is an effective modifier of behavior

if it is seen as a valued commodity by the recipient and if it is timely. It takes on value to

the individual when it is effective (relevant, understandable, accurate, useful) and when it

comes from a trusted or highly regarded

source. Although feedback need not be immediate or continuous, it should be given frequently. The longer the delay, the less effective it is in affecting performance.69 A

number of the workers interviewed for OTA

expressed a desire for more frequent feedback

about their work. They also thought that feedback information from the electronic monitoring system could be better designed to help

them gain more control of their work.

If employees perceive that rewards and/or

punishments could ensue from an evaluation

of their performance, they are especially interested in feedback. They want to understand

the basis of rewards and punishments, and

feedback helps to resolve feelings of ambiguity

or uncertainty.

sBIbid., p. 176, citing Stephen A. AIlen, “Aer Lingus-Irish

(B)” case #9-477-640 (Bostmn, MA: Intercollegiate Case Clearinghouse, 1976), p. 7.

69M.J. s~th, B,G. Cohen, and L.W. Stammerjohn, “An Investigation of Health Complaints and Job Stress in Video Display Operations, ” Efurnan Factors 23, 1981, pp. 387-400.
Ch. 2—Using Computers To Monitor Office Work ● 5 7

At the same time, feedback of performance

can create feelings of anxiety, frustration, and

lowered self-esteem. Since feedback fulfills an

error-correction function as well as a performance-appraisal function, it can indicate to employees that they are not doing their job as

well as they would like to, or as well as the

employer would like them to. This can create

stress, even when it resolves the stress associated with uncertainty and ambiguity. In

short, feedback is a two-edged sword insofar

as stress is concerned.

Feedback is necessary to groups as well as

individuals, and computer monitoring systems

can also give workers immediate information

about the work environment letting them know

how their work group is doing right now, and

how they can best contribute.

To take telephone customer service again as

an example, some offices have clearly visible

displays on the wall that show the number of

incoming telephone calls waiting to be answered and the age, in seconds, of the oldest

call. Such displays could be used as weapons

of callous management to keep constant pressure on agents of understaffed offices. However, in a properly staffed office, where peaks

of incoming calls occur for a few minutes at

a time, a few times a day, status displays become tools in the hands of the work group. People know how to pace their work. When the

display shows all zeros, agents feel freer to take

a little extra time with a difficult caller, to catch

up on paper work, or to take a break. When

many calls are backed up, they can make an

extra effort to finish a call quickly, or perhaps

to defer a break for a few minutes rather than

abandon their colleagues in a crunch.

Team spirit and friendly competition can be

powerful motivators, and both employers and

employees can benefit if they are not abused.

However, workers can also perceive employers’

use of feedback and social pressure to be unfair and manipulative. A Pacific Western Airlines (PWA) productivity campaign drew union

protests when company posters urged reservation clerks to:

Compare yourself with your friends. Compare yourself with ones who aren’t your

friends. Are you pulling your weight at the office? When the monthly statistics are published, ensure you’re not dragging down your

team and your office.

The union newsletter charged PWA with setting workers against each other, and called the

campaign a “new low in . . . degradation.’’70

70 Lawrence Archer, “I Saw What You Did and I Know W’ho

You Are, ” Canadian Business, November 19S5, p. H 1.

THE FUTURE OF WORK MONITORING

The OTA report on Automation of America's

Offices pointed out some trends in the growth

of computer-based office automation equipment that have implications for the future of

work monitoring.

One trend was the inevitable movement

toward direct machine-to-machine communication. Increasingly, data will be captured in

machine-readable form at the point of origin,

customers will enter their own data (as with

automatic teller machines) information will be

recorded using optical scanning and voice recognition, and different computer systems will

talk directly to each other, thus reducing the

need to keyboard data.

Another trend was the growth in the introduction and use of office automation equipment and its rapid adoption by all sectors of

the economy. It is estimated that by the year

1990 there will be one computer terminal for

every three workers in the United States; by

the year 2000, terminals may be as common

in offices as telephones.

Both of these trends suggest possible changes

in the population of workers that will be af-
58 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

fected by computer-based work-monitoring

technology. For example, the prime example

of the monitored job today is that of the dataentry operator, but over the next 20 years the

growth rate of data-entry workers is expected

to slow or perhaps decline. Those that remain

will probably still be monitored, but they will

be a smaller proportion of the office work force.

The other trend—towards wider use of computer-based office equipment–suggests that

more jobs will be at least partly automated or

dependent on the use of a computer. As a result, more types of jobs will be possible candidates for electronic monitoring. Although the

characteristics of monitored jobs listed at the

beginning of the chapter (repetitive tasks, high

volume of work, low training requirement, high

tolerance for turnover, ample labor supply) describe ideal conditions for monitoring, they are

not absolutes. It is already possible to apply

electronic monitoring to some highly skilled

professional and management positions. Some

times monitoring has not worked well in highlevel positions. Employee resistance may have

caused management to back down on implementation plans, or, as in the case of bank loan

officers interviewed by Westin, employees may

have found ways to “game” the system by

feeding it false information.71 The costs and

importance of employee resistance can change

“Alan Westin, “Privacy and Quality of Life Issues, ” Alan

Westin, “Privacy and Quality of Work Life Issues in Employee

Monitoring, ” contractor report prepared for OTA, 1986.

over time, however. If at some future time management determines that the benefits to be

generated from monitoring a particular job category will outweigh possible costs in higher

turnover, monitoring systems are likely be introduced. And while professionals may be able

to defeat their current monitoring system, a

system that automatically collects correct information could be designed if their employer

ever decides it is worth the cost.

The growing use of computer-based management information systems also means that

more managers will be subject to closer monitoring, simply because more of their day-today decisions will be revealed to superiors

through the computer system, rather than

waiting for monthly or quarterly reports.

If there is a growth in computer monitoring,

or a spread to other types of work, it does not

necessarily mean a devaluation of office work.

Computer-based monitoring can offer advantages to employees, for example, improved

feedback and better control of their own work.

Professional and managerial workers may be

able to use their bargaining power with employers to participate in decisions about the

redesign of their jobs or the implementation

of work measurement and monitoring, as to

assure fair use of monitoring. As with other

examples of technology in the workplace, many

nontechnological factors, including management and employee attitudes, corporate culture and relative power relationships, will govern how the technology is used.
Chapter 3

Telephone Call Accounting
CONTENTS

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Managing Telephone Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Telephone Call Accounting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

How Call Accounting Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Call Accounting and Telephone System Management . . . . . . . . .

Call Accounting and Employees’ Personal Use of Telephones . .

Active Cost Control Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Least-bet Routing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Calling Restrictions. . . . . . . . 00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Authorization Codes and Levels of Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Timed signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Studies of Unofficial Use of Government Telephones . . . . . . . . . . .

The PCIE Review of FTS Utilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Results of PCIE Audit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Future Directions for Government Telephone Management . . . . . .

Need for New Poolicies. . . . . . . . . ........ . . . . .

Establishing a Policy on Personal Use..... . . . .

Exception Reports and Personal Use . . . . . . . . . .

Future Use of Call Back Audits . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Local and Suburban Calls . ● . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Calls to Press, Union, or Public Interest Groups

Eavesdropping and Service Observation . . . . . . .

Other Methods of Cost Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Figure No.

9. Sample

10. Sample

11. Sample

Table No.

9. Resuts 

Call Detail Report

Summary of Calls

Exception Report

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..,..,. . . . .

...,.,. . . . .

Tables

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. . . . . . . . . . . .,

Of FTS Intercity Off- Network call Sample

10. Results of Commercial Long Distance Call Sample by

Agency

Agency

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Chapter 3

Telephone Call Accounting

INTRODUCTION

The personal use of government telephones,

and the controversy about what to do about

it, was in the news throughout 1985 and 1986.

News stories carried headlines like: “U.S.

Agencies Use High Tech To Curb Workers’

Phone Use: Savings Estimated at $300,000 a

Year,” 1 

“ U.S. Phones Raise Issue of Privacy:

New Equipment Would Provide Detailed

Records of Calls.”2 “U.S. To Use Program To

Audit Federal Employees’ Calls,”3 “Planned

Phone Audit Brings Blast From Several

Groups, “

4 “Toll Calls Abused by U.S. Employees, ”5 and “Listen Up Government

Workers: You May Be Allowed One Call.”6

Personal phone use in government was examined in an audit conducted by the General

Services Administration (GSA) under the

President Council on Integrity and Efficiency

(PCIE). That audit reported in the spring of

1987 that an average of about 33 percent of

off-network calls sampled on the Federal Telecommunications System (FTS) were “unofficial, “ i.e., made for personal reasons.7

Of course personal use of employers’ telephones is not a phenomenon limited to government. Telephone use has been called a

“phantom job benefit” because many employees, in both public and private sectors, believe

they have a right to make some calls from the

telephone on their desk. Reliable data are not

available for the private sector, but telecommunications experts have given estimates of

1 In~rview with Edwmd Ho~ell, Mitchell & Horrel L Inc. !

June 24, 1986.

‘New York Times, Mar. 17, 1985.

‘Computerworfd, Mar. 25, 1985.

4Federal Times, Mar. 25, 1985.

‘Washington Post, June 21, 1986.

‘tl’ashington Post, Sept. 11, 1986.

‘President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency, “Consolidated Report on Federal Telecommunications System (FI’S) Utilibation, ” prepared by the General Services Administration, Office of the Inspector General, Mar. 16, 1987.

personal use in the private sector that range

from 10 or 15 percent8 to as high as 30 or

even 50 percent.9

Employees’ personal use of telephones has

been going on for years-a common practice

that many firms and agencies have ignored as

being of little importance. However, in the past

few years new technological tools to measure

and control telephone costs have come on the

market and are being enthusiastically promoted by a growing segment of the telecommunication industry. Deregulation of the telephone industry has forced many firms to pay

greater attention to the costs and management

of their telephone systems. Although long-distance rates have declined steadily for the past

decade, telephone costs remain a major business expense. Many firms have adopted new

technologies, such as telephone call-accounting

software, in an effort to further control these

costs.

Controversy arises because use of callaccounting software may impinge on the

privacy of people using the telephone system.

Although its best and most common use is as

a statistical tool to analyze patterns of telephone use for a firm or office, call-accounting

records can also provide detailed information

about each individual call, whether official or

personal. The software automatically can record the information law enforcement officials

sometimes gather using ‘pen registers ‘—the

exact time, date, originating extension, and

destination number of every call-local or long

‘Interview with Edward Horrell, Mitchell & Horrell, Inc.,

June 24, 1986.

‘Judith Havemann, “Toll Calls Abused by U.S. Employees, ”

Washington Post, June 21, 1986.

61
62 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

distance. Such information, properly examined, can sometimes provide considerable information about the caller.10

This chapter reviews the growing trend in

use of call-accounting software by employers

in and out of government. It also attempts to

place call accounting in the context of other

telecommunication management tools. Call

accounting is only one of a number of technologies gaining use in firms and government

agencies to control telephone costs. This chapter also discusses other techniques that can

be used instead of or in addition to call

accounting.

Managing Telephone Costs

Controlling personal calling is not the only

way to reduce the telephone bill. Industry experts estimate that 35 to 40 percent or more

of all long-distance calls are “waste calls. ”

These are sometimes characterized as a combination of four factors:

• poor system design,

. fraud (unauthorized use by outsiders),

• abuse (personal use by authorized users),

and

● misuse (overuse or the use of a high-cost

service when a low-cost alternative is

available). ]

The proportional importance of each category

varies from one organization to another, but

abuse and misuse are often the largest, according to some experts. Several technological approaches for combatting them are discussed

in this chapter.

Poor system design means that telephone

equipment and service are not suitable to the

particular calling patterns of the firm. In the

past 10 years, a bewildering variety of alternatives has developed for business telephone

“)For a discussion of the use of pen registers in law enforcement, see U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Federal Government Information Technology: Electronic Surveillance and Civil Liberties, OTA-C IT-293 (Washington, DC: U.S.

Government Printing Office, October 1985).

“Interview with Edward Horrell, Mitchell & Horrell, Inc.,

June 24, 1986.

subscribers. Good telecommunications management begins with understanding the needs

of the firm and making basic decisions about

the size of the system needed, what long-distance carriers to use, whether to lease private

lines or to own private switches, and so on. Because of the wide variety of services offered

and the different rate structures of the longdistance telephone companies (carriers), wrong

design decisions can be costly. Telephone call

accounting, as discussed later in this chapter,

can be useful in giving a clear picture of telephone use on which to base management decisions.

Telephone fraud perpetrated by outsiders

can be costly to an individual firm, but most

of its costs fall on the telephone industry and

users as a whole. Fraudulent activities range

from individual hackers using private systems

for their own calls to multilevel marketing

schemes that sell illegally obtained authorization codes to consumers. If the legitimate user

(individual or corporate) notices charges for

these calls on the phone bill and denies making

them, the cost is usually absorbed by the longdistance carrier. The cost of telephone fraud

was estimated at $500 million in 1985. 12 The

telephone industry is attempting to combat

fraud by improving system software’s ability

to detect and investigate illegal users. As will

be discussed later in this chapter, telephone

call accounting can help firms reduce costs due

to fraud by giving them an accurate listing of

telephone calls independent of their telephone

bill.

There are two basic approaches to reducing

unwanted calls. The first is to keep careful

track of all calls so that problems of misuse

or personal use can be tracked and people who

make the calls can be identified. This is called

a passive approach to telephone management,

and the principal tool is telephone call accounting. The second approach is to design the telephone system so that unwanted calls are difficult or impossible to make, and so that calls

that are made are of reasonable length. This

1 Zwalter G. Frier, “Combating Long Distance Service

Abuse, ” Telephony, Aug. 11, 1986, pp. 69-70.
Ch. 3—Telephone Call Accounting ● 6 3

active approach to telephone system management is aided by such technological tools as

least-cost routing, call blocking, and timed

signals.

As the Federal Government begins the process of revamping its telephone system, it will

undoubtedly make use of several of these techniques. The one that has aroused the most controversy is call accounting, because of questions about the privacy of individuals who

make the calls. With the advent of improved

records on all long-distance calls, the government finds itself faced with the need to review

and revise some outdated policies related to

the use of its telephone system. Before discussing these policies in detail, however, it would

be good to look at how active and passive telephone management tools work and how they

are used in government and private industry.

TELEPHONE CALL ACCOUNTING

In the past 3 years, telephone call accounting has become one of the fastest growing segments of the telecommunications market, but

call accounting is nothing new. Every consumer engages in telephone call accounting at

home by reviewing the monthly telephone bill

to make sure that all the long-distance calls

listed were actually made by someone in the

household.

Telephone bills for businesses, while they are

sometimes more complex than residential bills,

provide essentially the same information: the

date, time, duration, destination, and cost for

calls. Usually all this information is provided

to business customers as a matter of course

for direct-dial or operator-assisted long-distance calls. However, long-distance calls made

on Wide-Area Telecommunications Service

(WATS) lines (which are billed on an averagecost-per-call basis) and local calls usually are

not reported in detail to business customers,

unless specially requested and paid for.

Businesses and government agencies are becoming more aware of the value of an accurate

record of calls in managing and reducing their

telephone costs. Even if call detail is provided

by the carrier (long-distance telephone company), the firm may want an independent record of telephone calls in order to verify the carriers’ bills or allocate telephone costs to

different departments within the organization.

Businesses can get such accurate, up-to-date

call accounts either from a ‘‘service bureau,

or through a call-accounting system on their

own premises.

It is estimated that about 19,600 stand-alone

call-accounting systems were sold in 1985,

amounting to revenues of about $206 million

for their manufacturers. This market is growing at about 50 percent per year and there are

currently about 130 firms that either manufacture a call-accounting device, write callaccounting software, or provide call-accounting services.13 In addition, many private

branch exchanges (PBXs, the computerized

switching systems that route telephone calls

in many offices, have built in call accounting

capability.

How Call Accounting Works

Raw data about calls-the time, duration,

called number, originating extension, and

estimated cost—can all be collected by a device called a station message detail recorder

(SMDR) that can be attached to the telephone

system. SMDRs can produce an enormous volume of information that is of little use until

it is processed and analyzed.

Probably the oldest type of call accounting

is offered by computer service bureaus, which

came into existence around 1970. The service

bureau uses mainframe computers to process

the magnetic tapes produced by SMDRs and

provides the customer with monthly or quarterly reports. The cost for such a service varies

widely. Depending on the number of lines, the

fee can range from $1 to $4 per telephone. ”

1‘Daniel I. Strusser, “Good News in the Call Accounting

Market, ” Teleconnect, March 1986, p. 62.

“

tDaniel I. Strusser, “The Six Kinds of Call Accounting, ”

Teleconnect, March 1986, pp. 66-71.
64 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Figure 9.—Sample Call Detail Report

Date: 03/07/84

Time: 11:56:20 Page: 1

Report Period: 2/24 - 2/29

Name: Dan Jones Division: Telecommunications

Ext: 1551 Department: Engineering

Date

2/24

2/24

2/25

2/25

2/25

2/25

2/25

2/25

2127

2/27

2/27

Time ——

08:01

11:35

08:46

08:52

10:57

12:57

14:00

14:07

09:43

12:55

13:14

Totals:

Fixed:

Duration

00:12:15

00:25:00

00:00:30

01:12:30

00:07:30

00:10:56

00:16:01

00:01:30

01:05:03

00:01:00

00:10:00

03:42:15

Charge

0.06

5.86

0.06

25.90

0.10

4.10

6.27

0.10

35.12

.42

0.06

>7.15

5.00

82.15

Number called Facil

616-429-2998

703-620-0880

616-429-4151

212-829-4272

714-525-5252

312-577-7901

714-525-5252

703-620-0880

616-429-6241

Calls: 11

Local

WATS

Local

DDD

Incmg

MCI

FX

Incmg

DDD

WATS

Local

Cost/M in:

There are about 30 firms in the United States

that provide this service. Service bureaus have

generally been used only by large firms with

high volumes of calls and multiple sites.15

Advances in computer technology are now

making call accounting more economical for

smaller firms. Call-accounting software is now

available for direct use by the customer, and

it can be run on personal computers, minicomputers, and mainframes. About half of the service bureaus, along with dozens of other companies, lease or sell call-accounting software

for customers to use. In addition, some PBXs

come with built-in capability to record raw call

data with a SMDR and to process callaccounting reports. Prices for call-accounting

software vary widely, from as low as $800 up

to $40,000, depending on the size of the telephone system and on the special features that

might be desired.16 Many software packages

produce not only a detailed listing of all calls,

but also allow the development of a number

of standard and customized reports.

“MCI Education Center, Gaining the Competitive Edge:

Network Design, p. L-6.

I“Daniel I. Strusser, “The Six Kinds of Call Accounting, ”

Teleconnect, March 1986, pp. 66-71.

(1) City

St. Joseph

Roanoke

St Joseph

New York

Anaheim

Chicago

Anaheim

Roanoke

St Joseph

.33

ST (2) Acct. Code

Ml -

VA

Ml

NY

CA

IL

CA

VA

Ml

Call Accounting and Telephone System

Management

The report-generating capability of the system is important. While the call-accounting de

vice keeps track of all calls in the order they

are made, a simple printout of all call records

may be of little use, especially in a large firm

with thousands of telephones and dozens of

locations.

Figure 9 is a sample printout from a callaccounting system. This particular system is

designed for small companies–with perhaps

100 to 500 telephones–and runs on a personal

computer. Raw call data is transferred to the

personal computer from the SMDR through

a RS232 connection (like the modular phone

jack on most telephones). Once the call records

are loaded on the computer, the call-accounting

software can produce a number of standard and

customized reports. Figure 9 shows all the calls

of a particular extension (1551), including the

date, time, duration, cost, number called, and

city and State of destination number. This information is similar to that found on a telephone bill, except that there is somewhat

greater detail. To some extent the level of detail to be used in reports can be chosen by the
Ch. 3—Telephone Call Accounting ● 6 5

Figure 10.— Sample Summary of Calls

Date: 03/07/84

Time: 11:43:37

Report Period: 2/24 - 2/29

Ext.

101

102

103

104

111

125

150

155

Name

Jackson, John

Cheever, Chuck

Berg, Wendy

West, Ellen

Cassidy, Mike

Ryan, Pete

Potts, Karl

Jones, Dan

Totals:

Total

cost

16,54 ‘-

4,48

9,36

4,00

16,88

3.25

1,20

83.05

138,76

Fixed

cost

0.35

0,27

0.42

4,00

0,56

3.25

1,20

5,00

15,0 5

system manager. For example, this particular firm has chosen to list and assign a cost

to local calls as well as long-distance ones, and

to include a listing and charge for incoming

(Incmg) calls.

Figure 10 shows a summary report by extension, summarizing the costs and activities

of all telephones in a particular department.

Similar detailed and summary reports could

be generated by extension, by caller, or by account code, for each department or division in

the firm.

More sophisticated cost-accounting reports

are also useful for equitably allocating telecommunication costs. Based on reports generated

by the call-accounting system, costs can be allocated to the proper department, project, or

customer account. Law offices, for example,

which must keep accurate records of each attorney’s expenditure of time and resources for

each client, can generate accurate reports of

telephone calls related to each case. This might

be done either by having staff members dial

a cost code before dialing each number, or by

having the call-accounting system store telephone numbers known to be frequently used

for each client. Call accounting software for

hotels and hospitals produces phone changes

for inclusion in client bills.

Another advantage of modern call-accounting software is the ability to process mountains

of raw call data into useful information about

Local

cost

0.00

0.00

5.61

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.18

5.79

L.D.

cost

16.19

0.75

3.33

0.00

13.62

0.00

0.00

77.67

111.56 -

OutDur Incom

HR:MN cost

0:25 0.00

0:05 0.40

0:11 0.00

0:00 0.00

0:18 2.70

0:00 0.00

0:00 0.00

 3:3 3 0.20

4:32 3:30

Page: 1

lnDur

HR:MN

0:00

10:32

0:00

0:00

5:12

0:00

0:00

0:09

15.53

calling patterns and system utilization. For example, a summary of all calls by trunk (or type

of service) would enable a telecommunications

manager to compare the number of calls and

relative expenditures for direct dial and WATS

lines to determine if the firm has the right facilities to meet current needs. Or the system

could produce a report of the 50 most frequently called numbers, in order of frequency.

The telecommunications manager might use

this information to determine whether a private line connection would be a more economical way to carry calls between the main office

and a frequently called branch office. A report

on trunk utilization, by day and hour, can also

be useful in analyzing the level of use of the

telephone, and might also be useful evidence

in case of disputes with carriers about the

amount of the telephone bill.

Call Accounting and Employees’

Personal Use of Telephones

At some firms and government agencies,

analysis of the most frequently called numbers

turned up a large number of calls to off-track

betting, “Dial-a-Porn,” the weather report, and

many long-distance calls to locations that did

not do business with the organization.

Employees’ personal use of employers’ telephones has become a concern in the past few

years and reference to the money being spent

on personal calls is a major sales tool for ven-
66 . The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

dors of call-accounting equipment. Telecommunications trade magazines (and advertisements of cost-accounting system vendors) are

full of anecdotes about abuses uncovered when

firms first start keeping track of their telephone calls. Stories include, for example, the

secretary who placed a one-hour long-distance

call during lunch every day in order to listen

to a soap opera on her mother’s television. Or

the man who ran his personal business from

the office telephone–a business that required

hundreds of long-distance calls weekly. Or the

woman who used the call-forwarding feature

of her office telephone to receive many hours

of long-distance calls at home in the evening.

On the other hand, many other people are

using employers’ telephones in much less expensive, but still pervasive ways. Employees

are human beings with concerns beyond the

workplace, and they sometimes have personal

business that must be somehow completed during work hours. People with toothaches have

to call the dentist. People with car trouble have

to call the mechanic to see if the work is done,

and then call a neighbor to ask for a ride home.

Working parents need to know if their children

have arrived home from school; indeed, parents in windowless offices may need to consult the weather report first to know what instructions to give their children.

One survey of Fortune 1000 firms estimated

that employees spent an average of 14.9 minutes per day on personal calls (about 3 percent

of an 8-hour day), or the equivalent of 11⁄2 work

weeks of personal telephone calling per

year. ” The numbers may be suspect, since

they are based on estimates by personnel managers, but they show that perception of a problem is widespread. As mentioned earlier, some

telecommunications experts have estimated

personal calling in the private sector to range

from 10 to 50 percent of calls.”

“’’Employees Spend Over One and A Half Weeks of Job

Time on Personal Phone Calls Each Year, Nationwide Survey

Reports, ” Sandford Teller Communications for Accountemps,

New York, Aug. 30, 1984.

‘sJudith Havemann, “Toll Calls Abused by U.S. Employees, ” Washington Post, June 21, 1986.

Despite the long-term decline in longdistance telephone rates, and the sharp decline

since divestiture,19 telephone costs remain a

major expenditure for many firms. Technological tools that promise to further control these

costs are attractive to managers, and vendors’

assurances of reduced telephone costs have

fueled the sales of call-accounting equipment

and software.

Personal use of an employer’s telephone has

been called a “phantom job benefit. ” Many

people consider personal use of the telephone

on their desk to be a reasonable perquisite, and

the question of when this personal use becomes

“abuse” is sometimes difficult to decide. Many

people would agree that employees who place

several hours of personal long-distance calls

per day are outrageously misusing their employer’s facilities. Many of the same people

would think that an employer that doesn’t allow parents to call home each day is insensitive to employees’ needs. Reasonable behavior

on both sides is somewhere between these extremes, but where should the line of “reasonable use” be drawn? Two local calls per day?

Ten? One local call and one short long-distance

call?

Often firms recognize a need to balance good

management of the firm’s resources with the

biblical injunction against “binding the

mouths of the kine that tread the grain. They

are also aware of their own interest—there are

other productivity factors to consider in addition to the cost of the telephone call. People’s

minds are clearer to focus on work if their personal problems are settled. Some calls simply

have to be made, one way or another. It may

be better for the firm’s total productivity to

let people take care of personal business during a short break at their desks than to require

them to wait in line at the pay phone.

Organizations differ in their official policies

of employee use of telephones. OTA interviewed telecommunications managers of several large firms. Some say flatly that office tel-

‘gFor example see “FCC Orders AT&T, Local Phone Firms

to Lower Long-Distance Rate of Return, ” Wall Street Journ~,

Aug. 8, 1986, p. 3.
Ch. 3—Telephone Call Accounting ● 6 7

ephones are for business use only. However,

the view of one telecommunications manager

was common, “We say company phones are

for company business, but actually we don’t

care about local calls as long as they keep it

reasonable. "20 A few organizations had no

problem with personal long-distance calls as

long as they were of reasonable length and the

employee reported the call and reimbursed the

organization.

And of course, regardless of official policy,

there is a wide variation in the enforcement

of the policy. Offices that do not keep track

of their telephone usage through call accounting have little idea whether the policy is being

observed or not.

Even firms using call-accounting systems

seldom find it cost-effective to evaluate every

call to see if it is official. The common practice

is to use the call-accounting system to generate ‘exception reports, reports that indicate

unusual call patterns that might result from

misuse. Here is where the ability of the callaccounting system to track all calls by time

and originating telephone, and then to corre-

‘(’Interview with telecommunications manager of a financial

services organization, December 1985.

Date: 03/07/84

Time: 11:48:33

Report Period: 2/24 - 2/29

Calls $5.00 or 30 min

Date Time Duration

Extension: 226

2/24 09:44 00:31:30

2/27 13:57 00:36:30

Extension: 1466

2/24 10:46 00:31:45

2/24 15:19 00:35:30

2/27 12:37 00:17:32

Extension: 1533

2/25 09:54 00:22:26

2/27 15:33 01 :34:12

2/29 13:42 00:45:01

late and process that information, becomes particularly important. For example, a number of

long-distance calls from a department that has

no out-of-state business might indicate that

personal long-distance calls are being made.

Many calls after business hours might indicate

that the security or cleaning crews are making use of telephones. The call-accounting system may be programmed to produce a report

of calls to certain prefixes, for example, in

many cities, all 976 numbers are assigned to

“audio text” services like “dial-a-prayer,”

“dial-a-joke,” figure 11 shows a sample exception report of all calls over $5.00 in cost or 30

minutes in duration.

The use of exception reports to find major

offenders is effective because most people actually make few personal calls. Despite estimates of the ‘‘average’ amount of time spent

on the telephone, common sense and evidence

from a few studies suggest that there is a wide

variation in personal behavior. For example,

an examination was made of 1,400 unofficial

long-distance calls (all to audio-text services)

made from the U.S. Department of Education

in Washington. The Department has about

5,000 telephones, but two-thirds of these audiotext calls came from just 41 telephones; 45 percent (650 calls) came from just 11 teleFigure 11 .—Sample Exception Report

Charge

$ 9.45

.10

$17.00

0.10

5.99

$ 6.12

0.00

4.89

Number called Facility

User: Tom Best

714-964-6732 WATS

Incmg

User: Joseph Carr

616-983-5555 WATS

Incmg

212-888-1357 C/O

User: Ellen

312-665-7863 WATS

616-429-6589 LOCAL

702-734-4444 MCI

City

Anaheim

St Joseph

New York

Evanston

St Joseph

Las Vegas

Page: 1

State

CA

Ml

NY

IL

Ml

NV
68 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

phones.21 Similarly, a 1984 study by the Department of Energy found wide variation in

the level of unofficial calling in different

offices.22 Telecommunications managers have

found that by relying on “exception reports”

to seek out patterns of misuse, they are more

likely to find habitual major offenders. This

is also considered fairer than closely scrutinizing the telephoning habits of every employee.

Just the existence of a call-accounting system can have a deterrent effect on personal telephone use, even if management makes little

“U.S. Department of Education, Office of the Inspector General, letter report ACN 11-40100, July 25, 1984. The 1,400 calls

were made over a 12-month period from November 1982 to October 1983.

‘zU. S. Department of Energy, Office of the Inspector General, “Review of Abuse of Long Distance Telephone Service

(FTS) in the Department of Energy, ” DOE/IG-0217, Mar. 22,

1985.

use of the reports. When employees are made

aware that records are being kept, their personal use of telephones tends to go down. The

reverse can also be true when they know there

are no records. One firm interviewed by OTA

removed its call-accounting capability for several months while making the transition from

one telephone system to another. The total

number of calls increased dramatically during

that period, although it was impossible to tell

from which phones the calls were made. Once

the new system was running, each employee

was sent a memo containing a reminder of company policy and a list of the previous weeks’

calls from his or her telephone. Nothing further was necessary to cause the volume of callng to drop to its former levels.23

‘sInterview with telecommunications manager, financial

services organization, December 1985.

ACTIVE COST CONTROL METHODS

Active methods of telephone cost control can

make use of technology to reduce the cost per

telephone call and also to prevent unnecessary

calling. Techniques include least-cost routing,

calling restrictions or blocking, authorization

codes and levels of service, and timed signals.

Least-Cost Routing

Least-cost routing automatically connects

a call with the least expensive line available.

Many modern PBXs are equipped with this

feature, which requires a computer program

to “hunt” through the available lines to find

one appropriate for the call being placed. For

least-cost routing to be most effective, the firm

should first study its telecommunication needs

to make sure that it has access to the proper

assortment of different carriers (AT&T, MCI,

and Sprint, for example) and different types

of facilities (WATS lines, leased lines, and direct dial) to match its calling pattern.

There are at least 40 different ways to call

from New York to Richmond, VA–each with

a different price.24 Deciding which is the

cheapest method of calling a given destination

at a particular time of day can be a complicated

problem, one which would be inconvenient for

an employee to solve every time he or she

needed to make along-distance call. The leastcost routing feature makes choosing the right

route “transparent” to the user. The employee

merely dials; a computer program searches

through a table of available lines, times, and

rates to pick the least costly route for each call.

At busy times of day, when the cheapest facilities are all busy, several options are available. The system may automatically queue the

call, and signal the user when a line is free, or

the system may signal the user to try again

later. Yet another option is to give the caller

a warning tone, indicating that the low-cost

lines are all busy. If the call is urgent, the user

can hang on, and the call will go through at

a higher cost.

ZdlntervieW with Edwmd Horrell, Mitchell & HorreL Inc.,

June 24, 1986.
Ch. 3—Telephone Call Accounting ● 6 9

Calling Restrictions

The call-blocking feature allows modern telephone systems to be programmed to restrict

the type of calls made by certain telephones

or certain callers. For example, the switch may

be programmed to block any calls to exchange

“976” in order to restrict the use of “audio

text” (weather, time, dail-a-joke) calls. Telephones in departments that do not deal with

the public can be programmed to make only

in-house calls. Telephones of workers with no

out-of-town business can be programmed to

provide only local service. Certain telephones

can be authorized to make long-distance calls

only via the lowest cost service, where others

may be able to override the least-cost routing

feature and make a long-distance call even

when low-cost lines are busy.

Authorization Codes and

Levels of Service

Telephone systems can also be programmed

so that no telephone will put through long-distance calls unless preceded by an authorization code that should be known only to people

authorized to make calls. The code also allows

the system to charge the call to a particular

person or account, which is useful for cost allocation purposes.

Authorization codes can form the basis for

different levels of service. Workers with a need

to make international calls can be assigned an

authorization code that permits such calls.

Those who only need to make calls within one

State can be given a code that allows this more

restricted level of calling. Similarly, the telephone system can be programmed to allow

some classes of users to make calls by the

lowest cost service only, while other users may

have an “executive override” status that allows calls on higher cost lines if low-cost lines

are busy. The State of New York, for example, has 26 different levels of service to accommodate needs of different classes of users.25

The advantage of authorization codes is that

they are independent of the individual telephone instrument. A person who is authorized

‘-’Interview with Peter Arment, State of New York, Division

of Telecommunications, September 1986. The 26 levels of ser\rice include both \’oice and data transmissions.

to make long-distance calls may do so from any

telephone in the system. The code is still valid

if the user moves to another office. On the other

hand, an unauthorized person cannot make

calls on any phone, unless he or she discovers

a code. In addition, authorization codes can

be easily changed. For example, if the user’s

job changes to require a different level of service, or if it is discovered that an unauthorized

person is using a code, the old authorization

code can be canceled and a new one issued in

short order.

A disadvantage of authorization codes is

that they require the user to dial five to seven

additional digits at the beginning of each longdistance call. This is annoying to most users

and a real hardship for those who need to make

many calls in a day. The State of New York

has overcome this problem by making use of

the speed dialing feature of modern telephone

systems. Speed dialing allows the user to store

a list of frequently called long-distance numbers (in some systems up to 60 numbers per

user) in the telephone’s memory. Each number is then referred to by a two-digit code.

When calling any of these numbers the user

must still dial the authorization code in full,

but only dials the two-digit code to reach the

frequently called number. Thus the total number of digits dialed per call is reduced to a manageable number.

Because authorization codes are generally

used to allocate costs, they are usually used

in conjunction with a call-accounting program.

Timed Signals

Several firms and government organizations

use timed signals to remind callers of the time

they are spending on telephone calls. Telephone

systems can be programmed, for example, to

give users a tone after some predetermined

period–say 4 or 5 minutes. While no penalty

accrues to the user who continues to talk beyond this point, the feedback is often useful

in reducing the average length of calls.26 People sometimes have no idea how long they have

been talking, and a 5-minute warning reminds

them that long-distance calling does cost

money.

“’Ibid.
70 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

STUDIES OF UNOFFICIAL USE OF

GOVERNMENT TELEPHONES

Personal use of Federal Government telephones is not only contrary to “company

policy” —it is illegal. The Federal Information

Resources Management Regulation (41 CFR

201-38.007) specifically forbids the use of FTS

or other government-provided long-distance

service for personal reasons, and provides for

fines, suspension, or dismissal of offending employees. Furthermore, 5 CFR 735.205 prohibits

the use of government property generally for

personal reasons. Some employees and contractors have also been indicted under Title 18, Section 641 (Public Money, Property, or Records),

which provides criminal penalties for the theft

of “a thing of value” from the government. For

example, 4 employees and 25 contract employees of the Department of Energy were indicted

for personal telephone use in 1981. Under a pre

trial diversion, the defendants repaid the government $38,487.27

Despite the illegality, government employees use their employer’s telephone for personal

reasons just as much as private sector employees do; some would say more so. A number of

studies conducted by individual departments

in the past few years have found that an estimated 30 to 60 percent of long-distance calls

are of an unofficial nature. A more recent

study, part of a coordinated multi-agency audit, reported personal calls made up an average

of 33 percent of off-network calls sampled in

the Federal Telecommunications System (see

below for a description of FTS off-network

calls). About 20 percent of calls sampled on

the government’s commercial lines were

personal.28

ZTU s Depmtment of Energy, Office of the Inspector Gen- . .

eral, “Review of Abuse of Long Distance Telephone Service

(FTS) in the Department of Energy,” DOE/IG-0217, Mar. 22,

1985.

2aJudith Havemann, “Listen Up Government Workers: You

May Be Allowed One Phone Call, ” Washington Post, Sept. 11,

1986. See also President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency,

“Consolidated Report on Federal Telecommunications System

(FTS) Utilization, ” prepared by the General Services Administration, Office of the Inspector General, Mar. 16, 1987.

Some agencies’ studies have also tried to

estimate the loss to the government in terms

of wages paid for time spent in personal calling. The Department of Energy, in its study

of phone use, added to the $8 million per year

cost of personal calls, an additional $6 million

per year for lost wages. This was calculated

by multiplying the total minutes of calls during work hours (8 a.m. to 12 noon and 1 p.m.

to 5:30 p.m.) by the average wage rate for the

department. 29 The figure is probably inflated

as the calculation does not consider that employees could have made calls during their

breaks or other slack periods when they had

no other work. However, in the case of major

offenders, for example a person running a

private business from a government phone,

wages lost to the government could be significant. In the Richland, Washington case mentioned above, the 29 defendants were required

to repay lost wages along with other fines and

the cost of the calls themselves.

The Federal Government is a major user of

telephone services. Its Federal Telecommunications System (FTS), established in 1963, provides voice and low-speed data telecommunication services throughout the United States,

the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. The

system contains about 1.3 million telephones,

1,600 local switchboards, 52 major switching

centers, and 15,000 long-distance trunks.

About 88 percent of the long-distance FTS

service is through leased AT&T facilities, with

the rest provided by GTE/Sprint, MCI, and

other carriers.

The General Services Administration (GSA)

manages FTS and supplies telephone service

to most Federal agencies as required by the

Federal Property and Administrative Services

Act of 1949 (40 U.S.C. 481). Some of these are

“full service agencies, “ in that they receive all

their telephone service through GSA. Others,

nu s Depatment of Energy, office Of the Inspector Gen-

. .

en-d, “Review of Abuse of Long Distance Telephone Service

(FTS) in the Department of Energy, ” DOE/IG-0217, Mar. 22,

1985.
Ch. 3—Telephone Call Accounting ● 7 1

including Departments of Energy, Justice,

Commerce, and the Veterans Administration,

procure their own local telephone service in the

Washington area, and rely on GSA only for

long-distance services. These are known as “exclusive use agencies. ”

There are three types of “long-distance”

calls:

A commercial call is made by dialing 9

from a government phone and accessing

the local telephone system; intercity calls

made after dialing 9 are billed at the regular commercial toll rate.

FTS on-net calls are intercity calls between two government telephones.

In FTS off-net calls, the originating telephone is part of FTS but the receiving telephone is not. In such a case, the call would

travel as far as possible on FTS, and then

would go off-network and use commercial

lines to reach its destination.

Off-net calls are generally more expensive than

FTS calls; commercial calls are most expensive. On many government telephones, a feature called Automatic Route Selection (ARS)

automatically transfers commerical calls to the

lower cost FTS network whenever possible.

This is similar to the “least cost routing” feature discussed earlier.

FTS handled about 300 million calls in 1986

and cost the government about $500 million.

Off-network calls represent about 65 percent

of the calls and 69 percent of the cost. In addition, commercial toll calls cost about $15 million in 1986.

For FTS calls, GSA pays the long-distance

carriers, bills the participating agencies quarterly, in advance, and then adjusts for actual

usage. Usage figures for long-distance calls are

currently collected by the telephone industry,

using the Automated Message Accounting

(AMA) systems of local telephone companies

and long-distance carriers. The detailed call record includes the telephone number of the originating user, a billing account code, the date

and time of the call, the telephone number of

the called party, and the duration in minutes.

Currently, call detail information is collected

on only a 20-percent sample of FTS calls one

call in five. GSA uses the information in this

sample to calculate quarterly telephone bills

for each department, and also sends copies of

the call records to agency telecommunications

managers. Due to the large backlog of work

in calculating telephone bills for all the agencies, AMA reports have been sent to the agencies 3 to 6 months after they are collected.30

Local calls are billed to each agency monthly

through GSA’s Telephone Inventory Accounting System (TIAS). Commercial toll calls are

billed to agencies directly by the long-distance

telephone companies.

The PCIE Review of FTS Utilization

The previously quoted figures on personal

use of FTS came from an audit recently conducted by GSA at the direction of the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency

(PCIE). It is the most recent attempt by the

Federal Government to study telephone use on

a governmentwide scale. The study involved a

statistical study of telephone use at 16 agencies

(basically an analysis of exception reports). In

addition, GSA conducted a call-back audit of a

sample of telephone calls from 14 agencies.31

For purposes of the auditing project, GSA

provided a sample of call detail listings of offnetwork and commercial long-distance calls to

the Inspector General of each participating

agency. These call records came from the regular 20 percent sample of FTS calls and from

telephone company billings for commerical

calls. Personnel from the Inspector General’s

office called back the numbers listed on those

records to determine whether anyone at the

destination telephone engages or has engaged

in business with the department or agency

making the call. Calls were then classified as

‘‘official, “ “unofficial,” or “unresolved.”

XIU S. Depmtment of Education, Office of the Inspector General, letter Report No. 11-40100, July 25, 1984.

‘l President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency, “Consolidated Report on Federal Telecommunications Systems (FTS)

Utilization, prepared by the General Services Administration,

Office of the Inspector General, Mar. 16, 1987.
72 • The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tension

If the potential use of call accounting in government raises questions of privacy, fairness,

and enforcement, a call-back audit, like the one

conducted by PCIE, was even more controversial. Announcement of plans for the audit (in

late February 1985) was greeted with immediate statements of concern by civil libertarians,

union leaders, and others.

One concern was the potential for “selective

disciplinary action against workers considered

undesirable by agency managers.”32 When

the PCIE study was announced, fear was expressed that, if the personal use of telephones

was as widespread as GSA believed, then

nearly every employee was to some degree

guilty. This being the case, telephone audits

could be used as a potential weapon against

whistleblowers or other dissidents. One article noted that in 1982 “investigators in the

Environmental Protection Agency secretly examined the agency’s long distance phone

records to determine whether Hugh Kaufman,

a government employee who had disclosed information that led to the removal of most of

the agency’s top officials, had talked with news

organizations. ’33

Union leaders also expressed the fear that

information from the audit could be used to

harass union members.34 Nor were critical

comments limited to labor groups. Bun Bray,

president of the Federal Managers Association, called the audit “another little deal to punish Federal employees,“ and asserted that the

savings from the program would prove ‘insignificant and minimal.“ “If they really want to

save money, they ought to take those resources

and check out General Dynamics and some of

those other defense contractors that are ripping off the taxpayer, ” Bray said.”

These topics along with other civil liberties

questions, also attracted congressional atten32Bill Montague, “Planned Phone Audit Brings Blast From

Several Groups, ” Federal Times, Mar. 25, 1985.

33 David Bmhm, “u,s, phones Raise Issue of privacy: ‘ew

Equipment Would Provide Detailed Records of Calls, ” IVew York

Times, Mar. 17, 1985.

3iBill Montague, “Planned Phone Audit Brings Blast From

Several Groups, ” Federal Times, Mar. 25, 1985.

351bid.

tion. For example, Representatives Don Edwards (Chair, House Subcommittee on Civil

and Constitutional Rights) and Patricia

Schroeder (Chair, Subcommittee on Service)

wrote to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) requesting further information on

the

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

audit:

What is the source of authority for the proposed monitoring scheme?

How would the monitoring program be conducted, who would conduct it, and what

types of telephone calls would be examined?

How long would the program last?

What types of data or analyses would the

program yield?

How would the resulting data and analysis

be used and who would have access to

them?

What measures would be taken to limit dissemination of the data and analyses?

What guarantee is there that the program

will not be used to discourage whistleblowers, to stifle dissent, to limit news media access to information, or for other political purposes?

What would happen to the data and analyses after the initial analysis is completed?

Our Subcommittees would like to be assured

on these points, and any others that may be

raised as additional information comes to

light, before any monitoring begins.36

In his reply, Joseph R. Wright, Jr., Deputy

Director of OMB, said the purposes of the

PCIE review were “to reveal patterns of misuse of the Federal long distance telephone systems” and to develop “recommendations for

systemic improvements in the management of

these systems. ”

Wright also gave specific answers to questions raised by the congressional letter. For

example, with regard to limiting dissemination

of the audit data he said:

[it] will be limited to the staff of participating Inspectors General. The bulk of the

data will be placed in audit workpapers and

used to support audit findings which are sumWMm 13, 1986 let~r from The Honorable Don Edwmds ~d

The Honorable Patricia Schroeder to Joseph R. Wright, Jr., Deputy Director, Office of Management and Budget.
mary in nature, Any data which require initiation of an investigation will be treated as

evidence and will be accordingly protected.

Data which may bring together names and

numbers will be filed as part of the IGs’ Privacy Act systems of records.

On the question of whistleblowers or the stifling of dissent, Wright reassured the committees that:

. . . long distance calls to news media, congressional offices, public interest groups, etc., will

be considered business calls for the purpose

of this review. . . .

The review is being performed by statutory

Inspectors General who have, among other

duties, responsibility under their own enabling legislation to protect whistleblowers. In

addition, the Civil Service Reform Act clearly

prohibits the kinds of activities described in

your question . . . while there are no absolute

guarantees that all persons will act properly,

there are ample procedures to deal with those

who are found to have committed such prohibited personnel practices. . . .

Representatives Edwards and Schroeder replied to Wright, indicating their appreciation

that the PCIE “is sensitive to preventing unwarranted disclosures of information collected

in any audit and avoiding invasions of privacy. ” Drawing on concepts in Wright’s letter,

and their own sense of proper elements to go

Ch. 3—Telephone Call Accounting ● 7 3

into guidelines for the audit, the two Members

of Congress suggested a number of principles

to be included in those guidelines.

A detailed memorandum of “Guidance on

the Privacy Act Implication of the PCIE Review of Federal Telecommunications Systems

(FTS) Utilization” was completed in August

1985. This document included many of the

principles outlined in the Edwards-Schroeder

letter, as well as safeguards discussed by

Wright. These guidelines were adopted as the

PCIE audit progressed through 1985 and 1986.

Results of PCIE Audit

The PCIE audit, conducted by the Inspector General’s office of each participating

agency, made use of a sample of call detail

records supplied by GSA. They included both

‘‘off-network’ FTS calls and commercial telephone calls. Researchers called each destination number in the sample to determine

whether anyone at that location engaged in

business with the department or agency making the call. At the conclusion of a conversation with the person or persons at the destination, calls were then classified “of ficial,”

‘‘unofficial, or “unresolved.”

Table 9 shows results of the FTS off-network

sample. The weighted average (based on the

Table 9. —Results of FTS Intercity Off-Network Call Sample by Agency

Estimated ‘- Unofficial Traffic

Agency calls (

0

/0) minutes (

0

/0) cost (O/. )

1, Department of Agriculture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -

30.5 26.5 23.6

2. Department of Commerce. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25,5 40.0 37.9

3 Department of the Interior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29.5 40.4 35.6

4. Federal Bureau of Investigations. . . ... . 26.5 30.0 25,1

5. Department of Labor ., . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45.5 45.1 44.8

6. Department of Treasury. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42.0 45.3 41.1

7. Office of Personnel Management . . . . . . . . . . . 36.5 41.1 38.9

8 General Services Administration ... ... . ... 39.0 49.7 47,5

9. Environmental Protection Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29.0 23.3 22,2

10 Small Business Administration . . . . . . 27.5 39.8 34.9

11, Department of Health and Human Services ... . 35.0 28.7 25,7

12 National Aeronautics and Space Administration . 41.0 48.3 43.2

13. Department of Housing and Urban Development ., 27.0 36.5 33.2

14. Department of Education ... ., ., 28,5 41,0 36.8

Simple average . ... . . . ... 33,6 36.4 33.3

Weighted average ... . . . . . . . 33.6 36.4 33.3

SOURCE Pres~dent s Council on Integnty and Efflclency, “Consolidated Report on Federal Telecommumcatlons System (FTS)

Utlllzatlon prepared by the General Serv(ces Admlnlstrat(on Mar 16 1987
74 . The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Table 10.—Results of Commercial Long-Distance Call Sample by Agency

Estimated Unofficial Traffic

Agency a

calls (

0

/0) minutes (

0

/0) cost (

0

/0)

1. Department of Agriculture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 3.3 2.3

2. Department of Commerce. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 31.1 25.5

3. Department of the Interior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 1.0 .6

4. Department of Labor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 49.3 40.2

5. Department of Treasury. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 11.3 8.3

6. Office of Personnel Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 17.2 15.3

7. General Services Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 14.4 3.6

8. Environmental Protection Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 6.2 2.6

9. Small Business Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 40.6 42.5

10. Department of Health and Human Services . . . . . . . . 22 15.8 15.1

11. National Aeronautics and Space Administration . . . . 14 18.5 12.4

12. Department of Housing and Urban Development . . . . 36 36.8 35.8

13. Department of Education ., . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , ., . . . 44 28.6 25.3

Simple average . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25.8 21.8 14.6

Weighted average. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.9 15.8 11.0

aF~deTal Bu~~~u of investigationdid not participate in the audit Of COrnrnerCld telephone calls

SOURCE President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency, “Consolidated Report on Federal Telecommunications System (FTS)

Utilization, ” prepared by the GeneraI Services Administration, Mar 16, 1987

size of agencies) of the number of unofficial

calls found was 33.6 percent. These calls made

up 36.4 percent of the total telephone time sampled, and 33.3 percent of the total cost of the

calls sampled.

Table 10 shows that use of commercial lines

was quite different. The number of calls was

smaller, with a weighted average of 19.9 percent of the sample being classified as unofficial. In addition, these calls made up only 15.8

percent of the total time of commercial calls

sampled and only 11.0 percent of the cost. This

would suggest that many of the personal commercial calls were short duration or low-cost

calls.

An estimate of the cost of personal calling

to the government could be developed by comparing the cost of the personal calls in the sample to the relevant portion of the government

telephone. For example, 33.6 percent of the

$345 million spent for FTS off-network calls

is $116 million, 11.0 percent of the $15 million

spent on commercial calls is $1.6 million. Thus,

simple extrapolation from the audit would suggest that personal calling cost the government

around $118 million in 1985.

While this extrapolation gives a rough estimate, there are a number of reasons why it may

offer a distorted picture of personal telephone

use in the government. For example, calling

patterns in Washington may be quite different than those in other areas of the country,

so that personal use statistics found in the audit should not be applied to the entire Federal

telephone bill. Locations outside the Washington area were not included in the PCIE audit.

However, two agencies, the Departments of

Defense and Energy, sampled some areas outside Washington at the same time as the PCIE

audit. These agencies found unofficial use ranging from 40 to 50 percent, suggesting that personal use in Washington may be the same or

a little lower than elsewhere in the country.

However, the results are not strictly comparable because the sampling technique and study

methodology were different.
Ch. 3—Telephone Call Accounting ● 7 5

FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR GOVERNMENT

TELEPHONE MANAGEMENT

Need for New Policies

Most of the questions raised by the audit

still remain open. The exchange of letters between Congress and the Office of Management

and Budget resulted in modified guidelines for

the PCIE audit conducted in 1985-86. In addition, OMB issued guidelines related to handling of call detail records under the Privacy

Act. However, the question of the basis for future permanent guidelines on the management

of the government telephone must still be resolved.

The government has been collecting call detail information for long-distance calls for a

long time. The recent audit relied on no new

technology. A similar audit could have been

conducted at anytime in the past 10 years. As

mentioned above, GSA provides its 20 percent

sample record to all government agencies, although the agencies do not always use this

detailed call information on a regular basis. The

government has used this information when

there is sufficient need or motivation. For example, examination of long-distance telephone

records was an important element in the investigation of Department of Commerce employees suspected of using “inside information” in stock trading deals. A number of

employees were required to reimburse the government for long-distance calls as a result of

that investigation.37

The opportunity to create a usable government policy on telephone use is especially important in the light of the development of a

new long-distance system to replace FTS, and

in the light of plans of a number of agencies

to take control of their own telephone manage

ment. Several, like the Departments of Transportation and State, have already begun procuring their own local service for their

headquarters offices. In most cases, these

agencies have also purchased or leased new

telephone equipment, including switching

3’John M. Berry, “Three Commerce Employees Fired for

Profiting From Data, ” Washington Post, June 13, 1986, p. 1.

equipment with call accounting, call blocking,

and other modern features. Developing and

implementing a governmentwide policy may

become increasingly difficult as the system becomes more fragmented. GSA, as the governmentwide telecommunications manager, is currently trying to revise policies related to

long-distance telephone use.

A number of major questions need to be

decided on a long-term basis. How will personal

use be defined, and what level of personal use

will be tolerated? Will there be a continuing

role for audits, such as the one recently completed? Will local calls be included in future

audits? What will be the policy toward longdistance calls to suburban areas? What can be

done to ensure employees proper access to the

press, to union representatives? Can a sufficient level of protection be given to callaccounting records to prevent their misuse?

What role, if any, will service observation or

other types of “listening in” play in government telephone management? What alternative kinds of management techniques are appropriate for use on government telephones?

These questions are addressed in the following sections.

Establishing a Policy on Personal Use

GSA has been struggling to develop a successor to the current policy of “no personal

calls. A number of alternatives might be considered. This section will discuss only long-distance calls, which are the main focus of concern. Local calls will be considered later.

One approach would be to allow personal

long-distance calls at the government’s expense under certain circumstances, for example in case of accident or illness, to check on

babysitters, or transportation arrangements.

The problem here is to create a list that eliminates frivolous calling, but still covers all reasonable circumstances, including some as yet

unforeseen.
76 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

.

Another approach would be to allow workers to make private long-distance calls on FTS

on a cost-reimbursement basis, as is the policy in some private firms, universities, and

State agencies. The problem with this approach is the possible bookkeeping burden that

could be created for an organization as large

as the Federal Government. It would be necessary to establish a method for identifying

personal calls, billing employees, and collecting money. Organizations that allow reimbursement tend to be small offices with a collegial atmosphere; identification of personal

calls is basically an “honor system, ” reinforced

by supervisory review of monthly call records.

Usually, a printout of calls is circulated among

the staff each month so that each person can

initial his or her personal calls. While this approach makes it possible for employees to use

the telephone freely, and provides reimbursement to the employer, it does not protect privacy. Not only supervisors, but everyone in

the office typically sees the printout and could,

if they were interested, make note of who called

whom.

Using a call-accounting system, it would be

possible to develop a private printout or “telephone bill” for each worker’s telephone. However, identifying personal calls might still be

a problem. Workers would be “on their honor”

to claim personal calls; those with a poor memory or an underdeveloped sense of honor would

still make calls at the government expense,

unless some sort of regular audit were made.

Collecting payment for calls would require

the creation of an administrative structure and

would generate costs that would have to be

passed on to the users, thus raising the cost

of the calls. Presumably this would be little

different from other instances (bookstores,

cafeterias) where government employees pay

cash for a service; however, in most cases these

are usually provided by contractors rather than

directly by the government. It is not likely,

in any case, that agencies will want to go into

the “telephone business” on a regular basis

for their employees.

Another approach would be to allow government workers to make personal long-distance

calls from the telephones on their desks as long

as the calls are bill to a home number or personal calling card. This approach is quite feasible now, given the near universality of calling cards. However, it may be considered

illegal, since current regulations prohibit the

personal use of the government telephone as

well as FTS. Billing calls to a home number

is technically possible from many government

phones and could be made possible from the

others. The costs to government of such a policy would be primarily in terms of employee

time (for calls not made during lunch period

or break).

Because many personal calls may be calls

home made by Federal workers traveling out

of town, GSA has advanced a proposal to allow each Federal worker one call home per day

of travel. This practice is held to be typical of

personnel policies in private businesses. GSA

has estimated that the cost of such a policy

could be as high as $100 million per year, based

on the total travel days of Federal workers.

It is not possible to tell how many personal

calls are currently made by traveling workers,

thus it is not known how much moving this

particular type of call from the “prohibited”

to the “permitted” category would affect the

level of personal use of the system.

Exception Reports and Personal Use

Telecommunications managers in many private and State government telephone systems

have found that the use of “exception reports”

is the most effective way to discover patterns

of personal use. The computer software is used

to select and report on calls that have a high

likelihood of being unofficial, for example, calls

to audio text numbers, calls at unusual times

or to unusual destination areas, long or reoccurring calls. The ability to use computer software to identify only larger instances of possible personal use would also seem the most

cost-effective approach. Call-back audits, if it

is decided they are appropriate, could then be

conducted in those specific cases where a pattern of prohibited personal use was suspected,

rather than as a general approach to telephone

management.
Ch. 3— Telephone Call Accounting ● 7 7

Use of exception reports requires decisions

about the thresholds below which possible personal use can be tolerated or at least disregarded. This is generally not a problem in

the private sector, where it is a management

decision, tempered perhaps by the “corporate

culture. But in the Federal Government, there

is at least the philosophical difficulty caused

by the fact that any personal use is not only

contrary to policy, but illegal. Even if some

tacit threshold of “reasonable personal use”

were implemented, questions of equity might

still be raised. People who were caught exceeding the threshold could claim they are being

treated unfairly because “everyone else” is also

guilty to some lesser degree.

Many agencies are not currently equipped

to manage their telephone systems using exception reports. While some agencies may be

making regular use of the call detail records

provided by GSA, others are not. One Department of Education study noted that the printout exceeds 1,000 pages per month; there is

insufficient staff to study the printout on a

regular basis; in some cases the reports have

remained in unopened boxes for months.38

Similar complaints have been voiced by Department of Energy and the General Accounting Office. A simple listing of detailed call

records is generally of little help as a telephone

management tool. The information requires

further computer sorting–by extension, frequently called numbers, long calls, etc., in order to be of much use. Several agencies are

making use of call detail information from

GSA, from their own telephone systems, or

directly from telephone companies to develop

their own exception reports.

GSA is currently planning to make call detail information from its 20-percent sample

more useful to agencies by providing exception reports to agencies using FTS service.

GSA is also investigating ways to make call

detail data available to some agencies in machine-readable form so they can more easily

use their own computers to sort the information and develop management reports.

“U.S. Department of Flducation, Office of the Inspector General, l~t Ler rf’port ;(’ ~ 11-40100, tJu}y 25, 1986.

Of greater importance for the government

w-ill be establishment of clear guidelines for the

handling of exception reports and other computer-based call records to protect the privacy

of employees and to prevent any possible misuse of these records by supervisors or others

within the government.

Future Use of Call-Back Audits

One major question in the future of the government continuing telephone management

is how or whether call-back audits will be used

on an ongoing basis. One major purpose of the

recent PCIE pilot study was to provide a

benchmark of current telephone system usage.

The primary reason, however, was to develop

methods for detecting personal use in the future. There will likely be strong arguments to

make call-back auditing a regular feature in

Federal telephone management.

The PCIE pilot study was coordinated by

GSA, but the actual audit was done by the Inspector General of each participating agency.

Each of these agencies is issued its own report

and is developing its own action steps to improve management of its telephone system.

While GSA is the governmentwide manager

of FTS, agencies have considerable discretion

in correcting their own problems.

It is possible that within a few years, PCIE

will want to conduct another multi-agency

study in order to compare the results to the

recently completed study. Even if this is not

done, a number of individual agencies may decide to undertake studies on their own, using

the techniques developed in the PCIE pilot

study.

Even more likely is that agencies will want

to use a modified version of the call-back audit on a regular basis to complement their exception reports. Agencies that create exception

reports to identify patterns of “suspicious

calls (e.g., unusually high number of calls, unusually long calls, calls to unusual area codes)

could use the call-back method to determine

whether or not they are legitimate.
78 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

.

This use of the method still raises some questions concerning the privacy of telephone

users. However, it has the advantage of affecting a smaller population—only those whose

calls are “suspicious,” rather than the entire

work force. This approach has some appeal,

since it targets investigation at specific cases

of suspected misuse rather than placing the

entire work force under suspicion. As mentioned in an earlier section, it would be necessary for the agencies or for GSA to establish

guidelines for determining when a calling pattern warrants investigation.

Local and Suburban Calls

An additional question arises about the ongoing policy with regard to local calls. The recent PCIE audit did not cover local calls, and

GSA does not collect detailed information on

local calls on a regular basis and has no plans

to do so (such information could be obtained

from local telephone companies if especially

requested and paid for). In their second letter

to OMB, Reps. Edwards and Schroeder expressed the opinion that the government

‘‘should not procure or install any service, feature, equipment or system that would permit

it to obtain call-accounting data on individual

local calls. ” New equipment being purchased

by some departments will have the capability

to record detailed information on local as well

as long-distance calls. In some agencies, it is

programmed only to report time and duration

of local calls, not the destination telephone

number. At the present time there is no governmentwide policy on this topic, and individual

departments have to choose how to make use

of this feature of the equipment. A governmentwide policy on this topic would be useful.

Local calls generally make up a much smaller

proportion of telephone costs than long-distance calls, but they are not completely cost

free. Besides the “message unit” charge by the

local telephone companies (7.5 cents per call

in Washington), there is the cost for additional

telephone lines if the volume of personal calls

gets too high. In addition, there is the question of employee time.

The private sector telecommunications managers interviewed by OTA, however, expressed

no interest in accounting for local calls. They

saw excessive local phone use as a management

problem, but not a telephone management

problem. One said, “That’s up to the managers

and supervisors. If their people are on the

phone all day, incoming calls can’t come in,

so they tell them to keep it short. ”39

Calls to nearby suburbs will require separate

consideration. These calls may be functionally

the same as local ones, but are long-distance

calls due to the arbitrary boundaries of local

service areas. In the Washington area, for example, employees who telephone from downtown Washington to their homes in Bethesda,

MD, are making a local call, but those who call

home to Herndon, VA, are making a commercial toll call. A large number of the personal

commercial calls discovered by the PCIE audit probably fit into this category. This would

account for the relatively short duration and

low cost of calls shown in table 10–many of

them were brief personal business calls of the

“checking on the babysitter” variety. The government might decide to allow these employees one call or a reasonable number of calls per

day, as discussed above. On the other hand,

the government might take the position that

the cost of calling the suburbs, like the cost

of daily transportation to the suburbs, is the

employee’s responsibility, and might provide

resonable means (pay phones or the use of calling cards) for employees to make these calls

at their own expense.

Calls to Press, Union, or Public

Interest Groups

The policy of the PCIE pilot study was to

treat any call to a press organization, public

interest group, congressional office, or labor

union as “official business” without further

SgIn~Wiew, May 19g6, with the telwomutications mmager of an insurance firm.
Ch. 3—Telephone Call Accounting . 79

examination. However, as Reps. Schroeder and

Edwards point out,

. deeming such calls “official” does not address . . . the fact that the Government will

be able to determine who has called whom. The

availability of such information and the ready

means to analyze it remain in our minds the

most troubling-and as yet unresolved—

aspects of the PCIE proposal.

The question of how these calls will be treated

on an ongoing basis remains open, and gives

rise to the further question of who will have

access to call-accounting records.

There seems to be little doubt that the information in telephone call detail records could

be used to identify and possibly harass whistleblowers, people who speak with the press,

union organizers, and dissidents. While harassment of such people is a violation of the Civil

Service Reform Act, use of time and attendance records, for example, to harass whistleblowers does take place. 40 New technology

call-accounting software makes it much easier

than in the past to isolate the calls made from

particular telephones.

If call accounting and use of audits must be

used to protect the government investment in

its telephone system, it may also be necessary

to take positive action to protect the civil liberties of telephone users. This protection might

take the form of clear and enforceable regulations to protect the privacy of call-accounting

records. This kind of transactional data about

telephone calls, while probably not as personal

as the content of the calls themselves, does

warrant protection. 41 Regulations may be

needed to ensure that information remains under control of telephone system managers, and

perhaps inspector generals, who need it to manage the telephone system, and that data is not

available to supervisors or other managers who

deal directly with employees.

‘OMyron Peretz Glazer andd Penina Migdal Glazer, “Whistle

blowing, Ps-lcho)ogy Today, August 1986; Donald E, Soeken,

“J’accuse,” Psychology Today, August 1986. Also, interviews

with Donald E. Soeken, February 1986.

“U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Federal

Government Information Technology: Electronic Surveillance

and Civil Liberties, OTA-C IT-293, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, December 1985).

In the absence of clear policies and procedures regarding who has access to this information and what they do with it, the possibility for misuse of the information is great. The

challenge is to develop procedures that will pro

tect the privacy and first amendment rights

of Federal employees, without unduly hampering investigation into cases of wrongdoing.

Eavesdropping and Service

Observation

The PCIE study did not in any way involve

the content of telephone calls. “Service

observation” –listening into employees’ dealings with the public-is practiced in Federal

Government offices such as the Veterans

Administration, Internal Revenue Service, Social Security, and other agencies with customer

service responsibilities. Federal Information

Resources Management regulations require

Federal agencies to notify both employees and

the public that service observation may take

place, although there is no requirement to signal that an observer is on the line.

Eavesdropping on other types of calls as a

strategy to reduce personal use of telephones

is of questionable value and legality. The instances where Federal managers have been

found recording or eavesdropping on conversations for any purpose have caused public indignation. One recent incident prompted the

introduction of legislation to specifically prohibit listening in on or recording conversations

on the Federal telephone system, except in

specified instances such as service observation

programs (H.R. 502, 99th Cong., Federal Telecommunications Privacy Act of 1985).

Further, as is discussed in chapter 4, in at

least one case in the private sector, a court has

ruled that an employer’s listening in on an employee’s private telephone conversation is

eavesdropping and a violation of Title III of

the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets

Act (18 U.S.C. Sec. 2510), even though the employee was using a telephone normally included

in a service observation program.

Aside from the privacy and legal questions,

eavesdropping would also be a costly and im-
80 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions — — —. —

practical means of managing a telephone system. It would probably be unfair, as well, since

only a few workers’ calls would be affected.

Other Methods of Cost Control

Finally, given that government agencies will

be procuring new telephone equipment and

services over the next few years, it would be

prudent to consider the use of other methods

of telephone cost control that may supplement,

or even replace, call accounting as a means of

controlling the costs of personal calls. It should

be possible, given the right technological and

administrative tools, to greatly reduce the

number of unwanted or unauthorized calls.

One approach is education. Many employees

actually believe that calls on FTS (or an employer’s WATS lines in the private sector) are

free. The belief has developed over years in

which no accounting was made, where widespread personal use was tacitly tolerated, and

where employers and agencies themselves have

treated telephone service as a free good. The

PCIE audit has been a first step in demonstrating that the government policy is changing.

A first step in changing the calling habits

of government workers might be a nonpunitive educational campaign to inform employees of the new policy on personal calls once that

policy is developed. This campaign should

include information on the methods of call

accounting that are being used. As mentioned

earlier, the mere knowledge that an effective

recordkeeping system is in place has a dampening effect on personal calling. Educational

efforts should also fully inform government

workers of the kinds of calls that are permitted,

and inform them of alternative means of making necessary calls not permitted on the government telephone system.

Education programs with respect to telephone use can be effective. Agencies have

found that they reduced their employee’s level

of misuse (use of an expensive facility when

a cheaper one is available) through educational

programs aimed at increasing use of FTS and

reducing use of commercial lines.42

The other strategy is to make use of active

cost control measures discussed earlier in this

chapter, for example “blocking” and “level of

service access” features. Designing a telephone

system that is best suited for doing the government’s business might be preferable to

scrutinizing call records to catch government

workers who misuse a poorly designed system.

As mentioned earlier, modern telephone systems do allow for the programming of different levels of service, depending on the telephone needs of the end user.

The government currently has some capability in this regard, but it is not used to a great

extent. There are five levels of FTS telephone

service available; these affect only the end

user’s ability to make outgoing calls, not the

ability to receive incoming ones. The levels are:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Standard Service: Can call only government

telephone in local area.

Commercial Service: Can call government

local telephones and commercial lines (dial

9). This includes the ability to access commercial long-distance lines after dialing 9.

Government Service: Can call local and intercity government telephones, but no commercial lines.

National Service: Full access to both government and commercial telephone networks, but no international dialing.

International Service: Full access to Government and commercial networks and international dialing.

42See for example, U.S. Department

the Inspector General, “Report on

Changes, ” Sept. 11, 1981.

of Education, Office of

Review of Telephone
Ch. 3—Telephone Call Accounting ● 8 1

According to GSA, the distribution of these

levels of service among government full-service

agencies was as follows:

Level of service Main lines

1. Standar d 881 ( 0.6%)

2. Commercial servic e 532 ( 0.4%)

3. Government service 242 ( 0.2%)

4. National service 36,267 ( 25.6%)

5. International service 82,955 ( 58.7 To)

No level 20,443 ( 14.5%)

Total 141,320 (100.0%)

The “no level” category refers to lines that

could not be classified or were installed before

the classification went into effect.43

As shown above, 84 percent of the lines are

in the two highest levels of service. While it

is possible that such a large number of Federal workers need access to the full range of

national or international telephone service, it

is likely that the actual number with a business need to make extensive long-distance calling is lower than 84 percent. In the past, the

relative difficulty of changing the level of service on a given line once it was installed made

it difficult to assign specific levels of service

to specific types of users. To ensure that telephone service would be at least adequate to

the needs of any group of workers stationed

in a particular office, lines have usually been

assigned a fairly high level of service.

However, new digital telephone systems will

have greater flexibility and could allow more

extensive use of programmed levels of service

that can be changed as needed. Meaningful

levels of service that reflect the calling patterns

of government workers would have to be developed, and individual agencies would need

to determine which of their employees need access to commercial lines, which to FTS lines,

which to off-network destinations via FTS

lines, and so on.

Restrictions might also be assigned to the

telephones themselves, or to their users, based

on authorization codes. Both approaches have

1 ~]nformation taken from President’s Council on Intwrit}’

and Efficiency, “Consolidated Report on Federal Telecommunications System { FTS) Utilization, prepared by the CIeneral

Services Administration, c~ffice of the Inspector General, Mar.

16, 1987.

their advantages and disadvantages. Authorization codes are more flexible, since they depend on user needs rather than the location

of a particular telephone he or she is using at

the moment. On the other hand, authorization

codes require users to dial additional digits,

which can be a burden on those who make

many calls unless speed dialing is available.

Assigning restrictions to specific telephones

would require that levels of service be changed

every time offices are changed; this is possible with new digital telephone systems.

It maybe that the government will want to

pursue both options on an agency-by-agency

basis. In some agencies, the telephones may

restrict long-distance calling except for holders

of authorization codes. In other areas where

authorization codes are unworkable, such as

teleservice centers where employees make

many calls all day, telephones can be programmed so that codes would not be needed.

Other agencies may decide to assign levels of

service to telephones rather than to an individual via authorization codes. Some possible

levels of service might include:

●

●

●

●

●

●

●

Local Government Service: Can call only

government phones in local area.

Local Service: Can call local government

phones and commercial (dial 9) lines. PBX

or local telephone company Centrex blocks

long-distance access.

Government Long Distance Allowed: All

above plus access to FTS.

Off-Net Long Distance Allowed: All above

plus ability to call nongovernment phones

via FTS.

Commercial Long Distance Allowed: All

above plus access to commercial longdistance network.

Range Authorization: Users in the previous three categories could be limited to

calls in certain area codes or zones within

the country.

International Calling: All above plus international direct dialing.

141,ist de~’eloped by OTA based on categories in “Detailed

Description” manual of State of New I“ork, Office of General

Ser\’ices, Di~rision of Telecommunication.
82 . The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Clearly, establishing better levels of service

will not eliminate personal calling. It is still

possible for the holders of authorization codes

to make personal calls, to the extent allowed

by their assigned level of service. Similarly,

should levels of service be assigned to specific

telephones, it is possible that the people sitting near telephones capable of making longdistance calls will use them for personal calling. However, a call-restricting approach could

reduce the number of unofficial calls made on

the government’s telephones. The State of New

York found that many employees do not need

to make long-distance calls in the course of

their work and therefore do not need authorization codes. Only 60,000 codes are in effect

(there are 200,000 employees at locations

served by the State telephone system). While

codes are sometimes shared among members

of a small workgroup, it is still clear that not

every employee needs access to long-distance

service at work. Only about 20 percent of codes

assigned have a level of service that permits

full national or international dialing privileges.

The other 80 percent are restricted to government calls, off-network calls within the State,

or commercial calls within selected area codes.

Determinations about employees telephone

needs are made by the individual agencies, not

by the Division of Telecommunication.45

The Federal Government’s telephone system

must be nationwide and must serve many

different agency and program needs. However,

it appears that the principle of reducing the

government’s exposure to risk of unauthorized

calls by reducing the number of employees with

access to full-service telephones is a valid one.

GSA, as the governmentwide manager of the

telecommunication system could greatly aid

agencies in making use of new information

technologies in two ways. First, it could continue, through its own research, to develop

model methods for telephone system management and communicate these to the agencies.

Second, it could serve as a clearinghouse for

sharing innovative and useful approaches developed by the agencies.

45Interviews with Peter Arment, State of New York, Division of Telecommunication, September 1986. It should be noted

that the State of New York does use call accounting. Authorization codes are the backbone not only of the service levels,

but also of the billing system. Long-distance calls are charged

to the authorization code, so the call is billed to the proper department, even if the call is made from another office, or even

from a State office building in another city.
Chapter

Electronic Work Monitoring Law

and Policy Considerations
CONTENTS

Page

Part I: Why Is Monitoring an Issue? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Part II: Framing the Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Manner and Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Where Is the Future of Monitoring Headed?.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Part III: An Overview of Applicable Law. . ..........................101

The Framework for the Legal Analysis . ...........................101

The Concept of Employment at Will . .............................101

The Legal Status of public v. Private Sector Employees . ............102

Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...............102

Manner and Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...........107

Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......................110

Part IV: Concerns Not Addressed by Law . ..........................112

Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................113

Manner and Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...........113

Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......................113

What Does the Future Hold? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. ...114

Part V: Policy Options.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....................115

Tables

Table No. Page

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

Unions With Positions Against Computer-Based Work Monitoring . . . 86

Key Issues and Problem Areas in Monitoring Clerical and Customer

Service Workers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

A Framework for Addressing Electronic Work Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . 90

Factors Affecting Electronic Monitoring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

A Framework for Addressing Electronic Work Monitoring . .........101

A Framework for Addressing Electronic Work Monitoring . .........112
Chapter 4

Electronic Work Monitoring Law

and Policy Considerations

With perhaps the exception of marriage, no

other institution in society is so pervasive as

the employment relationship. 1 Roughly half

of an adult waking hours are spent at work.

Societal attitudes regarding personal dignity,

autonomy, and privacy, and the individual’s

sense of self are tied to the workplace. Electronic monitoring-the computerized collection, storage, analysis, and reporting of information about employees’ productive activity2

—may be an increasingly important element

in the relationship between employer and employee, and in the overall context in which work

gets done. Decisions about monitoring may affect the setting in which citizens work, and may

therefore have a broader social significance.

‘‘ W’(J ha~r(’ lx,(orne a nation of employees . For our generat ion, [ }}(I +(] t) ~t o ncr of 1 i f(’ is in another mans hands. ” F. Tannenhau m. .,1 l)hilo.soph~” of labor 9 ( 1951 I (as quoted in Hlades,

“ f+;mplojn]ent aL Wrdl \s. 1 ndi~iciual Freedom: on Limiting the

.lbusi~e I’;xc’rc’iw> of F;mployer Power, ” 67 Columbia Law Re-

~tieur 1404 ( 1967’1. Although the employment relationship is freely

entered Into, the ncvd to earn a li~ing, together with limitations

the indi~idual qu:il}fi(at ions and the ease with which he or

sh(, (’an I)(’ sut)stitut ed, often pltice the worker at a disadvanta~e in determining Lhe conditions under which he or she shall

work,

“’1’; lectronic work monitoring, ” “electronic monitoring, ” or

just “work monitoring” are Lerrns used interchangeably in this

chapter and elsewhere in this report to include computer-based

work monitoring and telephone service observation. Telephone

ser~’ice observation, although not typically computerized, is included because it is often used in conjunction with electronic

work measurement techniques.

Between 4 and 6 million office workers have

their work measured by computers, and many

millions more are affected by telephone call

accounting. 3 Proponents of electronic monitoring, principally the vendors of monitoring

equipment and software and some companies

that have installed monitoring systems, say

that monitoring provides employers with new

tools for managing resources, allocating costs,

improving productivity, controlling quality,

and reducing waste, fraud, and abuse of employer property. At the same time, however,

critics of work monitoring, principally some

labor unions and civil liberties organizations,

suggest that electronic work monitoring is destructive to the quality of work life and has

damaging effects on workers’ privacy, civil liberties, sense of dignity, and health.

This chapter is an attempt to provide the

policy maker with a conceptual framework for

addressing concerns over electronic monitoring, now and in the future. It begins by asking why monitoring has become a policy issue,

and what is different about electronic monitoring that causes these concerns. It then examines which of these concerns are currently

addressed by existing law and which are not.

Finally, it provides the policy maker with a

range of options from which to choose.

‘See ch. 2.

PART I: WHY IS MONITORING AN ISSUE?

Neither work monitoring, nor the application of technology to measure work, is new.

As chapter 1 of this report illustrates, the

detailed observation and recording of employee

performance has been an integral part of American industrialization from the mid-1800s

onward. During the early 1900s, work monitoring culminated in Frederick W. Taylor’s

“scientific management. While early work

monitoring techniques were confined to pencil and paper tallies of performance, technologies such as the time clock, time stamps, and

cyclometers were applied pervasively to the

measurement of work.4

‘E’or a more complete discussion of early forms of work monitoring, see ch. 1 of this report.

85
86 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Given this long history of work monitoring,

two

1.

2.

questions arise:

why is concern about work monitoring

among management, labor, and public interest groups only now surfacing? and

why is the application of electronics to an

old-technique unique or different enough

to cause this concern?

Simply put, the questions are “why now?” and

‘‘what new?” The first question is addressed

presently, while the second forms the discussion in the remainder of this chapter.

Although the question of “why now?” has

no simple answer, it is possible to point to three

broad trends that have contributed to the

emergence of monitoring as a policy issue: the

computerization of office work, the computerization of communications, and the rise of workers’ expectations and rights in the workplace.

The three types of monitoring considered in

this report—computer-based monitoring, telephone call accounting, and telephone service

observation—illustrate the way in which these

trends have propelled work monitoring into the

national policy arena.

The computerization of office work is less

than 15 years old—less than half of the working lifetime of a white-collar worker.5 Computerization has lead to rapid, fundamental

changes in the quantity, quality, and organization of office work. As a result, conflicts are

emerging between management and labor over

how work will be designed; who will have a say

in that design; and what the expectations of

employee performance, flexibility, and privacy

should be. The literature on the impact of automation on work is voluminous, and the reader

seeking more information is referred to another

OTA report, Automation of America Offices.6

Computer-based monitoring is one example

of how the computerization of office work has

lead to the recent emergence of work monitoring as a salient issue. Since 1982, computerbased monitoring has been the subject of na-

‘5U. S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Automation of America Offices, OTA-CIT-287 (Washington, DC: U.S.

Government Printing Office, December 1985), p. 8.

‘Ibid.

Table 11 .—20 Unions With Positions Against

Computer-Based Work Monitoring

Estimated

Union membership

Automobile, aerospace, and agricultural

workers (UAW) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Communications workers (CWA) . . . . . . . . . . .

Electrical workers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Electronic, electrical, technical, salaried, and

machine workers (IUE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Federal employees (NFFE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Government employees (AFGE) . . . . . . . . . . . .

Government employees (NAGE). . . . . . . . . . . .

Machinists (IAM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Newspaper guild (TNG) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Office and professional employees (OPEU) . .

Postal workers (APWU) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Railway, airlines, and steamship clerks

(BRAC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Service employees (SEIU) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

State, county, and municipal employees

(AFSCME) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Steelworkers (USWA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Teamsters (IBT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Telecommunications workers (TIU) . . . . . . . . .

Treasury employees (NTEU) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Typographers (ITU) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Utility workers (UWUA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1,350,000

550,000

1,000,000

160,000

150,000

265,000

300,000

940,000

40,000

125,000

320,000

200,000

650,000

1,100,000

1,230,000

2,000,000

50,000

120,000

80,000

56,000

NOTE” Totals are rounded.

SOURCE WestIn, Pr/vacy and Qua//fy of Worklffe Issues In Employee Mon/for/rrg,

contractor report prepared for OTA, May 1986 Bureau of Labor

Statlstlcs, 1980, AFL-CIO estimates, supplementary Inqu!nes at

indwldual unions, 1984

tional TV news programs, a stream of newspaper and magazine stories, and several recent

books. Although it has captured media attention, unions were the first principal critics of

computer-based monitoring.7 (Unions having

positions against computer-based monitoring

are listed in table 11). While the concerns of

each union are not necessarily identical in details, a broad consensus seems to be that work

speedups, enforced by close work monitoring,

are bad because they create harmful stress

among employees and also compromise the

TDuring the course of this study, OTA Spoke With a V~ietY

of union representatives having an interest in work monitoring, including the American Federation of Labor & Congress

of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the Communications

Workers of America (CWA), the Service Employees International Union (SE IU), Nine to Five: The National Association

of Working Women (9 to 5), American Federation of State,

County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the American

Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), and the Graphic

Artists International Union (GAIU). In addition, 9 to 5 and

AFGE were represented on this study’s Advisory Panel. These

unions, and many others, have taken a public stance against

computer-based monitoring.
Ch. 4—Electronic Work Monitoring Law and Policy Considerations ● 8 7

quality of work provided to the public. As an

issue of job stress, unions see work monitoring-and particularly computer-based monitoring—as linked to quality of worklife issues,

worker solidarity, job design, and health concerns. Worker privacy is also emphasized as

a concern of the unions, particularly the rights

of workers to see what records are being collected about their work performance.

Unions represent only a fraction of the estimated 4 to 6 million monitored employees, but

from a field study of 110 business, government,

and nonprofit organizations conducted for

OTA, it is also possible to offer some observations on the attitudes of employees in general

with respect to computer-based monitoring.

The field study revealed that fairness in monitoring is a critical factor in clerical and customer service employee acceptance.8 The emphasis on fairness highlights the fact that both

process and substance are involved in how employees respond to electronic work monitoring. In addressing process, employees seek genuine involvement in the design, testing,

application, and subsequent adjustment of new

office systems technology. Substantively, the

perceived reasonableness of monitoring depends on: 1) the fairness of the standards set,

2) the fairness of the measurement process employed, and 3) the fairness of the way measurements are used in employee evaluation. A

breakdown of these key issues is given in table 12.

The computerization of communications

refers to the fact that the information moving

within modern communication systems, such

as the telephone, is increasingly transmitted,

routed, stored, and processed in digital form

by electronic computers. Because of the computerization of communications, the use of employers’ telephone systems can be tracked with

greater precision and comprehensiveness than

was possible previously. Computer software

in some modern Private Branch Exchanges

SAla we9tin, and The Educational Fund for Individual

Rights, Privacy and Quality of Work Life Issues in Employee

Mom”toting, contractor paper prepared for OTA, May 1986; field

study conducted during 1982-84, and updated at all 110 sites

during 1985-86.

Table 12.—Key Issues and Problem Areas in

Monitoring Clerical and Customer Service Workers

Key issues/problem aspects

1. Fairness of work standards

Do standards fairly reflect the average capacities of

the particular work force?

Will they create unhealthy stress for many employees?

Do they account for recurring system difficulties and

other workplace problems?

Do they include quality as well as quantity goals?

Do they represent “fair day’s pay for fair day’s work?

Do employees share in productivity gains achieved

through new technology?

2. Fairness of measurement process

Do employees know and understand how the

measurements are being done?

Can measurement system be defeated, impairing

morale of those willing to follow the rules?

Do employees receive statistics on performance

directly and in time to manage work rate?

Is relationship between quality and quantity

communicated by supervisors when discussing

problems with performance levels?

Do supervisors communicate clearly that they are

taking system/workplace problems into account?

Are group rather than individual rates used when such

an approach is more equitable?

Is there a formal complaint process for contesting the

way work data is used?

3. Fairness in applying measurements to evaluation

Are there meaningful recognition programs for superior

performance?

Is work quantity only one of a well-rounded and

objective set of appraisal criteria?

Does employee get to see and participate in

performance appraisal?

Is there an appeal process from supervisor’s

performance appraisal?

Is there a performance-planning system to identify and

help performance problems?

SOURCE: Office of Technology Assessment, 1987

(PBXs), for example, permits station message

detail recording (SMDR), a form of telephone

call accounting that records from which telephone a call was made, what access code was

used, where the call went, and how long it

lasted. The call-accounting system can then

generate detailed, comprehensive reports of all

of the telecommunication activities of every

employee in a firm.9

Telephone call accounting is an example of

how the computerization of communications

has placed work monitoring on the public policy agenda. A pilot study of unofficial use of

‘See ch. 3 for a more detailed discussion of telephone cailaccounting systems.
88 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Federal Government long-distance telephone

usage has been completed,10 and the implications of this study for employee privacy caused

concern in both Congress and the press.11 Although most of these concerns were over the

manner and method by which this study would

be carried out (and are therefore addressed below), at least some of the concerns are over the

purposes for which it might be used. One concern, in particular, is that call accounting might

be used to discourage whistleblowers, to stifle dissent or union activity, or to limit news

media access to information.12 Plans are being made to audit Federal employees’ long-distance calls on a regular basis, raising additional

concerns about the vigilance with which privacy concerns are addressed. The Office of

Management and Budget (OMB) has issued

proposed guidelines on compliance with the

Privacy Act, in contemplation of a permanant

call-accounting capability in executive agencies. 13 In the private sector, where about

30,000 call-accounting systems have been

sold,14 there are similar concerns over privacy

and the potential for misuse. The issues surrounding the purposes of call accounting, in

both the public and private sector, are considered in more detail below.

‘The unofficial use of the Federal Telecommunications System (FTS) or other government-provided long-distance services

is illegal. 41 CFR 201-38.007 and 5 CFR 735.205. For a detailed

discussion of the “Telephone CalI Reduction Initiative, ” conducted by the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency

(PCIE), General Services Administration, and the Office of Management and Budget, see ch. 3.

11 In Mmch of 1985, Rep+ Don Edwards (Chair, Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights) and Patricia Schroeder

(Chair, Subcommittee on Service) sent letters questioning OMB

Deputy Director, Joseph R. Wright, on the privacy problems

involved with the study. The ACLU, The New York Times (“U.S.

Phones Raise Issue of Privacy: New Equipment Would Provide Detailed Record of Calls, ” Burnham, Mar. 17, 1985), The

Federal Times (“Planned Phone Audit Brings Blast From Several Groups, ” Montague, Mar. 25, 1985) and the Washington

Post (“U.S. Agencies Use High Tech To Curb Workers, ” May

9, 1985) and considerable televisions coverage all brought public attention to the subject.

‘%etter of Rep. Edwards to Joseph Wright, question No. 6.

Mr. Wright’s response was that the program would not be looking at local calls, and that long-distance calls to news media,

congressional offices, public interest groups, etc., would be considered business calls for purposes of the study.

*’Notice by the Office of Management and Budget, 51 Federal Register 18982 (Friday, May 23, 1986).

“See ch. 3.

Finally, heightened public and worker expectations regarding privacy, health, and worklife quality help to explain why monitoring has

emerged only recently as a public policy issue.

The period from 1965 to 1986 saw the growth

of concern over privacy in the public consciousness,15 in the courts and legislatures,l6 and in

the scholarly literature.17 The concern over

privacy during the past 20 years largely tracks

the introduction and proliferation of the computer as a basic tool for the emerging information economy. It is no surprise, therefore,

that privacy issues have made their way to the

office environment, where computers have had

their most pervasive influence. As we will see,

however, the concept of privacy maybe inadequate to address most of the issues involved

in work monitoring.

At the same time as privacy became an important theme in public policy, there were rising medical, media, and public concerns about

the health effects of stress at the office workplace. Studies showed that stress among office workers was a contributing cause of ad1%ee e.g., The Dimensions of Privacy: A NationaJ Opinion

Research Survey of Attitudes Toward Privacy, conducted for

Sentry Insurance by Louis Harris & Associates and Dr. Alan

F. Westin, 1979. The survey revealed, among other things, that

strong majorities of full-time employees believed that it was

no longer proper for employers to ask job applicants about many

topics that had once been traditional to co~lect (e.g., information on an applicant’s spouse, neighborhood, membership in

organizations, residential status, arrest, and similar matters).

A 1983 Survey, also by Harris & Associates, reaffirmed the importance of privacy in the public mind.

‘GOver 20 Acts of Congress have been passed since 1970 to

address problems of individual privacy. See: U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Federal Government Information Technology: Electronic Record Systems and 1noi”vidual

Privacy, OTA-CIT-296 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government

Printing Office, June, 1986), p. 15. Most recent legislative efforts to protect privacy include the Counterfeit Access Fraud

and Abuse Act of 1985 and the E~ectrom”c Commum”cations

Privacy Act of 1986. None of these statutes are addressed specifically at employment, however. At the State level, 21 States

have passed legislation dealing specifically with the confidentiality of employee records, and 34 States have statutes concerning the use of the polygraph in employment. Compilation

of State and Federal Privacy Laws (1984-85 cd. ) (Washington,

DC: Privacy Journal), and January 1986 supp.

ITSee, e.g., Robert Ellis Smith, Workrights, Westin, Computers, Personal Admim”stration, and Citizen Rights, U.S. National Bureau of Standards Special Publication 500-50 (1979),

and the report of the U.S. Privacy Protection Study Commission, Personal Privacy in an Information Society (1977). See

also: OTA, Electronic Record Systems, op. cit.
Ch. 4—Electronic Work Monitoring Law and Policy

verse health impacts, such as heart disease,

and that clerical workers—because of their

‘‘high demand/low control’ working situations

—were among the occupations in office work

most “at risk. “18 Although the studies did

not find harmful stress dependent on computer

use (high levels of stress did show up in highproduction, closely monitored clerical work

that was not computer-based), the growing

number of ‘‘machine paced” and “machine

monitored’ computer-based clerical workers

generated similar concerns over stress and

health.

The workplace context in which privacy and

health concerns fermented was also changing.

Women comprise roughly half of the work force

in America today and are especially vulnerable

to the impact of microelectronics on the work

“of 1 )() con~rn{~n occupations, the following 12, ranked from

most t[~ It]ast stressful were said to be most stressful:

1, t.iil){)rer i’, \lanager/ administrator

2. .Secret:ir} h. M’aitress/waiter

3 I n~p({tf~r g, ~lachine operator

4 Clinic”~l lab techni~ian 10. Farm owner

5, ( ) ffice manager 11, Nliner

6. l’oreman 12, I’ainter

(as r{p{)rted in Nleek\, “}!’orker’~ Compensation and Stress,”

:\’i’ (’1’(’( ,J. 171, 174-’75 ( 19S4) [based on a 1977 N IOSH study]).

See {h. 2 [~f this r~pf~rt, whit’h discusses the N I(JSH study in

greater detail.

Considerations

environment. 19 Accompanying shifts in

● 8 9

the

structure of American industry, from heavy

industry to service and information sectors,

was a growing recognition of workers’ legal

rights—quite apart from those obtained by collective bargaining.20 These new rights are being introduced primarily at the State level, and

include right-to-know, privacy, safety, and discrimination laws. What impact the increasing

alarm over drug abuse and subsequent drug

testing will have on this trend toward greater

legal protection for workers is uncertain.

Of course, understanding the factors that

have made monitoring into a public policy issue is of little help in understanding what the

specific issues are, and why electronic monitoring raises problems that differ from conventional forms of work monitoring. Part II addresses these questions.

-—

‘%ee: Hartmarm, Kraut, Tiny (eds. ), (’on] purer ~’hips and P:~-

per Clips: Technolog.v and \{ ”omen l;mplfj.~ nlenf [\l’a\hington, DC: National Academ~’ Press, 1986).

~(’See, e.g., “Beyond Unions: A lte~olution in k;nlpl[~~c(

Rights is in the Making, ” Business Ilreek, tluly 8, 1985 (c[)~’er

story); and ‘‘The New Industrial Relations, 4‘ Business 11’wIA,

May 11, 1981; and more rerentlJ’, U.S. Labor Law and thtI 1’u-

.!wre of Labor-Management Cooperation, BI,MR 104 (Jl’ashington, DC: U.S. Department of I.ahor, Rureau of I,al Nlr-11 an agement Relations and Cooperati\re Progr,i IIIs, 1 W f; ).

PART II: FRAMING THE DEBATE

As seen in the first section of this chapter

and elsewhere in this report, electronic monitoring raises a variety of distinct concerns

ranging from worker participation in job design, to worker solidarity, to privacy, to stress

and health, to worker dignity, to quality of

worklife, and more. Yet not all of these concerns are of the same type; some relate to the

way that electronic monitoring is implemented

in a given work environment, some to the use

of monitoring to drive the worker, some to the

use of information gained in monitoring, and

some to the very fact that monitoring is conducted at all. Moreover, these concerns differ,

depending on the type of monitoring being discussed; computer-based monitoring raises the

issue of stress, while telephone call accounting engenders concerns over privacy. Clearly,

electronic monitoring is a multifaceted issue,

with no simple term of analysis.

Furthermore, upon close scrutiny, objections

to electronic monitoring resist categorization

in terms of traditional legal and normative

principles. As the legal analysis in part III of

this chapter shows:

●

●

Except when monitoring is used for illegal ends, even some of its more onerous

forms (e.g., machine pacing) are entirely

legal.

The concept of privacy, whether based on

law or on ethical considerations, seems too

narrow to address many concerns over the

types of employee monitoring considered
●

The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

in this report. The performance of tasks

at work is, for the most part, an inherently

public activity, which is done on behalf

of the employer at the place of employment. An employee would likely find it difficult to assert a right of privacy in his

or her performance at tasks such as computer claims processing.

Although some legal doctrines may be implicitly-aimed at-vindicating a person’s

claim to bodily or mental integrity, autonomy, or dignity, the law recognizes no

‘‘right of dignity" or “right of autonomy’

as such.21

Not only does monitoring escape the “net”

of what is normally considered private information, its infusion into the workplace seems

so gradual an extension of past practices that,

if there is no real basis in doctrines of privacy

for objecting to the proverbial supervisor with

a clipboard, there seems to be none to using

ZlCon9ider, for example, the common law torts of:

(1) Battery, which is an intentional and unconsented-to contact, and in which “[tJhe element of personal indignity has always been given considerable weight”;

(2) Assault, which stems from an interest in freedom from

apprehension of a harmful or offensive contact (as distinguished

from contact). This individual is protected against a purely mental disturbance of his personal integrity, Damages are recoverable for mental disturbance (fright, humiliation, etc. ) as well

as any physical illness that flows from it, but an assault must

create an apprehension of immediate physical harm; and

(3) Infliction of Mental Distress, an action in which the infliction of mental injury itself became vindictable. It is most often

found in cases of intentional, flagrant acts, where “extreme outrage’ of a defendant’s act allows recovery (“your husband has

been in an accident ’’–or situations in which there is repeated

hounding or threatening of the plaintiff). Mental distress must

exist and be severe, and no recovery can be obtained for mere

profanity, obscenity or abuse.

W.L. Prosser, Presser orI Torts, 4th ed. (St. Paul, MN: West

Publishing Co., 1971), pp. 802 et seq.

Some court opinions suggest a close correlation between common law rights of privacy and individual dignity, autonomy,

and personal freedom. For example, in Gerety, “Redefining

Privacy, ” 12 Harvard Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Journal 233-296, the author reviews several opinions dealing with

the common law right of privacy, and concludes that:

. . . [n]o fair measure of damages-general or specific-can be arrived at until we acknowledge that it was not the unexcused touching or the unwarranted search as such that caused the injury. What

was injured, rather, was that peculiar aspect of dignity and freedom invested in reasonable expectations of privacy.

Id. at 265 (emphasis added). Although it may be the case that

privacy rights entail interests in dignity and freedom, the converse does not necessarily follow: interests in dignity, freedom,

and autonomy are not necessarily privacy interests. To vindicate interests in dignity and autonomy, in other words, requires

a separate and independent basis in law, such as privacy.

Table 13.—A Framework for Addressing Electronic

Work Monitoring

Concern Criteria

Purpose of monitoring . . . . . . Fairness Relevance

Completeness

Targeting

Manner and method of

monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Autonomy Intensiveness

Dignity Intrusiveness

Privacy Visibility

Type

Leakiness

Permanence

Effect of monitoring . . . . . . . . Health Frequency

Stress Continuousness

Regularity

Control

SOURCE: Office of Technology Assessment, 1987

a computer to do much the same thing. As

chapter 1 explained, some form of work monitoring has always been apart of employment,

and the fact that technology introduces new

or more efficient ways to monitor work may

not be in itself an obvious incursion on privacy.

Some reason must therefore be found why

monitoring work by means of microelectronics

is significantly different from past forms of

monitoring, and what this difference means in

terms useful for formulating policy.

To that end, OTA has developed an analytical framework that draws on familiar concepts

and applies them to the new capabilities and

characteristics of electronic monitoring. Table

13 summarizes this framework. In general,

most claims about the deleterious effects of

electronic monitoring can be understood as

statements about its purpose, its manner and

method of implementation, or its effects. It is

this framework that guides the discussion in

the rest of this chapter. In this part of the chapter, the purpose/method/effect breakdown is

examined, in light of the characteristics of monitoring technologies, to show why electronic

monitoring may present unique problems for

the relationship between employee and employer. Then, in part III, the variety of legal

mechanisms for addressing problems in the

purpose, method, and effect of monitoring are

examined. Finally, the chapter looks at the

types of claims the law does not address, and

explores the options Congress may wish to pursue in light of these unresolved issues.
Ch. 4—Electronic Work Monitoring Law and Policy

Purpose

Concerns about the purpose of monitoring

refer to the ends that the employer seeks to

further through a given monitoring technique.

By and large, electonic work monitoring may

be used to measure and document a variety

of employee transactions, for purposes of:

● planning and scheduling personnel and

equipment;

• evaluating individual performance and

personnel decisions (promotion, retraining, discharge, etc.);

• increasing productivity by increasing individual performance (feedback on speed,

etc., and work pacing);

• providing security for employer property

(including intellectual property) and personnel records;

Ž investigating incidents of misconduct or

crime, or human error; and

• increasing management control, discouraging union organizing activities, identifying dissidents, etc.

Attacks on the purpose of a monitoring system can be understood as complaints about

its fairness. While illegal monitoring purposes

present little difficulty for finding the practice

unfair (see part III), its use for currently legal

purposes is more problematic. In general,

employees and unions oppose the use of monitoring for purposes which, while legal, they regard as unfair. For example, electronic evaluations of employee performance that reflect

inadequately or arbitrarily the task the employee is performing, or that place demands

on workers’ time and energy that are unrealistic or unduly burdensome, are likely to raise

objections by employees and unions.

Because electronic monitoring represents an

unprecedented ability to measure job performance exhaustively and in great detail (see chs.

2 and 3), several monitoring system characteristics become key items in ensuring fairness;

particularly the relevance, completeness, and

targeting of the monitoring.22

ZZTheSe factors are illustrative of the types of concerns raised

because of new technologies; they are hardly exhaustive, and

the reader may have his or her own in mind.

Considerations ● 91

Relevance.—A work monitoring technique

that is relevant is one that measures performance related to the goal that the monitoring

seeks to further. Thus, if billing customers in

a timely fashion is the goal, a relevant measure would be whether customers were billed

on time. A less relevant measure would be the

number of “fields” in a customer account database that are filled in per hour.

Completeness.–A monitoring system is complete if it takes into account all, rather than

some, of the performance parameters relevant

to a given goal or behavior. If, therefore, a job

entails both talking with as many customers

as possible during a given time and handling

customer needs in a satisfactory way, a monitoring system that measures only the number

of customers handled is incomplete.

Targeting.-A monitoring system that generates information on particular individuals

within an organization, rather than the group

or work process of which that individual is a

part, is a targeted system. A monitoring system that reveals only aggregate organizational

performance is “untargeted” or categorical.

Using these definitions as measures of the

fairness of monitoring technologies, one can

begin to understand why new technology

raises issues of fairness of purpose. For example, in computer-based monitoring, where a

computer is used to tabulate total keystrokes

during a given period of time, the question of

the relevance and completeness of keystroke

monitoring to the overall task can become a

point of contention. In contrast to nontechnological methods of measuring keystrokes, such

as a typing test (where typing speed may be

relevant only to qualifying for a job), computerbased keystroke monitoring may make typing

speed an end in itself, without regard to the

purpose for which speed is valued-meeting

a deadline as part of an overall project goal,

for example. An overreliance on typing speed

might also become an isolated, incomplete

measure of job performance.

In telephone call accounting, issues of completeness and targeting become important to

ensuring fairness. If, for example, the purpose

of the audit is to reveal excessive numbers of

long-distance calls, failure of the call-account-
92 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

ing system to also reveal extenuating circumstances may be deemed unfair. If the call-accounting audit targets specific individuals,

rather than “cost centers, as abusers of longdistance service, failure to implement special

procedures for giving notice to that individual, hearing explanations, and allowing challenges may give rise to charges of unfairness.

In service observation monitoring, fairness

may require providing safeguards to subjective supervisory judgments about the operator’s quality of customer service. In other

words, if the purpose of the monitoring is to

evaluate overall employee performance, it may

be claimed unfair unless a more complete

method of evaluation is used.

Many of the complaints reported to OTA

about electronic monitoring suggested that

monitoring may itself change what counts as

a relevant or complete measure ofjob performance. If, for example, a job previously entailed

finishing a given batch of insurance claims by

the end of a week, a monitoring system that

only measures the number of claims finished

per hour may change that job by changing

what counts as a relevant measure of performance, and by foreshortening the time in which

a goal is to be achieved. The means for assessing performance may often become an end in

itself.

Similarly, a monitoring system that is incomplete, or measures only one of several job

parameters, may unintentionally change the

nature of the job itself. If, for example, only

quantity is measured, quality maybe sacrificed,

Manner and Method

Method refers to what information is

gathered by monitoring, how it is gathered,

and what is done with it once gathered. As

such, issues about the manner and method of

electronic monitoring reflect concerns about

worker autonomy, dignity, and privacy. Care

should be taken in reading these words in a

too narrow or legalistic way—particularly the

word privacy. As we shall see, few of the concerns electronic monitoring and privacy can

be vindicated in a court of law. Nevertheless,

complaints about a loss of autonomy in job

decisionmaking, about the indignity of being

“watched” by a machine, or the invasive feeling of having one’s every move at work

recorded, reflect deeply held societal values.

In a work environment, we expect, and indeed

hope, that our performance will be evaluated

by our superiors, yet we may balk at the

thought that someone will be constantly

watching “over our shoulder. ”

The reason why concerns about autonomy,

dignity, and privacy are raised in electronic

monitoring has to do with the fact that computers are ever-vigilant; unlike human supervisors, they do not tire of observing and recording the minutiae of employee performance. In

some cases, computers are also being used to

pace workers to speed their work rate.23 In

the process of using computers as surrogates

for immediate human supervision, employees

may complain of “dehumanization” and isolation. They may perceive themselves as a component of a system, rather than as human actors involved in and concerned with a larger

enterprise. It is not difficult, under such circumstances, to understand complaints about

a loss of autonomy and dignity:

The electronic monitoring is one of the most

offensive and pernicious aspects of our jobs.

1984 is nowhere more apparent than in the

electronically monitored Equitable office. We

“clock in” at 7 a.m. and from then until the

end of the day, the VDT is counting every

keystroke. At the end of the day, managers

have a computer read-out from which productivity is determined and then averaged with

subjective factors such as attitude to determine our rate of pay. Being watched, counted,

and paced by a machine makes it very difficult to take pride in your work.24

It should be emphasized, however, that the

potential for creating an onerous work environment through electronic work monitoring

is not always realized. Indeed, whether computer-based work monitoring becomes "offenW3ee ch. 2.

24FrOm Alm weStin,~d TheEducational Fund for Individual Rights, Privacy and Qud”ty of Work Life Issues in Employee Mom”toring, contract paper prepared for OTA, May 1986,

p. 76; taken from testimony before House Subcommittee (?) 1984.
Ch. 4—Electronic Work Monitoring Law and Policy

sive and pernicious depends crucially on the

manner and method by which the system is

administered, and what the overall work environment is like. For example, one of many interviews conducted for OTA, by Alan Westin,

told of a suburban newspaper’s circulation and

classified ad department that monitored records

via visual display terminal (VDT) in a way that

minimized complaints:

The management has a daily job chart that

records each operator’s time on and off the machine, errors made, and accounts handled. “I

don’t mind that at all, ” Alice said. “They don’t

judge us on the numbers here; they take into

account changes in the business service we are

making, and the way customers—some of

them–need more service than others. Its not

a Big Brother thing. ” She also noted that

management’s attitude led employees to cooperate informally to take heavy loads off one

another when the calls piled up at one or two

stations. Alice also said that the pay was

“OK” by not “great” at this newspaper, but

she liked the job very much because “the benefits are excellent, you can take courses at

night and have the company pay for it, and

people you work with are fun to be with. ”

Several characteristics of electronic monitoring systems seem to be key to preserving

worker autonomy, dignity, and privacy:

Ž Intrusiveness.— Intrusiveness is concerned

with the degree to which monitoring involves probing the individual’s body or

mind. A monitoring technique that is intrusive is one that requires an individual

to reveal facts about his or her thoughts,

beliefs, or states of mind; to submit samples of body fluids or tissues, or to expose

body parts not ordinarily exposed. A monitoring technique is not intrusive if the information collected thereby is obtained

without probing into the person’s mind

or body. Note that intrusiveness concerns

how information is gathered, and not what

that information is.25 Techniques may be

‘sFor example, pumping the stomach of a person suspected

of ‘‘possessing’ illegal drugs is intrusive. See, e.g., Rochin t’.

Cdjfornja, 342 U.S. 165 11952) (The fourth amendment guarantees physical security of one’s person against procedures that

“shock the conscience.

●

●

●

Considerations ● 9 3

intrusive even if the information they yield

is information ordinarily observable.

Intensiveness.– Intensiveness is the

amount of detail about a worker’s performance that monitoring reveals. An employee log of personal calls made on an employer’s phone reveals only the number

of personal calls. A telephone call-accounting system reveals much more detail; i.e.,

length of call, destination of call, the number called, which phone was used, time of

day, etc.

Visibility.-Visibilitv refers to the degree

to which monitoring is apparent to the person being monitored. A computer-based

monitoring system that reports back to

the employee information on the number

of keystrokes entered is more highly visible than one that reports this information

only to supervisors. In general, the more

visible the monitoring system, the more

control the employee has in matching his

or her performance to expectations. Visibility is important in part because of its

influence on the psychology of power relationships at work. Whereas unaided monitoring by a supervisor may require a faceto-face confrontation with the employee—

which both informs the employee that he

or she is being monitored and ‘humanizes’

the monitoring by allowing explanations

and personal interaction—electronic monitoring allows the supervisor to remove

him or herself from the situation and use

the machine as intermediary, thereby

avoiding the human relationships that act

as a corrective to overly rigid work environments.

Type.—Type refers to the nature of the information gathered through monitoring.

Information can be either substantive or

transactional. Substantive information

concerns the actual content or meaning

of communications or documents. Transactional information is information about

substantive information; the number or

type of messages sent, to whom, how

often, in what sequence, etc. Telephone

service observation is an example of monitoring substantive information, since it
94 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

●

●

reveals the content of employees’ phone

conversations. Telephone call accounting,

by contrast, reveals only transactional information, such as the destination called,

length of call, cost of call, etc. The distinction between substantive and transactional information can become blurred,

especially where computers are used to

piece together patterns of transactions,

thus allowing inferences regarding the

substantive content of those transactions.

The distinction is important, since both

societal expectations and the law generally endow substantive information with

greater importance and protection.

Leakiness. -Leakiness refers to the ability of information gathered by monitoring for one reason to be used for another.

Thus, information gathered through telephone call-accounting systems tends to be

leaky, because the information gathered

can be used to track individuals’ extrawork activity, despite the fact that it was

collected for purposes of detecting abuse.

Computer-based keystroke monitoring, on

the other hand, tends to be relatively

“tight,” since the information gathered

often has little use outside of the context

of job performance. Like other criteria,

leakiness is a factor in determining the legality of certain information practices.26

Permanence. —Permanence refers to

whether the information gathered by monitoring becomes a record, and how long

that record remains in an employee file.

Some information obtained by monitoring is transient, and never becomes a record. A computer-based monitoring system

that determines when the employee has

finished a certain job and is ready to move

on to the next (i.e., machine pacing) may

generate no records, and is thus transient.

Telephone service observation, on the

other hand, may entail writing comments

on an evaluation sheet, which then becomes part of the employee’s permanent

record.

2%3ee part III of this chapter.

Permanence is important from a privacy standpoint, since privacy law very often regulates

what may be done with records that are permanent.27

The way in which these factors interact with

electronic monitoring to give rise to problems

of autonomy, privacy, and dignity can be illustrated by a brief consideration of the technologies considered in this report.

Computer-based monitoring may be implemented in an intensive and invisible manner.

In other words, the computer can be used intensively to chart periods of peak performance

at a VDT, time spent away from the terminal,

time spent idle, and other minutiae of job performance. The monitoring may be of extremely

low visibility-the employee may not know

how she is doing, but does know that she is

being “watched.” The knowledge that one’s

every move is being watched, without an ability to watch the watcher, can create feelings

that one’s privacy is being invaded and that

one is an object under close scrutiny. Being

subject to close scrutiny without an ability to

confront the observer may mean the loss of

a feeling of autonomy. This may have subtle

yet profound implications for interpersonal

power relationships at work. In French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre’s analysis of relationships between persons, he observes that:

. . . [w]ith the Other’s look the “situation” escapes me. To use an everyday expression which

better expresses our thought, I am no longer

master of the situation .28

Activities at work that cannot in fact be observed, measured, and thus controlled, are by

default discretionary activities. In the past,

the time an employee spent going to the bathroom, talking with his or her spouse, pausing

between tasks, and so on, were largely discretionary. Obtaining detailed information on

such activities was either impossible, impractical, or not cost-effective. What constituted

“acceptable” employee performance was in

27* the discussion of “systim of records” under the

Privacy Act in part III.

z~smtre, Being ~d Nothinfless, as reprinted in The Phl~osophy of Jean-Pau) Sartm (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1972),

p. 203. Emphasis in original.
Ch. 4—Electronic Work Monitoring Law and Policy Considerations ● 9 5

—

part a function of the information a supervisor could collect. There was some domain of

behavior which an employee could call his own,

and for which he knew he was unaccountable.

But, because the computer dramatically enhances the intensiveness of human observation, the employee may feel powerless and exposed under the gaze of electronic monitoring.

And, since face-to-face exchanges between employee and supervisor often involved negotiations and room for human error and “slippage”

in the performance of tasks, the employee’s

relationship to a supervisor was on more even

footing. But with systems of evaluation that

are invisible to the employee, the transactions

between people that allowed the employee to

assert his autonomy may be minimized.

Different sorts of concerns about privacy and

autonomy are present in telephone call

accounting. Call accounting raises questions

about thepemumence and leti”ness of records

generated. The legal implications of these factors are dealt with below, but here we call attention to the effect of the existence of records

on employee behavior. If records of all calls

are being kept, the employee knows he or she

may be required to justify those that are ‘questionable. ’ Under these circumstances, an employee may be less inclined to make calls that

cannot be easily justified as business calls. This

may have an impact on “whistleblowers” -

those seeking to disclose unethical or illegal

corporate or government activity. Although

reprisals against the whistleblowing employee

may be forbidden by law or company policy,

the knowledge that all of one’s long-distance

or even local calls are being accounted may

nevertheless act to “chill” such activities. Even

calls that can be justified as “business” or

‘‘official” may be subject to supervisors’ judgments regarding propriety or business sense.

And, although the employer does have a right

to protect its property by ferreting out nonbusiness calls, the process of identifying the

destination and identity of nonbusiness calls

may compromise an employee’s desire to conceal the identity of persons he or she is calling.

In short, automated telephone call accounting systems, if implemented in a pervasive

fashion throughout government and business,

may go “wide of the mark, ” and have incidental impacts on employees’ calling decisions,

and perhaps on the employer-employee relationship, which were not anticipated. While in

the past, employers had no choice but to treat

employees as if they were honest,29 the ability to store and process massive amounts of

data may reverse this de facto presumption.

Implicit in the installation of call-accounting

systems is the proposition that at least some

employees cannot be trusted in their use of the

employer’s property. While the proposition

may in fact be correct, the system nevertheless audits the calling activity of all employees, treating each as a potential abuser of facilities. Moreover, as the ability to detect abuse

is refined through technology, the standard of

what constitutes an abuse may be lowered—

while previous technology capabilities only allowed an employer to pay attention to extraordinary costs, new telephone call-accounting

systems may allow assessments of calls that

are “unnecessarily long” or “redundant.”

Customer service observation shares many

of the same characteristics with other monitoring systems. Visibih”ty seems an important

factor in assessing the manner and method in

which customer service observation is carried

out. The practice of listening in on employee

telephone conversations with customers is not

new, nor is it the result of recent technological innovations. It is also not essentially electronz”c monitoring, but instead a variant on human supervision and observation of employees.

But, since today’s technology permits a supervisor to listen in on an extension at a remote

location with no audible “click’ or diminution

in volume, service observation is also a relatively low visibility form of monitoring. These

factors have lead at least one organization, the

Newspaper Guild, to complain that

. . . the [employee’s] inability to tell under the

present equipment whether or not she is being monitored has inevitably given rise to feel-

‘Whe basic tool for measuring abuse-the monthly telephone

bill–was inefficient (requiring a human to scan and “flag” expensive calls) and revealed only flagrant abuses.
96 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

ings of concern, nervousness and insecurity

and has made the job. . . additionally and unnecessarily burdensome.30

In addition, telephone service differs from

other forms of monitoring in that it reveals a

substantive type of information; i.e., the content of employee conversations. As is discussed

in part III of this chapter, privacy concerns

are most often present where the type of information being gathered is substantive,

rather than transactional. Because of this,

courts have held that employers can only listen into business, and not personal, phone calls.

Recognizing employers’ needs to monitor the

quality of service its representatives offer, no

court has held service observation to be unlawful per se.

Effects

Unlike concerns over the purpose, manner,

and method of monitoring, concerns over its

effects are more tangible, less value laden, and

are directed at the physical and psychological

well-being of the employee. Because of this,

most parties opposing monitoring have couched

their arguments in terms of observable, objective effects on employee health caused by the

stress involved in working at a monitored job.

As we saw in chapter 2, however, proving that

monitoring causes stress can be very difficult,

and reliable data hard to find.

Electronic monitoring may create new demands on employee time, attention, and speed

that give rise to concerns about stress. Among

the factors that cause these concerns are the

frequency, continuousness, regularity, and control involved in the monitoring. Each of these

is described and discussed below.

• Frequency. — Frequency refers to how often

the act of monitoring takes place. A callaccounting audit or computer-based keystroke monitoring that is conducted once

‘(’From proceedings of an arbitration of a grievance filed by

the Newspaper Guild against the Boston Herald Traveler, Z30s-

.ton Herald Traveler Corp., Case No. 1130-0291-68, arb. award,

Nov. 12, 1969; as cited in Alan Westin, and The Educational

Fund for Individual Rights, Privacy and Quality of Work Life

Issues in Employee Monitoring, contractor paper prepared for

OTA, May 1986, p. A-16.

•

●

●

a year is obviously less frequent than one

that is conducted daily or weekly. Frequency is an important criterion because

in combination with other criteria, such

as continuousness and regularity, it may

make the difference between monitoring

as sporadic “spot checks” for efficiency

and monitoring as a part of the daily job

environment.

Continuousness.–Continuousness is a

measure of how constant a monitoring

technique is. It is closely related to frequency and regularity, but refers to the

duration of and intervals between monitoring. For example, a computer-based

monitoring system that records every

transaction, including time spent away

from the keyboard, during an 8-hour workday would be highly continuous. A similar system that recorded only when the

employee logged on and logged off would

be relatively noncontinuous.

Regularity. —Regularity refers to the predictability of intervals between monitoring. Thus, a telephone call-accounting audit

conducted every month is highly regular;

a random audit is not. Regularity is an important criterion, because it affects such

issues as actual or constructive knowledge

of being monitored, and it may play a factor in chronic stress (if monitoring is

highly irregular, the employee may have

to stay constantly “on guard” to the possibility of monitoring).

Control.–Control refers to the ability of

the employee to set his or her own pace

of work, and to use discretion in organizing and executing a task. An employee

who can determine the pace at which discrete tasks, such as filling out claim forms,

are completed has relatively greater control than one who doesn’t.

Electronic monitoring may involve changes

in each of these factors, and may therefore

cause greater stress than other forms of observing or measuring employee performance.

In computer-based monitoring, for example,

an employee’s control over the pace of work

may be given over to the machine; when one

claim form is filled out, another pops up on the
Ch 4—Electronic Work Monitoring Law and Policy Considerations ● 9 7

screen, and delays in processing the second are

being recorded. The machine sets the pace. This

may conceivably cause stress. On the other

hand, in customer service observation, continuousness and regularity may be the factors causing stress. Whether these, or any other, characteristics of electronic monitoring factors do

in fact cause stress is the subject of some debate, as will be discussed in part III.

Where Is the Future of Monitoring

Headed ?

The full extent of electronic monitoring techniques may have yet to be realized, and we

might see monitoring expand into more and

different jobs. The only limit, in principle, is

the technology itself. Advances in technology

may allow a greater range of less routinized

tasks to be monitored. Sophisticated software

design, called expert systems, in combination

with the computerization of most office activity, may enable tracking the complex transactions of bank loan officers, sales and management personnel, and stock brokers. Profit

center accounting software, for example, can

keep accurate and timely information on such

items as expense account and investment activity, interdepartmental funds transfer, and

business expense structure and account turnover. Since many expert systems are applied

to assist physicians in diagnosing disease, it

is conceivable that such systems could also be

used to monitor diagnosis and method of treatment decisions. Depending on the reliability

record of these expert systems, and their acceptance in the medical community, compliance with expert systems’ “decisions” may become prima facie evidence of a standard of due

care for purposes of determining liability for

negligence.

Advances in technology could change monitoring in the following ways:

More types of information, including information about employees’ behavior out of

work, may become increasingly available.

A greater amount of information about

employee performance is now available

through the use of technology. SophistiTable 14.—Factors Affecting Electronic Monitoring

-.—— .——— ——.

Factors favoring increased monitoring:

● Economics and increasing sophistication of the technology

• Labor market trends

Ž Macroeconomic trends

● Employer Iiability

● Vendor bandwagons

● Technological imperatives

Factors limiting increased monitoring:

● Employee backlash, morale, & t u mover

● Diminishing returns

● Job deskilling or upgrading

• Information overload

● Management priorities

SOURCE Off Ice of Technology Assessment 1987

cated use of the computer to edit and digest this information allows it to be put

to practical use.

In general, the means for obtaining information about the individual are less physically intrusive than would be possible

without technological methods.

The storage capacities of modern information systems permits more information

about employees to be retained as records.

The growing use of computer networks

also permits employee records to be distributed and shared more easily than paper folders.

Technology is not, as a practical matter, the

only limit on electronic monitoring. A variety

of factors, aside from legislation, may influence the way in which monitoring technology

is eventually used. The factors can be grouped

into those that tend to favor an increasing

amount of monitoring, and those that tend to

limit monitoring. They are discussed below and

summarized in table 14.

Factors Favoring Increased Monitoring

Because purchasing, maintaining, and using

an electronic work monitoring system often involves considerable expense, monitoring is unlikely to be done gratuitously. Beyond achieving the stated goals of enhancing productivity

or quality, or detecting and combating waste,

fraud, and abuse, several factors in combination suggest that work monitoring may increase, both in terms of the sheer volume of

businesses that monitor and the variety of

monitoring techniques and work environments.

Some of these factors include:
98 . The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

●

●

The economics and increasing sophistication of the technology.—In the past, the

economics of monitoring tended to work

against intensive mass surveillance; paid

employees were required to observe other

employees. Modern monitoring techniques

alleviate this fixed cost, labor-intensive approach, and substitute an approach with

a near-zero marginal cost, which is capitalintensive. Monitoring systems may become cheaper to maintain than the cost

of abuse or inefficiency in the labor force.

And, although it is easy to overstate the

importance of new technologies,31 the

permeation of microelectronics into most

office technology means that monitoring

can be fully integrated into work processes

without the need for elaborate and costly

independent measurement devices. Computer terminals and PBXs, for example,

can be monitored through relatively simple

and inexpensive changes in software.32

Labor Market Trends.—Organized labor’s

share of the work force is currently between 18 and 19 percent of the nonagricultural labor force in America (down from

a high of 35.5 percent in 1945), and it is

expected to decline further over the next

15 years.33 There is a concomitant shift

in jobs from the manufacturing to service sector; precisely the sector in which

monitoring is highest and unionization

weakest. It does not necessarily follow

from this that employee rights are being

31FOr ~xmp]e, key5trOke counters, called “cYclOmeters,”

were available for typewriters in 1913, and Taylorism developed a variety of sophisticated techniques for measuring output, sampling piecework, and counting units of production, See,

e.g., Lee Galloway, Offi”ce Management: Its Prina”ples and Practice (New York, NY: Ronald Press, 1919); and William Schulze,

The American Offi”ce: Its Organization, Management, and

Records (London: Key Publishing, 1913).

32The In@=a~ ~wicesI)igi@ Network (ISDN) maY do

much to accelerate this trend toward integration, since all transactional information can be reduced to commensurate, digital

form. The first critical steps toward ISDN have already been

taken, and will give users access to a broad range of communications and data processing services. See: Robert Rosenberg,

“The Digital Phone Net Finally Starts Taking Off, ” Electronics,

Aug. 21, 1986, pp. 57-61,

33’’ Beyond Unions,“ Business Week, July 8, 1985, pp. 72-77.

●

●

●

diluted, 34 but it may divert the source of

employee rights from the provisions of

labor-management contracts to statutory

or common law; areas which, as we have

seen, provide a paucity of protection

against monitoring.

Macroeconomic Trends.—Increasingly

competitive international markets in the

private sector, and decreasing agency

budgets in the public sector, force employers to trim expenses, including those

associated with labor. Monitoring is one

way of accomplishing this.35 At the same

time economic insecurity within the labor

market over finding and keeping a job

tend to blunt the incentive of employees

to “rock the boat, ” particularly if it would

entail lawsuits against employers.

Employer Liability.—For a variety of reasons, it is the employer that generally

suffers economic losses from the wrongdoings of its employees. Product liability,

negligence, trade secret, and even criminal laws often ensure this result. Furthermore, plaintiffs in civil suits often look to

the employer’s “deep pocket, ” rather than

to just the employee, for redress. Jury

awards may be very high. Under these circumstances, it is not merely prudent, but

in fact mandatory, that the employer exercise a degree of oversight and control

over its employees. Electronic monitoring

may often be the least expensive and most

thorough way of facilitating this.36

Vendor Bandwagons.—Vendors of computer-based monitoring and telephone

call-accounting software have an obvious

interest in promoting their products. While

some vendors are sensitive to privacy and

34Some think that the case is just the contrary: “Some business leaders think they will get a union-free environment, but

what they may get is a legalized environment, according to

Harvard labor law specialist, Paul Weiler, as quoted in Business Week, July 8, 1985, p. 73.

SSA press release by OMB in support of its Telephone C~l

Reduction Initiative said, for example, that “the PCIE and

GSA/OMB initiatives will address the reduction of the Government’s long distance phone costs. ”

%For exmple, by us~g a computer to track the accuracY of

records maintained by employees to avoid liability for warranty

or negligence in providing information; by sampling the communications and memos that go out of the office; or by using

cameras to observe employee conduct.
Ch. 4—Electronic Work Monitoring Law and Policy Considerations ● 9 9

●

other concerns, some tend to “puff” the

savings that their systems offer.

Technological Imperatives.—Monitoring

measures many things that employers

have always wanted to know. In addition,

a manager is concerned with doing all that

he or she canto increase efficiency and cut

waste. Nor should one rule out an irrational, but common response to new technology: “if it can be done, it should be

done. ” Because of this, the use of monitoring technologies may become an imperative or an accepted way of doing

business.

Factors Limiting Increased Monitoring

Not all factors indicate a headlong drift

toward more widespread and intensive monitoring. Indeed, many factors seem to suggest

that monitoring, if taken to extremes, may actually impede some of the goals that it seeks

to further (e.g., productivity). Such factors may

include:

Employee Backlash, Morale, and Turnover.–Past attempts to drive employees

to ever-higher levels of production through

close supervision, surveillance, abuse, and

threats of discharge have met with great

resistance among workers.37 Employee

sabotage and informal collusive “slowdowns, ” which tended to reduce production below the average, were often the result, even in nonunionized industries.

During times of economic expansion, job

turnover also increased. To the degree that

automation is contributing to job upgrading (see below), turnover may become an

increasingly expensive proposition, because of the time and money involved in

training new employees.

Diminishing Returns.-A monitoring system that emphasizes speed or volume, as

many computer-based monitoring systems do, may often do so at the price of

quality or accuracy. A computer-based

monitoring system that counts keystrokes,

‘7See: A. Gouldner, Patterns of lmiustrial Bureaucracy

for example, may engender a greater number of unintentional or intentional errors

(e.g., holding one key to increase total

number). According to a recent work on

the subject, greater gains in productivity

are often the result of a reorganized workflow and the integration of previously

fragmented tasks.38

Job Deskilling or Upgrading. -It is unclear

whether office automation is stripping

relatively skilled jobs of their discretionary and autonomous content (deskilling),

or whether it in fact is taking the drudgery out of work, leaving the employee with

a greater latitude for individual creativity

(upgrading). Some studies have suggested

that both deskilling and upgrading are

occurring, sometimes within the same occupation.39 To the degree that jobs are

being upgraded by automation, work monitoring systems that require jobs to be routinized, and reducible to standardized

units of production, may become less and

less apropos of highly complex, nonstandardized work environments.40

Information Overload.–Although electronic monitoring offers gains in efficiency

over human observation, it very often requires that a human digest the information generated by the system and make

managerial decisions based on that information. This in itself may require considerable investments of time and wages. The

records generated by telephone call accounting systems, for example, can be

quite voluminous, and often require a

cadre of auditors to verify and interpret

the results.41

MIpad Strauggmm, Information payoff (New York Ny: Frw

Press, 1985).

39P Af-tewe~ ~d J. Rule, “COmPUting and @g~katiOnS:

What We Know and What We Don ‘t Know, Communications

of the ACM, December 1984, vol. 27, No. 12, pp. 1184-1192;

R. Kling and W. Sacchi, “Computing as Social Action: The Social Dynamics of Computing in Complex Organizations, Advances in Computers, vol. 19, 1980.

‘Paul Straussman, Information Payoff (New York, NY: Free

Press, 1985).

“See ch. 3 for an example of an expense report generated by

telephone call accounting.

4ZR. Edwards, “Individual Traits and Organizational Incentives: What Makes a ‘Good’ Worker, ” Journal of Human Re-

(Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1954). sources, winter 1976.
100 ● The Electronic Supervisor.’ New Technology, New Tensions

● Management Priorities.—The kinds of information provided by electronic monitoring may not assist management in addressing the workplace inefficiencies that

it perceives as most troublesome, and

monitoring may frustrate the human relations goals that many firms see as a key

to productivity. Among management’s

more pressing concerns are employee

fraud and chronic absenteeism and tardiness;42 conduct that requires no electronic monitoring to detector deter. Moreover, management may have no interest

in monitoring systems that degrade

worker responsibility and morale, since

commitment to the job is perceived as a

vital element of employee productivity .43

Wild Cards: Automation and

Artificial Intelligence

It is possible that present concerns overwork

monitoring may be rendered obsolete by machines whose functions are to substitute for

precisely the type of job that is today the focus of monitoring. As mentioned in chapter

2, electronic monitoring is most often used in

jobs that require relatively few skills, that are

highly routinized, and that have more or less

uniform patterns of input and output. This

type of labor is gradually being substituted

by automation. Data-entry work (whether numeric or textual in nature), for example, can

be eliminated by:

• interorganizational transfer of data,

directly from computer to computer;

4~R. Walton, “From Control to Commitment in the Workplace, ” Harvard Business Review, vol. 35, No. 2, 1985, pp. 76-

84; and “The New Industrial Relations, ” Business Week, May

11, 1981. See also: Business Week, “The Hollow Corporation”

special issue, Mar. 3, 1986; Business Week, “High Tech to the

Rescue, ” June 16, 1986; National Academy of Science, Towards

a A/ew Era in the U.S. Manufacturing (Washington, DC: 1986);

and Human Resources Practices for Implementing Advanced

Manufacturing Technology (Washington, DC: 1986).

direct input of data by optical scanning

technologies, and possibly by speech recognition technology; and

capture of data at the point of origin, in

a variety of ways ranging from bar code

readers to consumer use of terminals, e.g.,

bank automated teller machines (ATMs).44

In conjunction with progress in natural language processing and pattern recognition systems ,

45 this trend toward automation of

highly routine jobs may end up eliminating

narrow, low-skill clerical positions altogether,

replacing them with multi-activity skilled positions.” Highly complex jobs, requiring multifaceted decisionmaking, interpersonal skills,

and “common sense” judgment, are unlikely

to be as susceptible to electronic monitoring,

since these jobs are not amenable to merely

quantitative measures of performance .

4 7

Thus, it is possible that the issue of electronic

work monitoring is merely a transient phase

in the automation of office work. There are

some indications, however, that data entry requirements are accelerating faster than the

ability to automate them. So it may be quite

some time before monitored jobs are automated out of existence.

44From U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment,

Automation of America Offices, OTA-C IT-287 (Washington,

DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, December 1985), p. 47.

45U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, information Technology R&D: Critical Trends and Issues, OTA-CIT268 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, February 1985), see especially ch. 3, “Selected Case Studies (Artificial Intelligence).

4%J.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Automation of America Offi”ces, OTA-CIT-287, p. 51. Of course, the

low-skilled employee may be eliminated entirely. The consequences of automation for the job market are highly controversial, but it is unimportant for present purposes to enter the

debate.

iTThis sta~ment should be qualified by two caveats: anY job

performance can in theory be subjected to quantifiable, electronically monitorable criteria; and electronic monitoring of the

future may be able to build in some sort of assessment of the

qualitative features of job performance.
Ch. 4—Electronic Work Monitoring Law and Policy Considerations

PART 111: AN OVERVIEW

The Framework for the Legal Analysis

Part II suggested that concerns over the purpose of monitoring can be understood as objections based on notions of fairness; that the

manner and method in which monitoring is implemented may involve issues of dignity, autonomy, and privacy; and that issues involving the effects of monitoring can be largely

understood as concerns over health and stress.

The following legal analysis uses this framework by applying more specific legal concepts

to the purpose/manner and method/effect framework, Table 15 shows the relationship of this

framework to applicable law.

Each of the major types of monitoring considered in this report—computer-based monitoring, telephone service observation, and telephone call accounting–will, to the extent that

they raise unique legal issues, be discussed

separately. Otherwise, the analysis that follows is cumulative; what is said of computerbased monitoring, for example, applies equally

to telephone customer service observation and

telephone call accounting, unless specifically

mentioned in the text.

Before proceeding with the analysis, it is necessary to discuss two issues common to all

three types of work monitoring: the concept

OF APPLICABLE LAW

• 101

of employment-at-will and the differing legal

status of private and public sector employees.

The Concept of Employment-at-will

Under the common law tradition in the

United States, the relationship between employer and employee has been one of “employmerit-at-will. ” Employment-at-will simply means

that, in the absence of a specific agreement to

the contrary, an employer has an absolute right

to discharge an employee for any reason, and

the employee has a correlative right to resign

for any reason.’” Although subject to considerable erosion through a variety of judicial and

statutory exceptions and qualifications (discussed below where relevant), q{’ the employment-at-will doctrine is still law in all 50 States.

—

%. Williston, Contracts j 1017 ( 1967): see e.g., Pearson T’.

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., 332 F.2d 439 (7th Cir. ), cert denied, 379 U.S. 914 (1964). The terminability y at will doctrine can

be modified by a contractual agreement to retain the employee

for a specified period of time require that the discharge of an

employeee be based on a breach of that employee’s obligations

under the terms of his or her contract of employment.

4gThe claim of wrongful discharge, for example. has been accepted in a majority of States. ‘ ‘To date, the common law of

threefifths of the states has recognized, albeit to markedly varying extents, a cause of action for wrongful discharge in one form

or another. ” Kenneth T. I.opatkay, “The Emerging I.aw of

Wrong Discharge-A Quadrennial Assessment of the I,abor I.aw

Issue of the 80’s, ” 40 Business Law 445 (1984), and see: Jl’illiam L. Mauk, “Wrongful Discharge: The llrosion of 100 Years

of Employer Privilege, ” 21 Idaho Z,aw lle~’if~u’ 201 ( 1985).

Table 15.—A Framework for Addressing Electronic Work Monitoring

Concern Criteria Example of applicable law

Purpose of monitoring . ., ... . . . . . . . . Fairness Relevance National Labor Relations Act: Civil Rights ‘-

Completeness Act; Merit System Principles (as adminTargeting istered in EEO, OS HA, ERISA, EPA, etc. a

);

State Law on Privacy; Constitutional Lawa

Manner and method of monitoring . . .Autonomy Intensiveness State Law on Wrongful Discharge: State Law

Dignity Intrusiveness on Privacy; PCIE Guidelines; Title Ill of OmPrivacy Visibility nibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act;

Type Electronic Communications Privacy Act; NaLeakiness tional Labor Relations Act, Privacy Act of

Permanence 1 974a

Effect of monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . Health Frequency Worker’s Compensation Statutes on StressStress Continuousness Causing Labor

Regularity

Control

aAppl IeS only 10 Federal employees

SOURCE Of ftce of Technology Assessment, 1987
102 . The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

The significance of the doctrine of employment-at-will for electronic work monitoring lies

in its practical effect on the legal or economic

pressure that an individual employee can bring

to bear against the employer. Unless the contract of employment includes either substantive prohibitions, such as work environment

clauses that can be construed to extend to work

monitoring, or procedural requirements, such

as binding arbitration agreements, an employee who objects to being monitored has the

options of accepting the practice, protesting

the practice to the employer and facing possible dismissal, or leaving the job voluntarily.

This is particularly true of Federal employees,

who, though they are represented by the American Federation of Government Employees

(AFGE), are forbidden by law to negotiate performance standards which are at the heart of

many disputes over electronic monitoring.50

The Legal Status of Public v. Private

Sector Employees

The legal rights of an employee with respect

to electronic monitoring depend critically on

whether the employer is a privately owned and

operated firm or an agency or subdivision of

the local, State, or Federal Government. As

a general rule, an employee has no constitutional rights against private individuals, including private employers.51 Therefore, even

if some forms of monitoring can be said to in505 U.S.C. $43, The Federal Labor Relations Statute.

51Thi~ ~OnCept is knom ag “state action. ” It k a bask Principle of constitutional law, and provides that the rights secured

to individuals by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution proscribe ordy certain actions by the stab, state agencies or subdivisions, or individuals acting under color of State law, and do

not limit actions between private individuals or private entities. See e.g., Flagg Bros., Inc. v. Brooks, 436 U.S. 149 (1978).

There are certain narrow exceptions to this rule, as where a company assumes all the functions of a municipality, Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946), or where there is substantial State

involvement with a privak entity, e.g., Burton v. Wihm”ngton

Parking Authority, 365 U.S. 715 (1961). Some have argued that

the actions of large private organizations that wield great economic power over individuals should be considered State action. See, e.g., Berle, “Constitutional Limitations on Corporate

Activity-Protection of Personal Rights Invasion Through Ece

nomic Power, ” 100 Um”versity of Pennsykuu”a Law Rew”ew 933

(1952).

fringe a constitutionally protected interest,

that interest can only be vindicated if the employer is a local, State, or Federal Government,

or if the employer is acting pursuant to or under authority of a statute or ordinance.52 Furthermore, the Privacy Act of 1974, which may

be relevant insofar as electronic monitoring

often generates a system of records, applies

only to records kept by the Federal Government. It is therefore significant primarily to

Federal Government employees.53

Notwithstanding this crucial distinction between private and public sector employers,

there are a number of State and Federal statutes that may be relevant to considerations

of the purpose, the manner and method, and

the effect of monitoring by both private and

public sector employers. The public/private distinction is therefore considered below only

where relevant.

Purpose

Computer-Based Monitoring

Computer-based monitoring is the computerized collection, storage, analysis, and reporting of information about certain employee

work activities. Within this broad definition,

the chapter focuses on the use of computerbased monitoring to obtain data about employees directly through their productive use of

computer and telecommunications equipment.

In all cases documented by OTA, computerbased monitoring is used by both public and

private sector employers for entirely legal purposes. As a rule, an employer is not liable for

endeavoring to further its legitimate business

interests, such as enhancing productivity and

bzEven in the latter case, the breadth of State action maY ‘n

fact be very narrow. See, e.g., Moose Lodge v. Irvis, 407 U.S.

163 (1972) (State liquor license for segregated dining room was

insufficient State involvement).

53A pro~sionthat would have made the privacy Act! 2

U.S.C. $552a (1976), applicable h the private sector was present

in the original Senate version of the Act, S 3418, 93d Cong.,

2d sess. $201(a), but was not adopted. The Privacy Act is, however, applicable to government contractors. 5 U.S.C. $552a(m).
Ch. 4—Electronic Work Monitoring Law and Policy Considerations ● 103

quality. Nor is an employer liable for protecting its property, or for investigating misconduct or crime.54

Computer-based monitoring for purposes of

advancing or protecting commercial interests

and overseeing actions of employees is not

merely prudent business practice—it may be

a positive legal requirement.55 In many instances, an employer is held vicariously liable

for the torts or crimes of its employees, based

in part on the theory that it is in control of

and responsible for many of the actions of its

employees while in the scope of their employment.56 Furthermore, an employer, as a seller

or even gratuitous supplier, may be liable for

the quality of the goods, services, and perhaps

even the information produced by its employees.57 And, monitoring the flow of trade

secret information out of a business concern

may be necessary if an employer is to preserve

its rights under trade secrets law.58

54 Ba~ed on one survey of the top three reasons for auditing

the use of intelligent desktop terminals were:

c To prevent abuse of company PC resources for personal

purposes.

. To prevent confidentiality/security breaches.

s To prevent violation of legal/regulatory duties in the use

of client or employee data.

From Alan Westin, and The Educational Fund for Individual

Rights, Privacy and Quti”ty of Work Life Issues in Employee

Monitoring, contractor paper prepared for OTA, May 1986.

55 For exmp]e, a representative of American EXweSS COW.!

Inc., informed OTA that American Express is required by the

Fair Credit Reporting Act to stop dunning a card member who

writes in to say that he or she is having a dispute with a service

establishment. Because the letters are computer generated, the

only way that American Express can know it & in compliance

is through its monitoring system, which aggregates all such

transactions and reports on when they are made. sG~, e.g., PrOSSer on TOrtS, $69 (1971)”

‘

7 The Uniform Commercial Code, adopted in 49 States, imposes on the seller of goods three different kinds of warranties.

U.C.C. 2-313-315 Providers of services, such as insurers, may

be liable for breach of either express or implied conditions of

the contract. Information providers, such as database companies and weather forecasters, may be liable on several theories,

such as strict liability, negligence, warranty, or defamation. See:

e.g., Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. v. Jeppesen & Co., 767 F.2d

1288 (9the Cir. 1985); and Dunn & Bradstrect v. Greenmoss

Builders, Inc., 105 S. Ct. 2939 (1985).

58A tra& gecret ig a form of intellectual prOper@ that coVers any confidential formula, pattern, device, or compilation of

information used in a business, which gives that business an

opportunity to obtain an advantage over competitors who do

not know or use the secret. One of the factors for determining

whether a business’ secret is a trade secret is “the extent of

measures taken by (it) to guard the secrecy of the information. ”

Restatement of Torts, ~757, comment B.

When used for certain purposes, however,

computer-based monitoring may become the

instrument of illegal ends. It is conceivable,

for instance, that monitoring could be used to

frustrate the rights of employees to organize,

by being used as “punishment” for individuals

seeking to organize.59 OTA found no evidence

that monitoring is actually being used in this

way. 60

It is also conceivable that monitoring might

be used to discriminate against a class of employees, by placing stricter scrutiny and standards of job performance on certain groups. As

mentioned in chapter 2, the highly specific information that monitoring generates often requires a considerable amount of interpretation,

leaving great leeway for (intentional or unintentional) misinterpretation in the guise of “objective, ” quantitative evidence. OTA found no

case where monitoring was intentionally used

for this purpose, but that does not preclude

such a possibility.61 It is important to point

out, however, that the vast majority of employees whose work is monitored by computer are

wsuch tights me pro~c~d, for example, by the Nation~ ‘a”

bor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. $151 et seq., which secures to employees “the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist

labor organizations . . .“ Id., at $157. The use of monitoring to

impose changes in working conditions-e. g., by accelerating machine pacing—may be illegal if done for the purpose of reprisal

against employee organizational activity. 29 U.S.C. $158 (a) (3);

See, e.g., N. L.R.B. v. Sm”tary Bag and Burlap Co., 406 F.2d

750 (3rd Cir. 1969) It is also possible that PC use could be monitored to detect union communications by searching or auditing

PC-user disks or files, although there is no indication that this

activity is widespread today. Monitoring for this purpose, however, would probably not violate labor laws, since employers

may observe the activities of employees on its property during

working time. Stone & Webster Engineering Corp. v. N. L. R. B,,

536 F.2d 461 (lst Cir. 1976); N. L.R.B. v. R.C. Mahon Co., 269

F.2d 44 (6the Cir. 1959).

600ne source told OTA that one practice in monitoring computer files is to check for human error. Under this circumstance,

some privacy questions may raised, despite the legitimate purposes of the monitoring.

GIFor exmple, the veracity of computer monitoring records

was the subject of an arbitration dispute between The State

of Oregon Employment Division and the Oregon State Public

Employees Union (affiliated with the SEIU), on behalf of one

of its members. The employee was fired from her job as word

processing specialist for allegedly tampering with her and others’

production statistics generated by a Wang “Machine Statistics System. ” The arbitrator found the statistics generated by

the computer system reliable, albeit circumstantial, evidence

that the employee had tampered with the system, and let the

State’s decision to terminate the employee stand. The union

(footnote continued on next page)
104 . The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

— — — —

female, raising questions about the existence

of de facto discrimination in working conditions. 62

Finally, monitoring could be used as a

method of detecting, preventing or retaliating

against whistleblowers. This might be accomplished by restricting access to certain computer files for the purpose of preventing

damaging information from being revealed, by

tracking the types of files accessed by certain

employees in order to ascertain the source of

“leaks,” or by imposing more onerous demands

on certain employees for revealing evidence of

waste, fraud, or abuse.63 OTA again found no

evidence that monitoring is being used for such

purposes.

(footnote continued from previous page)

disputes the arbitrator’s findings, and suggests that the employee’s “work station was frequently used by other employees, particularly her supervisor with whom she had a bad working relationship. From a “case study” submitted to OTA by

the Service Employees International Union, and Westin,

“Privacy and Quality-of-Worklife Issues in Employee Monitoring, ” OTA Contract Report, December 1986. See also, The Wall

Street Journal, June 6, 1985. The union thus suggests the possibility that the employee could have been ‘‘framed. Regardless of whether the employee in this case was in fact culpable

for the alleged tampering, it is clear that monitoring systems

are capable of being used for discriminatory or retaliatory reasons: the objective, mechanically produced measurements of

productivity can be “rigged,” and undue trust can be placed

in machine printouts.

‘Wee Title VII, Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000c

(a)(l). The de facto feminization of monitoring may give rise to

suits under the Civil Rights Act, since intent to discriminate

is not a prerequisite to an action under Title VII.

‘;{Federal employees ha~’e been protected by statute against

reprisal for disclosing waste, fraud, or abuse in the Federal Government since 1979. As part of “merit system principles, ” all

employees of the executive branch of government, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, and the Government Printing Office:

. . . should be protected against reprisal for the lawful disclosure

of information which the employees reasonably believe evidences—

(A) a violation of any law, rule, or regulation, or

(B I mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, an abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety

5 U.S.C. $2301(b)(9)

Additional protection may be available under anti-reprisal

clauses of various substantive employee protection or public

protection laws, such as EEO, OSHA, ERISA, EPA, and so on.

Other public employees are protected under First Amendment

principles, as articulated in Pickering v. Board of Education,

391 U.S. 563 (1968) (“the interests of the [employee], as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern [are to be

weighed against] the interest of the State, as an employer, in

promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs

through its employees. ” Id. at 568. See also: Mt. Healthy City

School District Board of Education v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274 (1977)

(protected whistleblowing must be ‘a matter of public concern”

The number of illicit purposes to which monitoring can be put is limited only by the imagination, yet monitoring seems no more or less

likely to lend itself to illegal retaliation than

any other form of office technology (the paper

copier or punch clock, for instance). However,

the employee may often know that his or her

computer files or phone calls are being “observed” by the monitoring system, and this

knowledge may in itself act as a “chilling” device to would-be whistleblowers or union organizers. In a case example submitted to OTA

by the AFL-CIO, the chilling effect of video

observation was noted:

. . . employer installed and focused TV monitoring equipment inside the plant on every

work station and worker after organizing effort began. Monitors were not available for all

to see, but viewed only by management in

management office. Employer said monitoring was for safety reasons and would lower

Worker Compensation insurance rates. In fact,

no one could determine how that could be. During the height of organizing, two workers who

left their work stations to go to restroom were

suspended for leaving their work station, without permission. Monitoring had chilling effect

on workers attempting to organize for purposes of collective bargaining, Of the 100

workers in the unit, 89 signed authorization

cards calling for a recognition election. But

when the final vote came, the union was 12

votes shy of a majority. . ."There was an unspoken fear that Big Brother would catch

them talking for or working for that union.64

Even if the truth of this use of monitoring

for alleged purposes of union-busting are not

and play a “substantial part” in decision to fire); and Connick

v. Myers, 451 U.S. 138 (1983) (whether dissent is a matter of

public concern is determined by content, form, and context of

communication). In addition, 21 States have enacted whistleblowing statutes. “Beyond Unions, ” Business Week, July 8,

1985, p. 73.

Employees in the private sector maybe protected under exceptions to the employment-at-will doctrine. See footnote 49.

“’’From AFL-CIO Case Examples, submitted to OTA. The

technology allegedly used to monitor these employers was the

video camera—a technology not considered in this report. However, software for computer-based work monitoring could be

used to accomplish much the same purpose as alleged in this

case study, by recording the time away from a station, by monitoring internal electronic mail and employee-generated documents, or by determining who was logged onto a particular work

station.
Ch 4—Electronic

born out, it nevertheless illustrates the heightened potential of monitoring used to deter the

efforts of whistleblowers or union organizers.

This potential is also explored below in the context of telephone call accounting.

Telephone Service Observation

Telephone service observation was described

in chapter 3. It refers to the act of systematically intercepting the content of employee telephone calls by listening in on them. This is

often done by a supervisor or quality control

specialist to evaluate courtesy, accuracy, or

compliance with company guidelines. It is a

common practice in a host of businesses which

sell products or service customers over the telephone. As mentioned in chapter 2, service observation is becoming integrated with various

forms of computer-based monitoring, the legal implications of which were considered

above. This section will consider service observation in isolation from other monitoring

techniques.

The use of service observation for illicit purposes—e.g., to discourage or listen in on employee organizational activities, to discriminate

against certain classes of employees, or to detect and punish whistleblowers—is subject to

much the same legal analysis as computerbased monitoring, and presents few unique

problems for the law.65 Since service observation is by nature a method of intercepting the

content of employee communications, legal

rights to privacy under State tort law may be

implicated, and while the employer often enjoys a qualified privilege to listen in on employee phone calls, that privilege may be vitiated by improper motive.66 Otherwise, the

6:)A very important qualification to this statement is Title

III of the Communications Act of 1934, which prohibits ‘eavesdropping” per se, without regard to the intent of the person

doing the eavesdropping, with certain crucial exceptions. Title

III is considered more fully below under the manner and method

analysis.

“’’[Defenses to common law claims of invasion of privacy include the defense of ‘‘privilege’ The qualified privilege of the

defendant to protector further his own legitimate interest has

appeared in a few cases, as where a telephone compan-v has been

permitted to monitor calls . . . ; citing: Schmulker v. Ohio Bell

Telephone. Co., 116 ,N.E. 2d 819 (1953) (time and motion studies

of employees); People I. .4pplebaum, 97 N.Y. S. 2d 807 (1950)

Work

.

Monitoring Law and Policy Considerations

— —

● 1 0 5

employer’s purpose for monitoring is not a consideration separate and apart from the manner and method in which the service observation is conducted.

Telephone Call Accounting

Chapter 3 discusses telephone call accounting in detail. Telephone call accounting systems are devices which can be attached to either the central office switch of the local

telephone network or, increasingly, to the private branch exchanges (PBXs) on the customers’ premises. Call-accounting systems generate detailed raw data on telephone usage;

incoming and outgoing call numbers, total

number of calls made, total time on the line,

etc (they do not provide information on the content of the telephone call). This raw information can be processed by computer to provide

summary reports of any type of telephone

activity that the employer feels is relevant or

useful.

Call accounting is often used for purposes

that many might consider legitimate business

functions, such as allocating costs between

various accounts in a business, billing customers or clients for particular services, and keeping track of abuse or waste of local or long-distance telephone services. The recently enacted

Communications Privacy Act of 1986 explicitly

recognizes the need for call accounting in the

course of providing communication services.67

The extent of personal phone use in the Federal Government was examined in a call-accounting audit conducted by the President’s

Council on Integrity and Efficiency (PCIE) in

conjunction with the General Services Administration (GSA) and Office of Management and

Budget (OMB). That audit reported in the fall

(tapping own telephone to protect own interests); T1’heeler \’.

Sorenson Mfg., 415 S.W.2d 582 ( 1967) (publication of wages

and deductions of employees to combat union dri~’e): and CitJ’

of University Heights v. (’onky, 252 N.E. 2d 198 (1969) (spying

on suspected thief). Presser on Torts, \117

~?The Electronic Communications Privacy .Act of 1986, public IJtiw No. 99-508, 99th Cong., 2d sess., Oct. 21, 1986 amends

portions of the criminal code (Title 18) to accommodate digital

communications, computer networks, cellular telecommunications, and other advances in communications. Its import for

telephone call accounting and service observation is discussed

below where relevant.
106 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

of 1986 that on the average about 33 percent

of long-distance calls made on the Federal Telephone System (FTS) were “unofficial,” that is,

made for personal reasons.

Concerns were raised in Congress over the

implications of the PCIE audit for privacy and

whistleblowing. Problems might also exist,

particularly in the private sector, if call

accounting were be used to frustrate union

organizing efforts. As previously discussed,

however, legal protections exist to address concerns over employee/union rights, and whistleblowers. Moreover, PCIE has adopted guidelines to address some of the concerns over the

privacy and first amendment implications of

the program.68 Among the protections are: a

“conservative” approach to classifying calls

as “unofficial,” prohibitions on invading the

privacy of the persons called from the agency,

categorization of ‘calls possibly made to news

media, congressional offices, public interest

groups, and employee unions” as “official,” 69

and a prohibition on using data to single out

individuals or to conduct investigations.70 It

remains to be seen, however, whether and how

the PCIE initiative will be continued and become part of the regular internal auditing Federal agencies. One department indicated that

in spite of its pilot study results—indicating

significant unofficial use of the department

telephone system-the agency had no plans for

further efforts to reduce these misuses, because

of concerns over privacy implications.71 If the

audit does become a permanent part in intraagency audits, questions arise over whether

protective guidelines will also become permanent, and if so, how such guidelines will be en-

‘8General Services Administration, Office of the Inspector

General, Office of Audits, “Guide for the PCIE Review of Federal Telecommunications System (FTS) Utilization, ” part II,

see especially app. XIII, pp. 65-74, July 3, 1985.

GgIbid p. 29+ ~tion IX of the “Guide” states that research

activitie~ concerning calls to these destinations should be terminated, that the information cannot be released to management, and that the information cannot be used against the person who made the calls.

701 bid., p. 30. The Guide does recommend, however, that

“serious or egregious” cases of misuse should be referred to

the agencies investigative organization for possible further

action.

710TA staff telephone interview with Department of Energy

Office of Inspector General representative, fall 1986.

forceable. If, for example, a Federal employer

were to discipline or withhold promotion or information from an employee based on that employee’s contacts with the press, the employee

may find it difficult to prove that the employer’s motivations for doing so were the result of information obtained through telephone

call accounting.

Although the PCIE study guidelines forbid

listening to or recording conversations (as does

Title III, discussed below), information on telephone transactions can yield a great deal of

inferential knowledge about an employee’s personal and life outside of work. Knowing that

an employee contacted a particular newspaper

one day before a damaging article is printed

is sufficient to infer the content of the conversation, regardless of how that call is classified

or whether it is subject to detailed investigation. Moreover, records of the audit which connect names and numbers, while protected by

the Privacy Act, may nevertheless be subject

to disclosure through the Freedom of Information Act.72

Yet another difficulty with the PCIE study

guidelines concerns enforcement and discipline. At present the guidelines contemplate

disciplinary action, such as removal, suspension, demotion, or reprimand only in cases of

“extreme” cases of FTS abuse. The difficulty

here is with selective enforcement and uniformit y of treatment. The PCIE guidelines offer no

guidance on what constitutes “extreme” abuse,

and no mention is made of who within each

executive agency will be responsible for enforcement. This leaves considerable discretion

to agencies’ Inspectors General in determining who will be disciplined and under what circumstances. It opens the door to claims of

differential treatment between low-ranking

clerical staff and high-level government executives. Since the scope of job responsibility is

often fairly narrow for low-level employees

(e.g., claims processing at the Social Security

72 See Title 5 U.S.C. $552, infra. See also Notice of Proposed

Privacy Act Guidance for Call Detail Systems (OMB), 51 Fecferd Register 19982, 19984 (Friday, May 23, 1986), which discusses disclosure in the context of a pxmanent FTS telephone

call-accounting system.
Ch. 4—Electronic Work Monitoring Law and Policy Considerations • 107

Administration), discriminating between “official’ and “unofficial” calls may be relatively

easy. But for high-ranking personnel, whose

communications are more likely to be a mix

of “business’ and “pleasure, “73 such determinations may not be so easy. In other words,

the informalities and ambiguities of the PCIE

guidelines may give greater latitude to highranking employees than lower level employees. Under the proper circumstances, this may

give rise to a claim of denial of equal protection of the laws under the 14th amendment.

Finally, there is a difficulty of administering the telephone call-accounting audit, particularly if it is implemented on a permanent

basis. Although OMB has, under the PCIE

guidelines, drawn up fairly extensive analyses

of Privacy Act implications concerning employee privacy and the disposition of records,

the question remains: who will be responsible

for overseeing the agencies in the conduct of

their audits to ensure that the guidelines are

followed? A recent OTA report” concluded

that OMB is not effectively monitoring such

basic areas as: the quality of Privacy Act

records; the protection of Privacy Act records

in systems currently or potentially accessible

by microcomputers; the cost-effectiveness of

recordkeeping; and the level of agency resources

devoted to Privacy Act limitations.

Such practical difficulties notwithstanding,

there appears to be no dearth of legal protection for activities of Federal employees that

the law recognizes as legitimate and responsible. However, the use of telephone call accounting by private sector employers for illicit purposes is not so clearly proscribed by law. In

fact, the only recourse of the private sector employee against the employer for using call

accounting to track whistleblowing activities

is the nascent legal right against “wrongful

discharge. “75 Because of the principle of

—

73FOr ~xmple, ig a ]Ong-digtmce call to set W a “business

lunch” with a good friend an “official” or “unofficial” call?

“U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Federd

Goverrnent Information Technology: Ekwtrom”c Record Systems

and Individual Privacy, OTA-CIT-296 (Washington, DC: U.S.

Government Printing Office, June 1986).

TsRet~atory di9chmge for whistleblowing activities may be

counter to public policy, and may thus constitute a wrongful

State action (see above), the private sector employee can claim no first amendment right to

speak to the public or the press. Of course,

statutes governing communications between

employees and labor organizations, discussed

above, apply with equal force to telephone call

accounting. It should be noted that, unless the

employer consents to the use of its telephones

for labor organizational purposes, the employee probably does not have rights under

statute to protest the use of telephone call

accounting to track and squelch union communications. 76

Manner and Method

Computer-Based Monitoring

The use of computer-based monitoring as a

means for furthering the legitimate employer

interests raises few, if any, legal issues. The

first hurdle that an attorney challenging the

practice itself must meet is to identify a‘ ‘cause

of action”—a legally recognized right that

forms the basis for a lawsuit. The only right

remotely relevant to monitoring is the right

of privacy .77

Privacy is a broad value, representing concerns about autonomy, individuality, personal

space, solitude, intimacy, anonymity, and a

host of related concerns.78 Since monitoring

discharge. See, e.g., ~onge v. Beebe Rubber Co, 114 N.H. 130,

316 A.2d 549.62 A. L.R.3d 264,25 EPD P 31,643; and R. Murg

and J. Sharman, “Employment at Will: Do Exceptions Overwhelm the Rule?” 28 Boston College Law Review 329 (1982).

Moreover, employers may be held to their own internal statements of policy concerning matters such as privacy and treatment of employees with respect to monitoring. See, e.g., Woolley v. Hoffman-LaRoche, Inc., 99 NJ 284,491 A.2d 1257 ( 1985),

which held that the employer’s official statement of policy for

its employees created a contract of employment for an indefinite period.

TGunder the. NatiOn~ Labor Relations Act, 29 u.S. C. $158,

for example, it is not unlawful for an employer to observe employee activities at the worksight during working hours to see

if union activity is being conducted on company time. IV. L.R.B.

v. R.C. hlahon Co. 269 F.2d 44 {6th Cir. 1959).

77vfioug th~rieg under tort law, such as assault, intentioned

infliction of emotional distress, defamation, outrage, and mayhem were considered, but lack sufficient connection to the types

of activities involved in computer-based monitoring.

M% u s ConWess, office of Technology Assessment, Fed- . .

ertd Government Information Technology: Electrom”c Record

Systems and Individual Privacy, OTA-CIT-296 (Washington,

DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 1986).
108 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

is one method of obtaining information about

and control over an employee’s activities, some

of these concerns may be relevant.

Although monitoring may affect culturally

held values, there are serious problems in attempting to stretch the legally enforceable

values regarding privacy, whether based on

common law, statute, or the Constitution, to

cover the types of monitoring considered in this

report .79 Although 34 States have adopted

laws regarding employer use of polygraph machines, and 21 have laws addressing the privacy of employee records,80 none have so far

adopted legislation restricting monitoring, as

such. One State, Massachusetts, has attempted

to enact legislation that might prohibit computer-based monitoring per se, but the legislation was found to violate the due process and

equal protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution. 81

79The ~o~t widely accepted privacy framework under tort

law is that offered by Presser. See “Privacy, 48 Cah”form”a Law

Review, 383 (1980). Each of the four distinct torts–intrusion,

disclosure, false light, and appropriation–require a physical invasion of the person or his/her property or personality and publication of the information gained by the invasion. Neither of

these criteria is applicable to monitoring considered in this report. Moreover, consent to monitoring, either explicit or as a

implied condition of the employment contract, would probably

vitiate whatever claims an employee might have. Privacy under statutory law, at both the Federal and State level, concerns

principally privacy of employee records, and while not relevant

to the act of monitoring itself, may be relevant to records generated and kept by the monitoring system. This is considered

below where relevant. Privacy under the U.S. Constitution has

two main branches; rights under the 14th amendment, designed

to protect family relationships, Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973),

Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965); and rights under

the Fourth Amendment, designed to limit unreasonable searches

and seizures. Katz v. Um”ted States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), and

progeny. Both of these branches require state action. Even supposing that monitoring might be considered a “search” under

the fourth amendment, it is unlikely that an employee would

be found to have a “legitimate expectation of privacy” in his

or her performance at a given task. Id.

‘OThese figures are from Compilation of State and Federal

Privacy Laws (1984-85 cd.), Privacy Journal (Washington, DC:

Privacy Journal), and January, 1986 supp., but see: Congressional Research Reports, Mar. 21, 1986, which reports that 22

States have adopted laws regarding employer use of polygraph

machines, and that 10 have adopted laws addressing employee

access to records.

‘*The legislation prohibited “the use of any monitoring device, without the express consent of the employee, by means

of which the surveillance of employees might be effectuated.

The term “monitoring device” included “any device, electronic,

mechanical, visual, or photographic’ by which ‘appearance, actions, or speech” could be monitored. cite. Re: Opinion of

Justices, 356 Mass 756, 250 N.E.2d 448 { ).

Furthermore, some State courts may hold

employers to internal statements of policy regarding employee privacy, and may award

damages for “unjust termination” of employees who seek to withhold information under

these policy statements.82 This approach has

not been widely accepted in the courts, and the

corporate policy statements seldom address

monitoring explicitly.

There are several situations in which computer-based monitoring may implicate certain

legal rights. The first is where the monitoring,

which ordinarily reveals quantitative information about the amount of work done and the

time spent doing it, reveals “personal” information as a byproduct. For example, if the only

discretionary breaks allowed a monitored

worker are for trips to the bathroom, the computer may allow an employer to glean this information by the frequency and duration that

the employee is logged off the terminal.83 In

this situation, a breach of employee privacy

is arguably present.84 Another situation concerns the monitoring of personal computer use,

and the auditing or editing of employee computer files. If the employer permits an employee to use computer files to store personal

information, or electronic mail capabilities for

personal messages, a breach of privacy may

be found under a number of theories if the employer subsequently examines or reveals the 85 Finally, to ‘he contents of the files or mail.

8’Op cit., Woolley v. Hoffman-LaRoche, 99 NJ 284, 491 A.2d

1257 (1985).

‘3See: Karen Nussbaum and Virginia DuRivage, “Computer

Monitoring: Mismanagement by Remote Control, 56 Business

and Society Review 16 (winter 1986); and Nine to Five: The National Association of Working Women, Computer Monitoring

and Other Dirty Tricks, April 1986.

“The tort of intrusion may be applicable, if such monitoring

amounts to an invasion of the employee’s solitude or seclusion,

even if there is not physical intrusion. Presser on Torts, p. 807.

If the private activity is publicized, there may also be a tort

for public disclosure of private facts.

“5For public sector employees, an action may arise directly

under the Constitution. For private sector employees, a tort

action may lie. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act

of 1986 is ambiguous as to whether an employer might access

the contents of its employees’ computer files. The prohibitions

of the Act speak to an “electronic communication while it is

in electronic storage. “ 18 U.S.C. j2701(a) (as amended). While

perhaps not intended as a communication when written, all files

in a personal computer are potentially communicable. Further,

the Act’s prohibitions do not apply to “the person or entity

providing a wire or electronic communications service, ” or to
Ch. 4—Electronic Work Monitoring Law and Policy Considerations . 109

extent that the transactions monitored by computer become part of the employee’s record of

employment, compliance with procedures set

out in the Privacy Act of 1974 (governing only

Federal employees) or several State privacy

statutes may be necessary.

Telephone Service Observation

Unlike computer-based monitoring, which

primarily raises serious legal issues only when

it is used to promote ends that are illegitimate,

the legal difficulties with telephone service observation lie primarily in the manner in which

it is carried out.

The principle law governing service observation is still Title III of the Omnibus Crime

Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, subject

to the amendments involved in The Electronic

Communications Privacy Act of 1986.X’ Title

111 forbids the interception of the contents of

telephone calls by government or private persons, except by judicial authorization. 87 This

blanket prohibition on “wiretapping,” however, is subject to two exemptions that permit telephone service observation—the consent

and business extension exemptions. 88 Both

exemptions have been construed narrowly by

courts. Consent cannot be implied from the

~ ‘‘user of that st,r~ice with respect to a communication of or

i ntxnded for that user. I R [J. S.C. \2701(b) (as amended).

“‘l-itlt’ 111 of the c)mnihus Crime Control and Safe Streets

Act, 1 ~ [J .S. C. ; : 25102520 ( 1976). Public I,aw No. 90-351, \

802, 82 Stat. 212, as amended by ‘1’he Electronic Communications Pri\acjr Act of 1986, Public I,aw No. 99-508, 99th Cong.

2cf Sess,, (M. 21, 1986.

‘“The relevant portion reads:

F;xcept as otherwise specifically provided in this chapter any

person who --

(b) willfullj US(+, mdea~ ors to use, or procures any other person

L() use of (,n(lea~(jr t () use any electronic, mechanical, or other de-

\rII(J t ~) Intercept any oral communication.

shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more

than fi~c year-s, or both

1 H U S.(’. \25 1 1( I )(b).

The statute also provides for a civil remedy and statutory

damages. 18 U.S.C. 12520.

“Section 251 li2)(d) of the law permits interception “where

one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to such interception, and Section 251 l(l)(b) excludes from

co~’erage ‘‘any telephone or telegraph instrument, equipment

or facility, or any component thereof. . . ,being used by the subscriber or user in the ordinary course of its business; .‘ I n

addition, communications common carriers may “intercept, disclose, or use (an employee’s telephone conversations) in the normal course of his employment while engaged in any activity

which is a necessar~ incident to the rendit ion of his wmice or

employee’s knowledge of a capability for monitoring,

89 but must instead be based on a

knowledge (or imputation of knowledge) that

certain types of phones or phone conversations

will be listened to.90 Similarly, the business

extension exemption applies only to the interception of particular calls as a part of the enterprise’s ordinary course of business,91 a n d

even at that, one court has held that personal

calls may be intercepted only to determine

their nature, but never their content.92

Title III and the Electronic communications

Act of 1986 appear to be the exclusive, albeit

extensive, legal framework for issues that may

emerge from telephone service observation.

Other legal theories, such as the common law

right of privacy and (for governmental employees) the fourth amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures, while possibly forming the basis for a legal action, are

unproven in the context of service observation.

“A recent case held that, although public employees are protected by the fourth amendment, their expectation of privacy must be

balanced against the government’s need for

supervision, control, and efficient operation of

the workplace.93 Moreover, the government is

not held to a “probable cause” standard; instead, its actions are assessed under a “reasonableness under the circumstances” standard.

Title III applied only to aural communications,

but The Electronic Communications Privacy

Act of 1986 extends the coverage of Title 18

to address analogous concerns present in the

service observation of the content of data communications. 94

to the protection of the rights or property of the carrier of such

communication . . .“ 18 U.S.C. \251 l(2)(a)(i).

‘

9 Watk”ns v. J!XM. Berry& Co., 704 F.2d 577 (1 lth Cir. 1983);

Campiti v. Walonis, 611 F.2d 387 ( 1st Cir. 1979): Crmker v.

L1.s. Depfltment of Justice, 497 F. Supp. 500 (D.Corm, 1980),

‘U’l$’atkins v. L.M. Berry, supra; Jandik ~’. i’illage of Brookfieki, 520 F. Supp. 815 (N.D. Ill. 1981).

$11 ~rat~”ns v. L.M. Berry & Co., supra; citing Briggs ~’. American Air Filter Co., 630 F.2d 414 (5th Cir. 1980).

‘

2 W’atkins v. L.M. Berry & Co., supra at 583. 1 n essence, the

court held that, once the personal nature of the call is known,

the employer must hang up.

‘iO’Cmnm ~. Ortega, 107’ S. Ct. 1492.55 USLW 4405 (19871.

‘

iTitle I I 1 convered only oral communications, 18 U.S.C.

I251o., cf. [[.S. v. New York Telephone Co., 434 U.S. 159( 1977)

holding that a communication under Title 111 must be capable

of being o~’erheard.
110 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Telephone Call Accounting

Many of the legal issues surrounding the use

of telephone call accounting center on the incidental information generated by a call-accounting system. In other words, although the

employer may not purposely set out to infringe

employee rights, many of the by-products of

call-accounting systems may in fact threaten

employee privacy. In the act of tracking recipients of calls originating from certain phone

numbers, employers must, of necessity, obtain

information on the identity of the persons

called, and the nature of the call (business or

nonbusiness). Depending on how the audit is

conducted, and how closely focused on individuals it is, a‘ ‘picture’ of extra-employment

activity may be obtained merely from the identity of the destination phone numbers, even

if the intent of the audit is to identify nonbusiness-related calls.95 Once the information

is collected, it maybe intentionally or accidentally disclosed to people whom the employee

would prefer remain unaware. Although a callaccounting audit may disclose misuse, such

misuse may not be the fault of the employee

(especially when others have access to the employee’s phone)–a claim that maybe hard to

prove.

Federal employees are the most protected

segment of the labor force. If the records generated by the telephone call-accounting system form part of a “system of records” personally identifiable to particular individuals,

then, under the Privacy Act of 1974, the Federal employee is subject to a number of procedural safeguards concerning notice that such

records are being collected, the subsequent use

to which they can be put, the right of the employee to corrector amend the records, the necessity, and the acquisition for lawful purposes

of those records.96

For public employees in general, it is unlikely

that a constitutional claim under the fourth

— 95 Calls to collection agencies may reveal debt trouble; calls

to counselor may reveal psychological or marital trouble; calls

b employers in similar businesses may reveal an intent to change

jobs; and calls to the news media may reveal the source of

“leaks.” %5 UOS.C. j552(a), jnf=~.

amendment could successfully be brought

against the practice of telephone call accounting—even against its surreptitious use by police in order to obtain evidence for a criminal

indictment .97 The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, while providing

stronger protection than the fourth amendment by requiring a court order for the application of pen registers and trap and trace

devices, 98 is applicable to telephone call accounting. 99 However, depending on how the

information gleaned from call-accounting systems is used and whether it is disclosed, all

employees may have rights under common law

theories of privacy or defamation.

Effects

Aside from the abusive purposes and methods of electronic monitoring discussed above,

the most salient legal issue presented by monitoring concern its health-related effects on particular workers. Other, less tangible, effects

97 Pen registers, which are devices that attach to a telephone

line to record dial pulses, may be used in law enforcement to

obtain information on suspects without the need of a search

warrant. Sm”th v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1980). By extension,

the use of call-accounting systems (that achieve very much the

same result-albeit, in a more detailed fashion), which often form

an integral part of modem PBXS, would seem to raise no unique

fourth amendment problems, especially when they are used on

the employer’s premises and it is known by employees that they

exist (thus raising no “subjective expectation of privacy”).

9818 u s. . .c Ch. 206 “pen Registers and Trap and Trace

Devices. ’

~Title 18 has been amended so as to specifically exclude a

“provider of electronic communication seMce to record the fact

that a wire or electronic communication was initiated or completed in order to protect such provider, another provider furnishing service toward the completion of the wire or electronic

communication, or a user of that service, from fraudulent, urlkiwful, or abuse use of such sem”ce; ” 18 U.S.C. 2511( 3)(h)(ii)

(emphasis added).

Call-accounting software might arguably be a “pen register”

for purposes of The Electronic Communications Privacy Act

of 1986, since, like SMDR PBX equipment, it is defined as “a

device which records or decodes electronic or other impulses

which identify the numbers dialed or otherwise transmitted on

the telephone line to which such devices is attached. . . .“ However, SMDR equipment and software is excepted from the prohibitions of the act: “(pen register) does not include any device

used by a provider or customer of a wire or electronic communication service for bilh”ng, or recording as an incident to biL!i”ng,

for communications services provided by such provider or any

device used by a provider or customer of a wire communication

service for cost accounting or other like purposes in the ordinary course of its business . . .” 18 U.S.C. $3126 (emphasis

added).
Ch. 4—Electronic Work Monitoring Law and Policy Considerations ● 111

are sociological in nature, and concern the impact of monitoring on the overall climate of

work in the United States.

The literature on stress and work monitoring is not broken down cleanly into the three

categories of monitoring dealt within this report. Computer-based monitoring, telephone

service observation, and telephone call accounting may each entail widely different work environment factors (e.g., different organization

factors, different physical relationships be

tween the employee and the technology on

which the employee is working, and different

expectations). Thus, any particular findings on

stress are likely to vary widely between types

of work monitoring. Nevertheless, most of the

legal analysis that follows will hold true so long

as stress can be shown to be caused by or associated with the particular type of monitoring

in question.

This section relies on the analysis developed

in chapter 2 examining the evidence for computer monitoring as a cause of stress, and applies relevant law in fight of this evidence. The

principle conclusions of chapter 2 are: 1) that

evidence that computer monitoring, per se,

causes stress is suggestive, but not conclusive;

and that 2) many other aspects of job design

and work enviornment-e.g., computer pacing,

heightened work pressure, routinized activities, variable workloads, lack of control over

the task, lack of decision latitude, lack of peer

and supervisory support, and fear of job loss—

may also cause stress among VDT office workers. Research to date has not succeeded in separating the effects of computer monitoring

from effects of these other workplace factors,

insofar as stress is concerned.10

IOOStress due to work monitoring should be considered separately from that due to the use of Video Display Terminals

(VDTS) per se. A recmt OTA report concluded that “evidence

for a relationship between stress-relati disease and VDT work

is still sparse. ” U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, A utmnation of America Offices, OTA-CIT-287 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, December 1985),

p. 150. In part, this is due to the methodological problems in

attributing stress and stress-related ailments to any one factor

or combinations of factors in the workplace. The OTA report

did conclude, however, that electronic monitoring in general is

associated with the symptoms of chronic arousal, and can lead

to increased anxiety, fatigue, psychosomatic complaints, and

job dissatisfaction. Id. at p. 130. In this regard, the report did

Many of those opposed to work monitoring

focus on its health, and particularly stressrelated, effects. Moreover, many of the ‘‘case

studies” submitted to OTA by a variety of

unions emphasize the deleterious effects that

monitoring has on employees’ health. The approach of this section will therefore be to take

the assertion that monitoring causes stress and

health-related problems as a given, and ask:

how might present law address concerns over

these effects of monitoring?

All State jurisdictions recognize stress as

a compensable injury, either under their tort

or Worker’s Compensation laws.101 However,

“stress” is subject to a wide variation in definition in the way it is manifested, and the manner and context in which it is inflicted. Standards of proof for its existence, and the degree

of injury necessary for compensation, are determinative of whether monitoring-induced

stress (if it can be shown to exist) will rise to

the level of a legally recognized claim.

Worker’s Compensation, which was established in all 50 States to provide compensation on a “no-fault” basis for the loss of ability to earn wages, is a substitute for employer

tort liability. Most Worker’s Compensation

statutes require that the injury be accidental,

and that it arise out of or in the course of employment. Courts have read these requirements expansively in recent years, so that even

“accidents” that are slow in manifestation and

which rise out of employment-related risk are

compensable.102 This means that, as a threshold matter, chronic stress caused as a result

of monitoring may be compensable.

not separate computer-based monitoring from customer service observation and call-accounting systems, as is done in this

report. However, the way in which monitoring was described,

as a system of electronic supervision or feedback in work organization, would include the first two forms of monitoring considered in this report. Moreover, machine pacing—the use of

a computer to control when and how fast a task is performed—

can lead to anxiety, depression, boredom, dissatisfaction, frequent health complaints, and decreases in productivity with

increases in error rates. Id. at 128-29; citing Salvendy and Smith

(eds.), llac~.ne pacing and Occupational Stress (London: Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 1981).

101 IB Lmson, The Law of Workmen Compensation, $42 infra (1982), and Presser, LBW of Torts, $12.

10Z1 A I.arson, The Law of ~Odfmi31 Compensation.

5$37.00-39.00 and $$6.00-8.00, infra
112 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Even if stress meets these threshold requirements, not all States recognize psychological

effects as compensable injuries caused by

stress. 103 Only a handful of States would allow recovery for monitoring-induced stress, if

that stress can be characterized as “not un-

, .

usual, ‘ ‘ or “not in excess of

employment. “104 Otherwise,

compensable injury under

pensation laws, stress must

everyday life or

in order to be a

Worker’s Combe “unusual, ’’l”’

or even “sudden,” “frightening,” or “shocking. "l06 As electronic monitoring gains ac10 JFIOrid~, GW~gia, K~SaS, Louisiana, Minnesota, MOnt~a~

Nebraska, Ohio, and Oklahoma do not recognize purely mental

or emotional injuries as the result of stress. Emotional Stress

in the Workplace, op. cit. All jurisdictions recognize stressrelated ailments, whether “mental” or “physical,” that have

an antecedent physical injury. And, with the exception of Ohio,

all States recognize “physical” disabilities resulting from stress.

1A Larson, $42.22 et seq.

IOiCalifornia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, Oregon, and West Virginia. See generally “Emotional Stress in the

Workplace–New Legal Rights in the Eighties, National Council on Compensation Insurance, 1985. 10fiArizona, Arkansas, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico,

New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Id.

‘

w

Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, Mississippi, South Carolina,

Tennessee, Texas, Virginia. Id,

ceptance as an ordinary part of the work environment in which it is deployed, any stress that

it causes (if any) is arguably “not unusual. ”

In order to be recognized in most States, therefore, electronic monitoring-induced stress must

manifest itself in a physiological symptom to

be compensable.

Finally, many States today recognize the

tort known as “intentional infliction of emotional distress. ” Although compensation for

emotional distress previously required some

sort of physical invasion or injury, such as a

battery or assault, this is no longer the law in

a substantial number of jurisdictions. This notwithstanding, monitoring-induced stress is unlikely to be actionable under tort law. First,

the distress-producing act must often be of an

“extreme and outrageous” nature—a characterization that is probably not fitting to electronic work monitoring. Secondly, as with the

tort of invasion of privacy, consent (found in

the implied or explicit terms of an employment

contract) will probably vitiate an employee’s

claim. Finally, many States still require that

physical illness or some other nonmental effect be present before allowing recovery.

PART IV: CONCERNS NOT ADDRESSED BY LAW

Table 16.—A Framework for Addressing Electronic Work Monitoring

Concern Criteria - Example of applicable law Possible “gaps” in law

Purpose of monitoring–. . . . . . . . . Fairness - Relevance National Labor Relations Act; Due process—type

Completeness Civil Rights Act; Merit System guidelines for private

Targeting Principles (as administered in employees

EEO, OSHA, ERISA, EPA, etc.a

);

State Law on Privacy; Constitutional Lawa

Manner and method of

monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . Autonomy Intensiveness State Law on Wrongful Dis- Privacy in transactional

Dignity Intrusiveness charge; State Law on Privacy; information; “Human

Privacy Visibility PCIE Guidelines; Title Ill of Om- Rights’’—type law;

Type nibus Crime Control and Safe laws requiring notice

Leakiness Streets Act; Electronic Commu- of monitoring

Permanence nications Privacy Act; National

Labor Relations Act; Privacy

Act of 1974a

Effect of monitoring . . . . . . . . . . Health Frequency Worker’s Compensation Statutes Guidelines/regulations

Stress Continuousness on Stress-Causing Labor on stress—inducing

Regularity labor practices

Control

aApplle~ only to Federal employees

SOURCE Off Ice of Technology Assessment, 1987
Ch 4—.Electronic

If we look at the types of concerns raised

by electronic monitoring, and at those addressed by law, several broad conclusions

follow:

●

●

●

●

Purpose

In general, public employees are better protected against “unfair’ monitoring practices

than private sector employees. Constitutional due process protections afford public sector employees the opportunity to challenge dismissals, demotions, or other actions

based on monitoring that is irrelevant, unfairly targeted, or incomplete. Although the

doctrine of employment-at-will is gradually

being eroded in State courts, a suit for unjust dismissal of private sector employees

based on unfair monitoring is unlikely to

succeed.

Aside from provisions made in union contracts, no law compels an employer to implement monitoring with fairness, unless it

can be shown that the employer has taken

actions against certain employee(s) based on

race, sex, or religion or for motivations that

are against narrow public policy exceptions

to the employment-at-will doctrine.

• Electronically monitoring formerly unmonitored tasks may change the very nature of

that task, by accommodating the task to the

system of measurement. While some employees may object to this as an unbargained

for change in job description, no legal protections, aside from employment contracts,

exist.

Manner and Method

Monitoring most often involves the collection of transactional, rather than substantive, information about employees’ performance. No privacy protections exist against

the collection of transactional information

on employees activities while at work. For

example, no law prevents the collection of

telephone usage data in a call-accounting

system, or of performance data in a computer-based monitoring system. If, however,

Work Monitoring Law and Policy Considerations ● 1 1 3

transactional data becomes part of a personally identifiable record, then the subsequent use and disposition of that record is

regulated by both Federal and State law.

With some exceptions, no law prevents an

employer from using the monitoring sys -

tems considered in this report in a secretive,

low visibility manner. For example, an employer is not under a positive duty to reveal

to its employees the fact that their keystrokes

are being counted, or that their outgoing

long-distance calls are being documented.

Unless the employee has an expectation of

privacy in the activity or location while at

work, the employer is free to collect as much

information on the employee performance

as it sees fit.

Although employees may regard some methods of monitoring as an assault on their dignity or autonomy, there is no legal right to

be treated with dignity or as an autonomous

person. Unless the monitoring technique is

intrusive—invading either the bodily or

mental integrity of the person (as, perhaps,

in drug testing or brain wave analysis)—

there are no legal protections against monitoring because it is “dehumanizing.” Although monitoring may affect interpersonal

and power relationships at work, no law prevents employers from using intense, low visibility monitoring. For example, using computers to set the pace at which tasks are

accomplished, to measure the employees’

performance, or to document time away

from a terminal, are not prohibited by law.

Effects

Although some forms of monitoring may

cause stress, and may therefore have health

effects, no law currently protects workers

against stressful environments, whether the

stress is caused by monitoring or by other

aspects of the work environment. Lawmaking with respect to stress in the work environment is not unprecedented, however, and

several foreign countries have adopted legislation that attempts to address stress in

the work environment.
114 . The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

● In some cases, stress may be a compensable injury under Worker Compensation statutes, but stress-related health effects are difficult to prove, and are not accepted in a

majority of State courts.

What Does the Future Hold?

Depending on the influence of a variety of

business, economic, and social factors (see part

II), the next 10 to 15 years may see substantial changes in monitoring technologies and

settings in which they are conducted. These

changes may raise a whole new set of concerns

warranting continued congressional scrutiny.

Incremental Changes

Today’s monitoring techniques, which are

in and of themselves neither illegal nor clearly

in conflict with employer-employee custom,

necessarily form a precedent for future monitoring techniques. As these techniques become

more sophisticated and permeate the work

environment, law and lawmakers may have a

difficult time distinguishing between each new

innovation and the one that preceded it. The

law and practice that grows up around a particular form of monitoring may easily assimilate anew, incremental change in the technology or application. The cumulative changes in

work environment may be great, despite their

gradual and hence imperceptible nature. The

framework for analyzing claims to privacy,

which relies on an assessment of an individual’s “reasonable expectations, ” 107 can easily

become simple descriptive statements of what

the monitoring milieu is, rather than prescriptive statements of what ought to be. An individual’s knowledge that certain technologies

are capable of intruding into previously pri107K8~z v. Urn-ted Stateg, 389 U.S. 347 (1967) announced the

constitutional “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard that

has guided the Supreme Court ever since. It has two components: whether the individual actually expected that his or her

activity remain private, and whether that expectation is one

that society is prepared to accept as reasonable. This standard

has gradually been applied in nonconstitutional, tort-privacy

cases.

vate realms may vitiate claims that the individual’s expectation of privacy was a reasonable one.l08

Work Environment Changes

Much of employee behavior in the past went

unobserved or undocumented simply because

the technical facility for monitoring it did not

exist, or was too cumbersome to employ. As

noted in chapter 2, however, the use of modern information technology enables employers

to keep track of more information on employee

performance in much greater detail. Given this

new ability, much of the “looseness” of previous work environments may be reduced or

eliminated. What was in the past a de facto

perquisite of the job, such as a limited ability

to make nonwork-related phone calls, or an occasional break from a given task, may in the

future become grounds for discipline or dismissal. In such a case, the question is not

whether the employer is “within his rights, ”

but whether the work environment should become so rigorously controlled as to eliminate

all discretionary employee activity.

Qualitative Changes

As discussed elsewhere in chapter 1, a clear

distinction can be made between work monitoring and worker testing; the former is an

evaluation of the performance or behavior of

an employee, while the latter is an evaluation

of an employee’s physical or mental state. In

theory, it maybe possible for legal rules to be

framed in accordance with this distinction.

However, while the distinction may be relatively easy to make in theory, it is breaking

down in fact. Research in the field of psychophysiology, discussed elsewhere in this report, may be able to correlate behavior with

psychophysiological states; blurring the boundaries between monitoring work and monitoring the worker.

108For exmple,~ c~”fo~”~ V. ChO)O, a r=nt case h ‘Mch

police used an aircraft and camera to obtain evidence of marijuana growing in a suspect’s backyard, the Court concluded

that “[t]he Fourth Amendment simply does not require the police traveling in the public airways . . . to obtain a warrant in

order to observe what is visible to the naked eye. ” The standard for determining what expectations of privacy are reasonable is, in part, dependant on the state of technology for intruding on that privacy.
Ch. 4—Electronic Work Monitoring Law and Policy Considerations ● 115

PART V: POLICY OPTIONS

Before addressing the problem of how Congress might act, it is first necessary to consider whether and when action may be appropriate. Some factors suggest that a “wait and

see’ posture may be appropriate; uncertainty

about whether monitoring causes stress, the

lack of judicial precedent, the possibility of privately negotiated restraints on monitoring,

and marketplace checks on monitoring are

among these. Other factors indicate that Congress may want to act now to alleviate growing concern about monitoring in the workplace.

These include the lack of union representation

in the bulk of the monitored work force, inadequacy of current law to address concerns over

health, privacy, and dignity, difficulties of legislating against powerful economic interests

at the State level, and increasing sophistication of the technology itself. Several possible

directions of Federal policy are described

below.

Option 1: Take no Federal action concerning work monitoring at this time.

Questions of the fairness of work monitoring practice would be left, as they are at

present, in the hands of stakeholders, employers and employees. In industries where labor unions are active, collective bargaining

with regard to technology change, monitoring,

and methods of evaluation should continue under current rules.

Although many unions have adopted positions opposing electronic work monitoring (see

table 11), their bargaining strength with respect to it, whether by informal negotiations

or by formal collective bargaining or arbitration, is probably not great. However, some

forms of monitoring take place within specific

industries or companies. An argument can

therefore be made that, pending the development of a longer history of negotiations between labor and management on this issue,

monitoring is best addressed at the union level;

the parties concerned are most familiar with

the specific problems, and contracts, rather

than national policy, are the best way of approaching what appears to be situation-specific

problems (see part III). Under these circumstances, Congress may want to avoid legislating on the issue of monitoring per se, and instead make monitoring an item for compulsory

arbitration or collective bargaining under Federal labor law.

This, of course, does not necessarily ensure

an outcome that is satisfactory for the majority

of monitored workers, who are not unionized

and are therefore powerless to negotiate a fair

monitoring practice, or any other aspects of

the quality of work life, through the collective

bargaining process. Furthermore, a growing

segment of the work force are temporary workers, who, since they come and go on a weekly

or monthly basis, have little ability to improve

the quality of worklife.

There is the argument that natural “market forces” may tend to limit unfair monitoring and preclude the need for congressional action even on behalf of nonunionized workers:

employee backlash, low morale, and high turnover should dissuade employers from monitoring practices that their workers find onerous.

If monitoring is indeed stress-producing, then

employers who use it will inevitably see the

effects of stress on diminished quality and output of its product or service. The response to

this is that many monitored jobs comprise routine work subject to and indifferent to a high

turnover rate. And, in many instances, high

attrition works to the employer’s benefit (by

lowering the costs of pension, salary increases,

etc.). Thus it is not clear that “natural’ checks

will be sufficient to ensure that monitoring is

not abused.

If natural checks are not sufficient, political action is still available. Unions and other

interest groups have worked to pass State level

legislation on monitoring, service observation,

or VDT health and safety. These activities will

probably continue. Some of these attempts

may be successful, giving rise to a variety of

legislative or regulatory approaches to deal-
116 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

ing with issues related to electronic monitoring. Some may serve as models for Federal action at some later time, should the need for the

harmonizing effect of national legislation be

seen more clearly in the future.

Option 2: Establish whether stress effects

of electronic monitoring are an occupational health hazard; if they are, consider

creating Federal legislation or regulations

governing the use of electronic monitoring.

The effect of monitoring on stress and

health-issues which might provide the policymaker with the most direct and least valueladen approach to acting on monitoring–is in

a state of scientific uncertainty. There exist

few authoritative studies on the effects of electronic monitoring on health. Many studies and

informal polls of workers suggest that monitoring has stressful effects, and there is a certain common sense appeal to the idea that

working in fast paced, highly monitored environments may be very stressful. However, not

much is known about the types of monitoring

that are stressful, how stress might be reduced,

or how stress due to monitoring manifests itself (if at all) in physiological symptoms. Until more is known about the effects of monitoring on health, policy action under a “stress”

rationale may be premature. The policy maker

may consider it appropriate, therefore, to initiate studies on stress in the workplace, and

on the role that monitoring plays in such stress.

The National Institute of Occupational Safety

and Health would seem to be the logical agency

to supervise or carry out studies of stress as

a workplace hazard. Specific studies of monitored workers would have to be done with an

eye to understanding the effects of monitoring independent of other workplace stressors,

a major deficiency in existing studies. In addition, however, it would be useful to understand

more about the phenomenon of workplace

stress in general, given the rising number of

worker compensation claims and other evidence of the growing importance of stress in

occupational health. Research may reveal that

other factors in the workplace are as important as or more important than monitoring in

contributing to stress-related illness, and that

these should also be covered by protective legislation or regulation.

Option 3: Consider Federal legislation aimed

at gaps in current law. This could be in

two possible directions: general legislation

aimed at establishing certain rights for

employees within the workplace or surgical legislation aimed at specific monitoring practices.

There have been no court cases challenging

the types of monitoring considered in this report. Two conclusions can be drawn from this.

The first is that, until the judiciary acts, Congress has very little clue (aside from analyses

of the sort found in part III of this chapter)

as to the type of legal inadequacies it should

address, and ought therefore to wait to legislate on work monitoring. The second is that

current law is inadequate to even form the basis for a lawsuit, and that Congress must take

the lead in providing rights to monitored employees, should it decide that certain forms of

monitoring are pernicious.

Current worker protection legislation gives

workers a variety of rights, such as the right

to organize, to bargain collectively, to minimum wage, and increasingly, the right to know

about health and safety hazards that form part

of the working environment. However, U.S.

law has not heretofore involved itself deeply

in quality of worklife issues nor in issues of

personal privacy or dignity in the workplace.

There is no legal right to be treated with dignity or as an autonomous person. There is no

legal right to a well-designed, interesting job,

nor is there law that compels employers to consider employee input in decisions about new

technology or new monitoring procedures. To

the extent the law treats privacy in the workplace, it looks to a standard of what an employee might reasonably expect to remain private; as mentioned earlier in this chapter, this

standard may fail as a guide for action in the

face of employer’s increasing use of monitoring, surveillance, or testing technologies.
Ch 4—Electron/c Work Monitoring Law and Policy Considerations ● 117

That these issues are not currently addressed

in law does not mean they could not be. As

is discussed in appendix A, a number of other

countries have quality of worklife legislation.

Such legislation could give guidelines on the

rights to health, safety, privacy, constitutional

protections, or information that employees can

expect to enjoy in the workplace. As indicated

earlier in this chapter, the erosion of the doctrine of “employment-at-will” through antidiscrimination, health and safety legislation,

and public interest concerns, has already

marked some involvement of the U.S. Government in regulating the work environment. The

issue of electronic monitoring in offices is too

narrow to serve as a basis for comprehensive

work environment legislation. It should be just

one factor of many to be considered in determining what rights U.S. citizens have in the

workplace, both as employers and employees.

However, assuming that blanket legislation

on worklife quality is neither wise nor desirable, Congress might address concerns over specific issues through the use of specific amendatory legislation. If, for example, telephone

call accounting is an area of particular concern,

Congress might address the problem specifically by amending the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to comport with what it

considers “fair” monitoring practice. The

President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency

guideline may form a template for such legislation, or instead, Congress may mandate alternatives to telephone call accounting discussed

in chapter 3 of this report.

Another example of an area of the law not

currently addressed, and on which Congress

may wish to act, is what might be called transactional privacy, or the collection of “information about information. ” For example, the

number of keystrokes, the number of visits to

the bathroom, the destination of calls, etc., are

all type of information about transactions,

rather than about the content of communications or activities (see part II). 109 Although

‘WI’ransactiona) information, it will be recalled, differs from

substantive information, in that the latter reveals the content

or meaning of communications or documents. Transactional information, in contrast, reveals facts about communications or

documents.

present law, such as the Privacy Act and the

Fair Credit Reporting Act, regulates what can

be done with transactional information once

collected, it does not forbid its collection as

such. As we have seen, however, the collection

of transactional information, particularly if

done on an intensive basis (see part II) can

arouse feelings of having one’s privacy, dignity, and autonomy invaded. Moreover, because of the power of computers to generate

profiles and crosshatch many transactions,

transactional information can yield informed

estimates of the substantive content of communications or patterns of behavior—it can be,

in other words, a “back door” for getting at

personal information that existing law regulates.

Certainly, to forbid or regulate the collection

of all transactional information would be unreasonable. Much transactional data collected

by electronic monitoring software is used to

monitor equipment utilization, to track totals

of transactions made, and to determine whether

security systems are working properly. The collection of transactional data becomes most

subject to controversy when it is collected

about the performance of an individual worker.

It maybe that Congress would choose to treat

electronic monitoring as a‘ ‘right to know’ issue for workers; that is, employers could have

the right to collect whatever kind of transactional data they wish about employee performance, but would be required to give employees

access to, and if need be, correct, this information.

As this report has indicated throughout,

however, the issue of work monitoring cannot

be adequately understood, nor appropriately

addressed, in isolation from larger labor-management, privacy, and the health and safety

context in which it is embedded. Nor will specific policy actions taken with respect to particular forms of monitoring necessarily end the

controversies arising out of the application of

new technology forms in the workplace. The

policy maker should therefore be aware that an

exclusive focus on the forms of monitoring considered in this report will at best form the basis for a series of patchwork solutions to what

has been a perennial issue between workers and

employers.
Appendixes
Appendix A

Notes on Computer Work Monitoring

in Other Countries

Introduction

Because the American economy is so tied to the

global economic structure, increasing attention has

been given to approaches taken by other industrial

nations in their efforts to maintain a competitive

edge and adapt to microelectronic technology. It

is helpful to look at the experience of other countries in evaluating what lessons might be learned

with respect to work monitoring. There are a number of ways in which the different legal structure

and the institutional structure of labor relations

has resulted in different policies toward monitoring.1

The American labor relations system and labor

law model differ importantly from many other industrial nations. Most other industrial democracies have a higher level of unionization. Table 17

shows the approximate percentage of the work

force that is unionized in the United States and

in 15 other developed countries. Given the higher

level of union participation in the work force in

some of these countries, unions have naturally had

a greater influence in a wide variety of workplace

lpat~ of tti~ ~ction ~aw heavily from Steven Deutsciu “The International Context of Labor-Management Relations: Implications for

Workplace Monitoring, ” paper prepared for OTA, 1986.

Table 17.—Percent of Unionized Workers by Country

United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22%

France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23

Japan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......30

Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......35

Switzerland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......35

West Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......40

Netherlands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......40

Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .50

Ireland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50

Britain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......52

Austria. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Belgium. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......65

Norway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......65

Denmark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......70

Finland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......85

Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......90

SOURCE: Alan Westin and Russell Pipe, “Electronic Monitoring in Other Industrialized Countries, ” contractor report prepared for OTA, 1986.

issues, including introduction of computer technology and use of work monitoring. In addition many

of our competitor nations have a tradition of governmental involvement in labor relations and a

more developed tripartite government-labor-management approach to industrial policy, economic

development, and growth. This approach has no

real equivalent in this country, but there are increasing calls for some efforts in this direction.

A tradition of worker participation, including

employee involvement in applying new technology

in factories and offices, is also more developed in

some other industrial countries. In some countries,

this participation depends almost entirely on the

collective bargaining process, as for example in

England, Australia, and Canada, where the adversarial labor relations model is closer to that of the

United States. In others, however, worker participation or “co-determination” is required by law,

as in Sweden, Norway, Germany, and Holland. In

some of these countries as well, work environment

laws define certain workplace rights and give

guidelines for job design. Tables 18 and 19 list some

work environment legislation. The Norwegian

Work Environment Act of 1977 reads, in part:

General requirements.—Technology, organization of the work, working hours and wage systems

shall beset up so that the employees are not exposed

to undesirable physical or mental strain and so that

Table 18.-European Work Environment Acts

Providing Goals for Changing Working

Conditions During Office Automation

Federal Republic of

Germany . . . . . . . .. .The Works Constitution Act of

1972

The Netherlands . . . . . Working Environment Act of 1980

Norway . . . . . . . . . . . . . Work Environment Act of 1977b

Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . Working Environment Act of 1974

Denmark . . . . . . . . . . . . Act Respecting the Working

Environment

German Democratic

Republic . . . . . . . . . . Labour Code as Amended, June

1977

a

These Acts deal with all working conditions, thus are specifically applicable

to office automation.

bAlso known as Act Respecting Worker’s Protection and the Working Eflvironment

SOURCE Office of Technology Assessment, 1984

121

63-982 0 - 87 - QL: 3 -- 4
122 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Table 19.—European Acts Requiring Employers To Provide Information About New

Technology and Worker Representation in the Decisions About the Quality of Worklife

Country Information provision Work representation

Federal Republic of

Germany . . . . . . . . . . . Works Constitution Act of Works Constitution Act of 1972

1972a

The Netherlands. . . . . . . Works Council Act of 1979a Works Council Act of 1979

United Kingdom . . . . . . . Emploment Protection Act of b Employment Protection Act of

1975 1975

France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Act No. 82-915 of 28 October Act No. 82-689 of 4 August 1982

1982

Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Act Representing Co- Act Representing CoDetermination of Work of Determination of Work of 1976

1976b

alnfOmatiOn is ~~~”i~~d tO ~ w~~k c~””~il which Carl ba a Cross.sectiorl of all interested paflies including gOVOmment, industry,

and labor. blnforrnatlorl is provided to the worker or worker representative.

SOURCE” International Labour Organization, Aukxrratlor?’ Work Organization arrd OccfJpafional Stress (Geneva, Switzerland”

their possibilities of displaying caution and observing safety measures are not impaired. . . .

Arrangement of work.–The individual employee’s opportunity for self-determination and professional responsibility shall be taken into consideration when planning and arranging the work.

Efforts shall be made to avoid undiversified,

repetitive work and work that is governed by machine or conveyor belt in such a manner that the

employees themselves are prevented from varying

the speed of the work. Otherwise efforts shall be

made to arrange the work so as to provide possibilities for variation and for contact with others, for

connection between individual job assignments, and

for employees to keep themselves informed about

production requirements and results.

Control and planning systerms.-The employees

and their elected union representatives shall be kept

informed about the systems employed for planning

and effecting the work, and about planned changes

in such systems. They shall be given the training

necessary to enable them to learn these systems,

and they shall take part in planning them,

This law, and the Swedish Work Environment

Act of 1978, were both based on evidence that

machine-paced, monotonous work, done in social

isolation and involving shift work, leads to unhealthy outcomes in both emotional and physical

terms.2

There is a well-established international communications system across management and union

circles which has shared research results and exzBjorn Gustavsen and Gerry Hunnius, New Patterns of WOrk ‘~

form: The Case of Norway (Oslo: Oslo University Prees, 1981); Bertil

Gar(iell and Bjorn Gustavsen, “Work Environment Research and SOcial Change: Current Developments in Scandinavia, ” Journal of Occupational Behavior, vol. 1, January 1980.

perience in job redesign, improvement of working

life quality and participative management. There

is evidence of a substantial growth of a more participative and cooperative trend in the American

labor-management relations community,3 and the

Federal Government has started an initiative on

labor-management cooperation in the U.S. Department of Labor.4

Since collective bargaining covers only one-fifth

of the American work force, other initiatives have

been explored by advocates and policymakers, including the use of occupational safety and health

laws and agencies (which somewhat parallel work

environment laws in other nations that have addressed job stress, work organization and technology concerns). Concern over health effects, stressrelated worker compensation claims, are among the

driving forces for reform here. Thus far, only modest changes in Federal legislation and standards,

such as the OSHA hazard communication standard, have been seen. More activity seems focused

at the State and local level in efforts to pass legislation to protect employees against possible health

and safety hazards associated with video display

terminals (VDTs.) European developments have

been a significant stimulus for some of this effort.

3 & fOr example Business week? “The Hollow Corporation, ” Mar.

3, 1986; Steven Deutsch and Sandra Albrecht, “Worker Participation

in the United States: Efforts to Democratize Induetry and the Economy,” Labour and Society, vol. 8, July-September 1983, pp. 243-269.

4% u s Depmtment of Labor, Bureau of Labor-Management ‘la-

. .

tions and Cooperative Programs, U.S. Labor Law and the Future of

Labor-Management Cooperation, BLMR 104 (Washington, DC: 1986).
App. A—Notes on Computer Work Monitoring in Other Countries ● 123

Policy Approaches to Monitoring in

Selected Countries5

West Germany

Both the West German Trade Union Federation

(DGB) and a number of individual unions have been

active in trying to set ergonomic and work environment standards for VDT users. In 1979-80 German unions opened a campaign to write “model

codes” for VDT work into both industrywide and

plant-level agreements. These models included a

ban on individual monitoring, for example: “It shall

not be permitted to monitor the performance of

workers, for the purposes of measurement, control,

or comparison, by use of the installed [VDT] equipment. “6 A study of about 50 actual contracts concluded during this period found that work monitoring clauses like the above were often included,

Part of the concern about monitoring arises at least

partly from the fear of social isolation of monitored

workers, A study of bargaining agreements found

that such clauses are often included in actual labor management agreements as well.

Another example of a clause preventing monitoring comes from the 1984 contract between the

Commmerzbank AG and the bank employees’

union:

The performance or behavior of employees shall

not be effected by means of existing or planned EDP.

Data and programs which serve to verify performance or behavior shall be erased. . . .; A guarantee

shall be given that personal data on the employees

which are a by-product of the working process or

which can be deduced from work process data will

not be such as can be used or interpreted as a check

on personnel behavior or performance.

An interesting feature of the West German labor relations scene is the Works Council, an elected

group which management must consult in all matters of “internal order” in an enterprise; its functions are independent of the collective bargaining

process. Works councils are active in the process

of ‘co-determination, ” that is, they represent the

employees’ voice in the selection of technology and

‘Much of the information in this section comes from Alan F. Westin

and Russell Pipe, “Employee Monitoring in Other Industrialized Democracies, ” contractor report prepared for OTA, 1986.

“’West Germany: Workplace Agreements on New Technology, ”

European Industrial Relations Review, No. 106, November 1982, pp.

7-9. Cited in Alan F. Westin and Russell Pipe, “Employee Monitoring

in Other Industrialized Democracies, contractor report prepared for

OTA, August 1986, p. 23.

in other matters. According to the Act on Works

Constitution, which created works councils,

. . . the works council will, if no statutory rules or

collective bargaining agreement exist, co-determine:

. . . the introduction and use of technical installations that are intended to monitor conduct or performance of employees.

Norway

There is an understanding in Norway, among

both unions and employers, that the work measurement capabilities of new office technologies

have great potential for increasing productivity

and helping in planning and management of work.

However, there is a strong aversion to using the

information for individual performance measurement.

The general trend is to use the work monitoring

system to collect information, but to only use aggregate data. The social security administration,

for example, recently introduced a computerized

case handling system. The daily work statistics on

individuals are collected by the system, but the

reports issued are aggregated by work groups. At

the present time the data are available to both

union and management as part of an experiment

designed to test the productivity of two different

work organization approaches.

Similarly, the bank union has included in its technology agreements with employers that data on

work volume and speed be used only at the work

group level:

. . . local regulations laid down under the collective

agreement are designed to ensure that such information . . . is not used to evaluate employees. The

union points out that the only way to assess the impact on employment and working conditions of new

technologies. . . . is by using such work measurement

devices. However the union stresses the importance

of controlling the use to which the information is put,

Sweden

The Swedish Codetermination Act of 1976 requires that employee representatives participate

in decisions about computer system design, including the possible use of electronic monitoring. Further, The Work Environment Act of 1978, which

guarantees workers the right to a “satisfactory”

work environment, is generally interpreted to mean

that jobs should be designed to avoid machine pacing or individual computer monitoring, if possible.

Electronic monitoring systems, as negotiated between employers and unions, are generally only

used to measure group performance, as in Norway.
124 • The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

However, in some cases, where the union has

agreed to the necessity, individual monitoring can

and has been used. This has been the case, for example, where computers are used to keep track of

inventory in order to prevent theft. In addition,

nonunionized temporary workers are sometimes

paid by piece rates, so their work is sometimes

monitored electronically.7

Canada

Canada has a voluntaristic labor union system

similar to that in the United States, although the

level of unionization is higher. There are no specific provisions dealing with work monitoring in

any of Canada’s national or provincial labor codes,

nor have there been any regulations on monitoring issued by national or provincial regulatory authorities, although several have been considered.

What limitations on employer conduct that have

taken place have been the result of (a few) collective agreement clauses negotiated on that topic,

or arbitrator rulings interpreting rights of employees under contract.

Electronic monitoring appears to be fairly common in Canada, in the same sorts of work it is applied to in the United States. Service observation

is also an established practice in the telephone industry and in other types of telephone customer

service.

A survey conducted for the Canadian Labour

Congress’ (CLC) 1980 study of VDT health and

safety issues found that monitored workers experienced stress-related illnesses (general tiredness,

irritability, headaches, and sleeplessness) to a greater

extent than nonmonitored workers. As a result, the

report recommended that “direct electronic monitoring of individual worker’s activities and productivity be discontinued.” Where productivity

monitoring was deemed necessary, the report suggested that indirect or aggregate monitoring techniques be used.

Canadian unions began mobilizing around VDT

related issues, including work monitoring, in the

early 1980s. Model contracts proposed by the

Canadian Union of Public Employees and the

Canadian Labour Congress, among others, contained language barming monitoring of individuals.

For example:

71ntewiew with E~abeth Lagerlof, Labor Specidst, SWediSh ‘mbassy, Mar. 26, 1986.

It is recognized that volume measurement may

be necessary to obtain an objective evaluation of

the level of production of a group, a section or an

office. However, there shall be no individual work

measurement. 8

Such language has been adopted in a few contracts.

The Postal Workers, for example, negotiated for

work measurement by group in 1981 when new

equipment was installed. The Telecommunications

Workers got a coremitment from British Columbia Telephone Co. that data collected on computerized cash registers at Phone Marts would be used

only for inventory purposes, rather than individual performance.9

A task force appointed by the Canadian Ministry of Labour also addressed the question of electronic monitoring in its 1982 report In the Chips:

Opportunities, People, Partnerships.” The task

force considered monitoring “the most serious

manifestation” of the introduction of new office

technology, pointing to the stress, performance

pressure, and lack of autonomy suffered by monitored workers.

The Task Force regards close monitoring of work

as an employment practice based on mistrust and

lack of respect for basic human dignity. It is an infringement on the rights of the individual, and undesirable precedent that might be extended to other

environments unless restrictions are put in place

now. We strongly recommend that this practice be

prohibited by law.

The Task Force recommendations were in general considered too sweeping, too costly, and too

“pro-labor” and were not endorsed by the Ministry of Labour. However, there have been attempts

to pass legislation at the provincial level to create

ergonomic standards for VDTsand to ban individual monitoring. Legislation was introduced in Ontario, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan between 1981 and 1985, but none of the bills passed.

Japan

Interviews and published reports indicate that

individual electronic monitoring is not common in

Japan. This may be due in part to the still low

penetration of automated equipment into offices

there, but is most strongly related to cultural

values toward work. According to an executive of

one computer firm:

Individual work monitoring is not an issue in Japan. Employers do not measure individual output

and make individual judgments on that basis. If

8Canadian Union of Public Employees, Model contract on Technological Chamge, 1982. Cited in Westin & Pipe, op. cit. $Jwe~tb ad Pipe, op. cit.
App. A—Notes on Computer Work Monitoring in Other Countries ● 125

they tried to do that, unions would complain, because it would violate the union-company attitude

toward worker productivity. The climate in our

workplaces is for employess to work hard, and for

the whole work group-employees and managers—

to strengthen the norm of hard work. We would not

measure each person.

In one documented case, individual monitoring

has been used, not to increase worker performance,

but to insure that employees did not hurt themselves by working too hard. In the 1960s, a wave

of repetitive strain injuries among keypunch operators was attributed to the high number of keystrokes they performed daily. Several companies

and unions proposed voluntary limits on keystrokes

and in 1964 the Ministry of Labor issued a guideline of 12,000 keystrokes per hour. The guideline

also called for breaks of 10 to 15 minutes per hour

of work, a total of 300 minutes keypunching per

day, and regular medical exams. To enforce these

guidelines, employers have monitored individual

performance, at least on a test basis. These Ministry of Labor guidelines are still in use, and are the

model for updated guidelines now being considered

for VDT work. ’”

Privacy Legislation

Most Western European nations have privacy

legislation intended to ensure that personal privacy

is not eroded as a result of data processing applications. Most of these laws were passed in the

1970s, beginning with Sweden’s Data Act of 1972;

this was the same epoch as the work of the U.S.

Privacy Protection Commission (final report in

1977), the passage of the Privacy Act, and several

other privacy-related laws in the United States.

Unlike the approach of the United States, however, European laws do not leave it to the injured

individual to complain or sue if he or she believes

that personal data has been misused. Rather, independent government agencies (data protection

authorities) were created to supervise and enforce

prescribed data handling practices. All databases

containing personal information must be registered

with the data protection authority so that their use

can be supervised. In most cases, this applies to

both government and private databases. One principal focus of the data protection authorities has

been to prevent linking of databases to build up

‘‘profiles or “dossiers” of citizens.

‘OWestin and Pipe, op. cit. Information compiled by Alan F. Westin,

from interviews with industry, legal, and academic experts, Tokyo, May

1985,

Table 20 outlines the main provisions of legislation of 11 nations that use the Western European

model of privacy protection. These features generally include a requirement that the data be collected for legitimate reasons and used only for the

specified purpose, and that the individual have the

right to inspect the data. In some countries,

citizens can withhold sensitive information; anyone storing it in a database without their consent

would be in violation of the data protection law.

While the words “work monitoring” do not appear in the privacy legislation of any European

country, computerized work monitoring is covered

by data protection legislation to the extent that:

1) information is collected and stored by computer

and 2) information can be related to a specific employee. Table 21 indicates coverage of computer

usage monitoring, telephone call accounting, and

work measurement records under the laws of 11

nations.

Although records created by work monitoring

are covered by privacy laws in these nations, it appears that these laws have not been used extensively to prevent or modify any monitoring practices that unions or individual workers might have

found objectionable. Data protection authorities

have been preoccupied with their first-line responsibility of bringing major government and private

databases into compliance with the law, and recently have had to deal with increasingly frustrating problems of enforcing the laws in an era of

proliferating personal computers. There appear to

be no jurisdictional problems involved with data

protection authorities becoming involved in the

case of some inappropriate use of work monitoring records; data privacy officials in some countries have expressed increased interest and frustration with their inability to regulate such aspects

of the new information technologies. It appears

that the unions, works councils and labor courts

have not requested their involvement. Thus, trade

unions and labor law will continue to be the focal

point of actions to deal with monitoring.

Privacy Legislation and Telephone Call

Accounting

In West Germany, telephone call accounting has

been the topic of at least two court cases and the

subject of a continuing disagreement between the

privacy commission and the Federal government.

The privacy commission objects to collecting records of personal telephone calls by government

employees and urges utmost restraint even in keep-
126 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Table 20.—Main Provisions of Foreign Personal Data Protection Legislation Relevant to Coverage of

Employee Monitoring

National legislation

Provisions

Scope of application:

Central government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Y Y Y N

Provinces/states . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Y N Y N

Private sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Y N N Y

Covers all information traceable to identifiable

individuals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Y Y Y Y

Information collected and/or processed using

computers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Y Y Y Y

Limits placed on personal data collection . . . . . . Y Y Yc Y

Personal information must be collected for

specified, legitimate purposes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Y Y Y Y

Individuals have right of access to inspect personal information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Y Y Y Y

Sensitive personal details specified (collection

only with data subject’s knowledge and consent) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . N N Y Y

YYYYYYY Y

Y Y

e Y Y Y Y Y Y

YYYYYYY Y

Y Y N’ N

b Y Y Y Y

YYYYYYY Y

Y Y

d Y Y Y Y Y Y

YYYYYYY Y

Y Y’ Y Y Y Y Y Y

YNYNYYY Y

KEY: Y = Yes; N = No

%overs information concerning private affairs, such as ftnancial situation of individuals.

bcovers information on an individual’s personal status, intimate affairs, economic position and vocational qualifications.

collection of personal data limited unless it is “natural part of the t70m7d OfMrt3tiOIIS Of an enterprise. ”

d pers onal information Collection IS pg~rnissjble if it sg~es the purpose of a contractual relationship or there is a legitimate interest in (a business) storing it

estate laws may be enacted that for personal data maintained by the public sector.

SOURCE: Russell Pipe and Alan F. Westin, “Employee Monitoring in Other Industrialized Democracies,” contractor report prepared for OTA, 1966.

Table 21.–Applicability of Foreign Personal Data Protection Legislation to Employee Monitoring

National legislation

SOURCE: Russell Pipe and Alan F. Westin, “Employee Monitoring in Other Industrialized Democracies,” contractor report prepared for OTA, 1986,
App. A—Notes on Computer Work Monitoring in Other Countries ● 127

ing records of official call destinations. Of particular concern are calls by union representatives and

others (counselors, medical services) in sensitive

positions. In one agency, on the basis of an unwritten understanding in effect since 1984, calls by the

“personnel council” have been channeled through

a separate telephone line to bypass the call-accounting system. In general, however the Federal government finds value in call accounting and has not

complied with the privacy commissioner’s request

to terminate the practice and erase previous records. A similar controversy is going on at the state

level.

Conclusion

The force of law, tradition of labor-management

relations, and the current economic and political

milieu have shaped the American approach to dealing with the new technology at the workplace, including electronic monitoring. It is a model which

is different in important ways from the more centralized, regulatory, legislated model of employeremployee relations in many other industrial nations. While voluntary and recommended styles of

participative management and other approaches

towards dealing with microelectronic technology

developed abroad may have growing influence in

the United States, there will continue to be a distinctly different approach taken in this county in

the foreseeable future.
Appendix B

Privacy

Testing

and Civil Liberties Implications of

Employees in the Workplace

Introduction

The focus in this section shifts from the monitoring of work to the testing of employees. It looks

at some of the tests that can be given by employers

in hopes of predicting some aspects of an employee’s future work quality. Can technology help employers predict how good an employee will be before the person is hired? Could there be some

corporate equivalent of a carnival “weight and

fate” machine, capable of succinct predictions:

“This woman will try to embezzle money: don’t

trust her.“ “This man will have a heart attack at

45; don’t invest in training him. ” “This one uses

drugs: don’t hire him.“ “This is is a healthy, honest

worker; hire her!”

Clearly, such a single tool for personnel selection

does not exist, but a growing number of employers

are relying on tests for employees and job applicants to try to predict behavior or personal characteristics that may affect their job performance.

Limited evidence suggests that over the past few

years workplace testing has been undergoing arevival that may surpass the heyday of psychological testing in the 1950s. The future trend may well

be in the direction of more testing. If this is the

case, then the controversy about worker rights,

workplace privacy, and privacy of personnel records, may intensify.

Issues such as those explored in earlier chapters

will continue to arise and become more prominent

concerning what information is reasonable and necessary for an employer to have, who should have

access to it, and how it ought to be used, and where

the line should be drawn between information that

is personal and private and that which is not.

As noted earlier, the past pattern has been for

these new capabilities to come into use in a piecemeal fashion over time. Sometimes, however, they

are put to use almost immediately, before adequate

research can be conducted, as with polygraph testing, and before consideration can be given to the

long-term consequences for society. When this happens, issues arise that have no established legal,

ethical, or other useful framework for evaluation.

This appendix focuses on three technologies that

are already in use today: polygraphs, drug tests

by urinalysis, and genetic screening. In addition,

the appendix will review some research in the field

of brain wave analysis that could give rise to new

forms of worker testing in the next few years.

Some of the technology used for testing is not

new. The polygraph, for example, has had limited

use in law enforcement for 60 years. Now, however,

its dominant use is in personnel screening; of 2 million polygraph tests given annually, about 98 percent are given by employers to job applicants and

employees. 1 Medical screening for drug or alcohol

use, formerly used primarily as a diagnostic tool

in clinical settings, began to be used by the Department of Defense in the 1970s to identify returning military personnel with drug problems. Now,

nearly all military personnel, millions of private employees, and a growing number of government employees find that their jobs depend on passing the

drug test.

Genetic screening, an emerging technology for

predicting a person’s likelihood of developing diseases, is now used only in a few workplaces, usually

to identify workers who maybe hypersusceptible

to chemicals found in those workplaces. However,

tests for many common diseases will be commercially available within the next 5 years, and employers may want to include them in pre-employment physicals.

Still in the research stage are tests based on brain

waves. Currently under study is the possible use

of brain wave analysis in monitoring concentration,

detecting lies, and predicting certain illnesses. A

computer-based system to detect drug use by

measuring brain waves is already on the market.

Controversy about worker testing focuses on the

accuracy and predictive value of the tests. Employers who test employees for drug use or honesty may believe that the tests work or at least

that the fear of testing discourages the unwanted

behavior. Washington Area Metropolitan Transit

Authority, for example, noted a decrease in drug

use and in accidents since beginning its drug test

*Harrison Donnelly, “Privacy in the Workplace, ” E&”tonal Research

Reports, Mar. 21, 1986, p. 214, citing figures from the American Polygraph Association.

zKenneth F. Englade, “’l’he Business of the Polygraph, ” Across the

Board, October 1982, pp. 20-27.

128
App. B—Privacy and Civil Liberties Implications of Testing Employees in the Workplace • 129

program. Officials of the Eckerd Drug Co. believe

that requiring a test of all applicants and periodic

tests of employees, is the best way to deter theft

and “keep basically honest people basically honest. ”

But there have been no systematic studies of employee theft to support this claim.2

On the other hand, there are concerns about testing, and many argue that these gains, if they exist, are achieved at a heavy cost: undue intrusion

into private lives of employees; creation of an

atmosphere of fear and intimidation in the workplace; and false accusation and denial of job opportunities for many innocent people.

This chapter outlines some trends in worker

testing–who uses it, what can be learned, and

directions of research. The chapter also explores

why worker testing is controversial, and looks at

some of the ethical and legal questions raised by

its use.

Polygraph Testing

Extent of Honesty Testing

Employee theft is a major business problem, resulting in losses estimated at $5 billion to $10 billion annually.’ To counteract it, employers are increasingly using “honesty testing” on workers,

either using the polygraph (“lie detector”) or paperand-pencil honesty tests. One major object is to

cut down on employee theft by screening out potential thieves before they are hired. In addition,

a number of employers use polygraphs as part of

internal investigations of theft and other wrongdoing, and some administer polygraph tests on a

regular or random basis as a deterrent to

wrongdoing.

A testing industry has grown in response to this

demand, and perhaps has helped to fuel the demand. While some large firms have in-house polygraphers (one Florida drug firm has a staff of 40),

most rely on detective or personnel security firms

who provide polygraph services on a contract basis. There is no good estimate of the total number

of such firms throughout the country, but a gauge

of their growth can be found by looking at selected

cities. In 1970, for example, there were only three

such firms listed in the Atlanta yellow pages. By

1975 there were 20, and in 1985 there were 33.4

‘

) Susan Gardner, “Wiretapping the Mind: A Call to Regulate Truth

Verification in Employ merit,” San Diego Law Review, vol. 21 No. 2,

March 1983, pp. 295-323.

‘Kenneth F. Englade, “The Business of the Polygraph, ” Across the

Board, October 1982, pp. 20-27; Atlanta Yellow Pages, 1985-86.

At present 3,000 polygraphers belong to the American Polygraph Association, but it is estimated

that there are 8,000 to 9,000 full-time polygraphers

nationally. Some are employed by law enforcement

agencies, some by detective agencies, and some are

part of in-house security departments of large

firms.5

Paper-and-pencil honesty testing has gained

popularity in the past few years, partly in response

to criticism of polygraphs and partly as a lower

cost alternative. Compared to a cost of $40 to $50

per test for polygraph, paper-and-pencil tests can

be administered and scored for $8 to $15 a piece.’

At the present time, about a dozen firms nationwide are dominant producers of these tests, two

of the largest being John E. Reid & Associates in

Chicago and Stanton Corp. in Charlotte, NC. At

least 2 million of these tests are given annually in

preemployment screening.

Thirty-two States have legislation limiting the

use of polygraphs in employment, including 12

with an outright ban on employers’ requiring or

requesting that employees take a polygraph test.

Nine States require licensing for the polygraph

operator. Four States have legislation regarding

the types of questions that maybe asked, prohibiting questions on such topics as sexual preference,

religion, union affiliation, or politics. Twenty-one

States have laws providing that polygraph tests

be voluntary7 (see table 22).

At the present time there seem to be few State

laws dealing directly with paper-and-pencil honesty

tests. One 1986 Massachusetts law outlaws honesty tests that amount to paper-and-pencil polygraph tests. There have been several attempts to

pass polygraph legislation at the national level, including bills in the 99th Congress. s

Part of the reason for the growing use of honesty testing is the increasing difficulty and high

cost of doing good background checks. A thorough

check might cost as much as $250, and many employers hesitate to give detailed information about

former employees, partly due to fear of libel

suits.9

5JoXph Buc~ey, III, ~esident, John E. Reid & Associates, PerSOn~

communication, Aug. 19, 1986.

6%~n Demler, et ~., ‘CCm YOU Pa.gs The Job Test, ” ~“ewsweek, May

5, 1986, pp. 46-53; Kenneth F. Englade, “The Business of the Polygraph, ” Across the Board, October 1982, pp. 20-27. ~wimm E, Hmtsfield, “Polygraphs,” Labor Law Journal, vol. 36,

November 1985, pp. 817-834,

‘Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1985 (H.R. 1524) passed the

House; Polygraph Protection Act of 1985 (S. 1815) was reported out

by the Committee on Labor and Human Resources but not acted on

by the Senate.

“’The High Cost of Employee Theft, ” Dun Business Month, October 1982.
130 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Table 22.—State Legislation on Polygraph Testing

Employer may Employee must Certain personal

not test or Employer may not be told test is questions License for

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

x

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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x

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x

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x

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x

x

x

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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x

x

x

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x

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x

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x

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x

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x

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x

x

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x

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x

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x

x

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x

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x

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x

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x

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request test require test voluntary prohibited polygraphers

Alabama. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alaska . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Arizona. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Arkansas . . . . . . . . . . . . .

California. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Colorado . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Connecticut . . . . . . . . . .

Delaware . . . . . . . . . . . . .

District of Columbia . . .

Florida . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Georgia . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hawaii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Idaho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Illinois . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Indiana. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Iowa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Kansas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Kentucky . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Louisiana. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Maine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Maryland . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Massachusetts . . . . . . . .

Michigan . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Minnesota . . . . . . . . . . . .

Mississippi . . . . . . . . . . .

Missouri. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Montana. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nebraska . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nevada. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

New Hampshire . . . . . . .

New Jersey . . . . . . . . . . .

New Mexico . . . . . . . . . .

New York. . . . . . . . . . . . .

North Carolina . . . . . . . .

North Dakota . . . . . . . . .

Ohio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Oklahoma . . . . . . . . . . . .

Oregon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Pennsylvania. . . . . . . . . .

Rhode Island. . . . . . . . . .

South Carolina . . . . . . . .

South Dakota . . . . . . . . .

Tennessee. . . . . . . . . . . .

Texas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Utah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Vermont. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Virginia a

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Washington . . . . . . . . . . .

West Virginia . . . . . . . . .

Wisconsin . . . . . . . . . . . .

Wyoming . . . . . . . . . . . . .

x

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

x

x

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x

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x

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x

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x

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x

x

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x

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x

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x

x

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x

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x

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x

x

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x

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x

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x

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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applicant or employee must give written consent and be told all Ciuf3SliOnS in advance.

SOURCE Adapted from William E. Hartsfield, “Polygraphs,” Labor Law Journal, vol. 38, November 1982, pp. 817-834
App. B—Privacy and Civil Liberties implications of Testing Employees in the Workplace . 131

Technological Considerations

Polygraph technology has not changed substantially since it came into use in 1921.10 The polygraph measures and records a number of physiological responses, including skin resistance,

respiration, and blood pressure, while the subject

answers a series of questions posed by an interviewer. The most commonly accepted theories of

polygraph hold that the subject’s guilt and nervousness will produce measurable physiological reactions when he or she is lying. These reactions must

be interpreted by a trained polygraph interviewer.

Critics argue that the physiological change during lying is still not well understood, and even

proponents of polygraph agree that a unique set

of physiological reactions to lying has not been

found. The reactions often attributed to lying can

also be caused by anxiety, anger, or humiliation.

Being required to take a polygraph test elicits precisely these feelings in many people.

In determining the accuracy and reliability of

polygraph tests, it is important to consider whether

the test is used for investigating a specific criminal incident or for screening. The questioning technique is also important, as discussed in a previous

OTA report.11 The polygraph appears to be most

reliable when the interviewer is asking relevant

questions about a specific event (e.g., “Did you

take $200 out of the cash drawer yesterday afternoon?”) and comparing the reactions to a list of

irrelevant control questions (e.g., “except for what

you told me already, did you even steal anything

before the age of 21?’’) .12 Subjects that react more

strongly to relevant questions than control questions are believed to be deceptive. OTA’s previous

review of research on polygraph validity found that

most research has focused on use in specific incidents. Methodological problems and differences

made it difficult to draw overall conclusions about

validity. In the studies reviewed, accuracy rates

ranged from O to 100 percent, and innocent people

were more likely to be assessed deceptive than vice

versa. A summary of the findings of the OTA review is shown in table 23.

Table 23.—Accuracy of Polygraphs for

Specific Incident Criminal Investigationsa

Field studies Range Average

Six prior reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . 64-980/.

OTA review of 10 individual field studies:

Correct guilty . . . . . . . . . . . . 70.6-98.60/o 86.30/o

Correct innocent . . . . . . . . . . 12.5 -94.1 76.0

False positiveb . . . . . . . . . . . 0-75.0 19.1

Fasle negative c . . . . . . . . . . . 0-29.4 10.2

OTA review of 14 individual analog studies:

Correct guilty . . . . . . . . . . . . 35.4-1 00.00/0 63.7%

Correct innocent . . . . . . . . . . 32.0 -91.0 57.9

False positive . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.0-50,7 14.1

False negative. . . . . . . . . . . . 0-28.7 10.4

alncludes some Investigations d work site

bFalSe positive—innocent persons found deceptive

CF”ls,e negative—guilty persons found nondeceptive

SOURCE’ Adapted from U.S. Congress, Off Ice of Technology Assessment, Scientific Validity of Po/ygraph Test/rig” A Research Rewew and Eva/ua.

fion —A Technical Memorandum, OTA. TM-H.15 (Washington, DC U.S

Government Printing Office, November 1983), p 97

Validity in screening situations, where questions

are of a more general or hypothetical nature (’‘Have

you ever taken something that didn’t belong to

you?”) and responses cannot be easily compared

to control questions, is more problematic. Some

critics suggest that screening polygraph tests are

strongly biased against honest people. In this view,

the basically honest person, the one who feels

guilty about small past wrongdoings or angry at

a challenge to his or her integrity, is likely to do

worse on a polygraph test than a person with less

developed conscience. 13 The America Psychological Association, for its part, charges that polygraph tests produce “an unacceptable number of

false positives.’’” The OTA report found no

studies evaluating whether polygraph testing is

valid in personnel security situations. is OTA is

currently reviewing the Defense Department’s

polygraph test and research programs. ”

The validity of pencil-and-paper honesty tests

has also been called into question, and there appears to be a dearth of independent research on

their validity. Some critics note that many “correct” test answers are based on values and definitions of honesty that may not be shared by all test

takers. ’7

I“Kenneth F. Eng]ade, “The Business of the Polygraph, ” Across the

Board, October 1982, pp. 20-27.

1 I For a description of the various polygraph Whrdques ~d ~ evaluation of scientific research on polygraphs, see, U.S. Congress, Office

of Technology Assessment, Scientific Vti”&”ty of Polygraph Testing:

A Research Review and Evaluation-A Technical Memoranclum OTATM-H-15 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, November 1983).

] ‘Ibid.

13 David T. Lykken, “Detecting Deception in 1984, ” American 13ehavioraf Scientist, MarchlApril 1984, pp. 481-499.

1

4

’’ Can You Pase the Job Test, ” Newsweek, May 5, 1986, pp. 46-53.

16For a description of the various polygraph techniques ~d ~ ev~Uation of scientific research on polygraphs, see, U.S. Congress, Office

of Technology Assessment, Scientific Validity of Polygraph Testing:

A Research Review and Evaluation-A Techm”cai Memorandum OTATM-H-15 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, November 1983).

1@TA Review of the Defense Department ‘S Polygraph Test ~d Research P;ograms forthcoming (1987).

17 Quoting Michael Merbaum in “Can You Pass the Job Test, ”

Newsweek, May 6, 1986, p. 49.
132 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Legal and Ethical Considerations

The privacy issue pits the employees’ interest

in being left alone, and in keeping certain information private, against the employers’ interest in protecting their businesses and selecting employees

by their standards.

However, questions addressed to workers in onthe-job polygraph tests sometimes go beyond jobrelated topics and probe into sensitive areas of personal life. Several critics have charged that the purpose of such questioning is not only to intimidate

workers but to screen out minority group members

or those who may show dissident tendencies or an

inclination to join unions. At least four States have

legislation prohibiting employers from asking

questions about politics, religion, union affiliation,

or sex life. 18

Drug Abuse Testing

Rationale and Extent of Drug Testing

The problem of drug abuse on the job has gained

increased attention in the past few years, but it

is not a new problem. In fact, overall abuse of most

drugs in the United States has held steady or declined since 1979.19 Substance abuse is still a major problem, however, and the current public awareness and concern should help to reduce it further.

Alcohol abuse is estimated to cost the U.S. economy a total of $89.5 billion per year in lost employment, illness, reduced productivity, and death and

injury due to automobile accidents. Other types

of drug abuse are estimated to cost society about

$46.9 billion per year.20 The U.S. Chamber of

Commerce estimates the direct costs of drug and

alcohol use among workers costs employers $60

billion per year in reduced productivity, increased

medical claims, and absenteeism.21 Workers who

are dependent on alcohol or other drugs tend to

have more accidents, which may increase their employers’ insurance costs. Addicts are also more

likely to steal money or property from the employer

or from co-workers in order to support their habits.

In order to ensure a drug-free workplace, some

employers have resorted to testing their workers

for drug and alcohol use. About 25 percent of the

18willi~E. H~5field, “pOlYgTaph9, “ Labor Law Journal, vol. 36,

November 1985, pp. 817-834.

lgRe%mch ~mgle Institu~, Econonu”c costs to %Ciety Of A~cOhO~

and Drug Abuse and Ment%J Illness, Research Triangle Park, 1984. The

continuations of this trend is supported by statistics of the National

In;~~W;de of Drug Abuse.

21sus& Demler, et ~-, Iicm you Pass the Job Test?” ~ewsweek,

May 5, 1986, pp. 46-53.

Fortune 500 firms now do some testing of employees, as compared with 10 percent in 1982.22 As of

mid-1986 nine Federal agencies had drug-testing

programs in place, and at least eight were planning to begin testing in the immediate future.23

An Executive Order of September 1986 established

a “drug free workplace” as the policy of the U.S.

Government.

A number of firms that have instituted drugtesting programs have reported dramatic decreases in on-the-job accidents and injuries—90

percent in the case of Georgia Power and 70 percent at the Southern Pacific Railway .24 However,

there are some who dispute that testing is responsible for these results; for example, in the case of

Georgia Power, the accident rate began its decline

before testing started.25 In addition, the tests

have also led to charges that they are invasive of

privacy, that tests are sometimes inaccurate, and

that testing programs are sometimes used to intimidate, discriminate against, or harass certain

groups of workers.

Public concern with the substance-abuse problem, on the one hand, and concern about the advisability of on-the-job drug testing, on the other,

reached a head in 1986. In March of that year, the

President’s Commission on Organized Crime recommended that Federal employees and contractors

be subjected to “suitable” drug testing as an essential step in reducing the demand for drugs. Several months later, President Reagan held “voluntary” testing for the White House staff and

suggested that government agencies and private

industry follow suit. Executive Order 12564 of September 1986 directed the Office of Personnel Management to develop governmentwide guidelines on

testing. Objections to widespread use of testing

have been voiced in the press and in a report by

subcommittees of the House Committee on Civil

Service.26

‘zMark A Rothstein, –ning Workers for Drugs: A Legal and Ethical Framework, ” Employee Relations Law Journal, winter 1985/1986,

Pp. 422-437.

23U. S. Congress, House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service,

Subcommittee on Civil Service, “Drug Testing in the Federal Governmerit, ” Staff Report, June 20, 1986, pp. 7-10.

24Stephen R. Dujack, “An Unhealthy Specimen: Drug Tests Are Unconstitutional and Sometimes Wrong, ” Washington Post, Aug. 17, 1986.

25Testimony of Ms. ~s~e price before the Subcommittee on Human

Resources, House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, Sept.

16, 1986.

2%.S. Congress, House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service,

Subcommittee on Human Resources, “Drug Testing Federal Employees, ” Hearings, Mar. 18, 1986, Serial No. 99-46; Subcommittee on Civil

Service, “Drug Testing in the Federal Government, ” Staff Report, June

20, 1986.
App. B—Privacy and Civil Liberties Implications of Testing Employees in the Workplace • 133

Drug testing is rapidly growing into a multimillion-dollar industry. Total sales of urine test kits

in 1986 were estimated at $115 million worldwide

and $80 million in the United States, and some expect sales to double by 1990. Of the $73 million

total test kit sales in 1985, only about 12 million

dollars’ worth were purchased by hospital labs

(where primary use is to monitor levels of medication prescribed by physicians). About 20 million

dollars’ worth of test kits were purchased by the

Department of Defense, $10 million by employers

for onsite screening, and $22 million by commercial laboratories, which primarily do testing for emplloyers. 27 In response to the booming market,

many firms that have heretofore specialized in

diagnostic tests for hospitals are hurrying to introduce kits for identifying drug abusers in the

workplace.

In addition to manufacturing the reagents and

test kits, several of the largest test manufacturers

are also in the consulting business, helping their

clients set up drug test programs and cope with

the personnel and legal problems associated with

drug testing. For example, Diagnostic Dimensions

—a joint venture of test manufacturer HoffmanLaRoche and Development Dimensions International, a management training company-helps

employers to implement testing programs and to

fight legal challenges by employees. Similar service is offered by Psychiatric Diagnostic Laboratories of America.28

Technological Considerations

Tests for use of drugs such as marijuana, cocaine,

heroin, or amphetarmines have relied on chemical

analysis of urine or blood specimens. Typically, in

the employment context, urinalysis is used. This

requires taking the sample from an employee under conditions that satisfy “chain of custody” requirements (i.e., treating each urine specimen as

though the results may be introduced in court).

Careful security and labeling procedures must be

maintained in sending the specimen to a laboratory, performing chemical tests on the specimen

(and often a second “corroborating” test), and then

returning the test results to the employer.

Among the more widely used tests are EMIT

(Enzyme Multiplied Immunoassay Technique), manufactured by the Syva Co., and the ABUSCREEN

system, manufactured by LaRoche Diagnostics,

27 Calvin Sims, “Boom in Drug Tests Expected, ” New York Times,

Se t, 8, 1986, pp. Dl, D21. % Fern Schumer Chapman, “The Rukus Over Medical Testing, ” Fortune, Aug. 19, 1985.

Inc. Both these tests are based on immunoassay

techniques, are fairly low in cost ($13 to $15 per

test), and are generally used for mass screening of

large batches of samples. Tests using the gas chromatography (GC) or gas chromatography/mass

spectrometry (GC/MS) techniques are more accurate, require more highly trained technicians,

cost more ($60 to $80 per sample), and are usually

used to confirm any positive results (finding the

evidence of drug use) from a screening test.

One major problem with these tests is that they

do not measure the current level of intoxication,

but rather the levels of chemical byproducts created as the body metabolizes the drug. Thus, the

tests can only show that some drug has been used

but do not show that a person is currently impaired.

Other problems relate to the accuracy of the tests

themselves and the ability of commercial labs to

provide accurate results on a regular basis. Although manufacturers and proponents of screening tests claim accuracy rates of 95 to 99 percent,

other researchers have found accuracy to be much

lower in typical commercial laboratories. Inaccurate results can arise from poor laboratory procedure or from mislabeling or mishandling of specimens en route to the lab. In 1984 the Air Force

had to reinstate 6,500 airmen dismissed for drug

use because their tests were invalidated by poor

lab procedures and improper “chain of custody”

procedures for handling specimens.

Proficiency tests of laboratories have revealed

that many have high error rates.29 According to

some experts, competition for drug testing contracts has lead many to cut prices and overwork

their technicians and equipment, thus pushing error rates even higher.30 There are no mechanisms

to put incompetent labs out of business. Even the

few States with regulations and proficiency standards do not have manpower to enforce their regulations. Federal regulations affect only labs that

test specimens sent across State lines, and these

regulations are hard to enforce.31

A number of other substances, including prescription and over-the-counter drugs, herbal teas, and

culinary poppy seeds can be mistaken for drugs

in some of the tests. A controversial set of studies

has found that tests can mistake melanin (the substance responsible for skin color as well as other

‘29sW for ex~p]e Hugh J. Hansen, Samuel P. c~~) ~d ‘. ‘*

Boon, “Crisis in Drug Testing, ” JAMA, Apr. 26, 1985.

3oLawence K. Altmaw “Drug Tests Gain Precision But Can Be Inaccurate, ” New York Zl”mes, Sept. 16, 1986.

31 Walt Bogdanich, “False Negative: Medical Labs, Trustd as

Largely Error Free, Are Far From Infallible, ” Wsll Street Journal.
134 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

functions of the body) for a byproduct of THC (the

active ingredient of marijuana), thus producing

higher false positive rates among black people.32

There is also controversy over the cutoff points

to be used for tests. While some experts suggest

that tests for marijuana should be considered positive only if they have a concentration of over 50

nanograms per milliliter (rig/ml) a more typically

used cutoff point is 20 ng/ml and some organizations use even lower cutoff points. Inaccuracies in

all tests are much more likely at low concentrations.33 Even the use of confirmatory tests has

not stilled controversy about accuracy, especially

since some commercial labs rely on lower cost tests

for confirmation as well as screening.34

Ethical and Legal Issues

Privacy. -There are several reasons why employees have objected to drug testing on privacy

grounds. For one thing, it can reveal details of personal life outside of work. Current methods of drug

screening reveal recent use of a drug, not current

impairment; people who use drugs outside of work

test positive, even though they might be sober and

fit for duty during work hours. Is after-hours use

of legal or illegal drugs an employer’s concern?

In addition, producing a urine sample before witnesses violates most people’s reasonable expectation of privacy for bodily functions. Both these objections apply to deficiencies of urinalysis, not to

the concept of drug testing in general.

Methods and Conditions of Testing.–The first

question is whether testing is the appropriate response to perceived drug use in workplaces. In

many populations a testing program may cast too

broad a net, subjecting many workers to testing

in order to identify a very few drug users. The next

question is who should be tested? Should all employees be tested or only those with jobs that pose

special problems of safety or security if there is

drug abuse? If only some employees are tested,

does this create equal protection problems if those

tested are disproportionately racial minorities or

blue collar workers? What drugs should be tested

for? Is it an employer’s job to identify only users

of illegal drugs? Many legal drugs are also abused.

32Jarnes Woodford, Ph. D., personal communication Aug. 25, 1986,

based on studies conducted at the U.S. Army Forensic Lab, Wiesbaden,

Germany. See also “The Melanin Defense, Debated by Woodford and

McBay,” Substance Abuse Report, Dec. 1, 1986, p. 3.

“’’The Melanin Defense, Debated by Woodford and McBay, ” Substance Abuse Report, Dec. 1, 1986, p. 3.

34 Table on “Modified Drug Screen” from conference material

produced by Sm.ithKline Clinical Laboratory, Memphis, TN.

On the other hand, some employees that are using

a legal drug for legitimate medical reasons maybe

impaired using it.

Is there a socially acceptable need for an employer to mandate periodic or random substanceabuse testing for the workforce, or should testing

be limited to specific instances where an employee’s conduct raises “reasonable suspicion” of substance abuse? Random or periodic testing seems

contrary to the principle that people are innocent

until proven guilty; such a testing scheme requires

everyone to prove his or her innocence on a regular basis. In a number of cases to date, the courts

have required that employees be tested only when

there is reasonable suspicion of drug use. Random

testing of Iowa prison guards and compulsory testing of New York City teachers applying for tenure

were struck down by the courts.35 In both cases,

however, the employers were government entities,

whose employees are protected by the Fourth

Amendment to the Constitution against “unreasonable search by their employer. ” A number

of private employers make use of random testing,

and some of their programs are also being challenged.

Another important point is what drugs should

be covered by the tests. A survey of drug testing

programs in the Federal Government found wide

variation in the types of drugs being screened.36

While many employers focus on illegal substances

like cocaine and marijuana, a number of legal substances are also abused. However, testing for these

drugs will also reveal their use by individuals who

use them legitimately, thus raising another privacy

issue.

One interesting point is the lack of interest of

many employers at the present time in testing for

alcohol abuse in the workplace, despite all the evidence that alcohol is responsible for far more workplace accidents and absenteeism than the illegal

drugs. (Alcohol intoxication is usually tested by

breath or blood tests, rather than urinalysis.)

S5For exmple, ca9e9 of New York City teachers, New Jersey government workers, Jesus Rangel, “Government Bars Drug Testing of

Teachers, ” New York Times, Aug. 12, 1986, p. B1; Alfonso A. Narvaex,

“U.S. Judge Blocks Urine Drug Teats,” New York Times, Sept. 19,1986,

p. Al.

‘%ee U.S. Congress, House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, Subcommittee on Civil Service, “Drug Testing in the Federal Government, ” Staff Report, June 20, 1986, pp. 7-10; also Lawrence Miike,

“Accuracy and Reliability of Urine Drug Tests, ” in House Committee

on Post Office and Civil Service, Subcommittee on Human Resources,

Hearings of Sept. 16, 1986.
App. B—Privacy and Civil Liberties Implications of Testing Employees in the Workplace ● 135

Use of Test Results

Another question germane to any testing program is what to do with the drug abusers when

they are discovered. In the case of pre-employment

screening, the answer of most firms is not to hire

them, although a few do tell the applicants why

they have been turned down and invite them to

reapply once they are drug free.

In some firms, a current employee who tests

“positive” might be referred to an employee assistance program (EAP) for rehabilitation. Some observers have expressed concern that existing EAPs,

which heretofore have assisted employees who voluntarily sought help for drug problems, will be severely weakened by an influx of clients who have

been “sentenced” to rehabilitation after a positive

urine test. An alternative followed by many clients

is the dismissal or discipline of drug users. Between

1971 and 1980 the Armed Forces tended to rehabilitate returning Vietnam veterans whose drug

problems were detected through urinalysis. In recent years, however, the emphasis has turned to

discipline and dismissal. The current guidelines issued by the Office of Personnel Management for

Federal agency drug programs directs each agency

plan to include an EAP, but also lists disciplinary

actions including reprimands, suspension, and dismissal. According to the guidelines, dismissal from

Federal service would be mandatory upon a second confirmed finding.37

A forthcoming OTA technical memorandum will

look in greater detail at some of the technical,

administrative, and legal problems involved in

drug testing.’”

Genetic Screening

Extent and Rationale for Genetic Testing

Genetic screening is not new, though in many

ways it is still an emerging technology. Tests for

diagnosing or predicting some genetically based

diseases have been available for some time. For example, screening tests for sickle cell trait, a condition especially common among those of African ancestry, were available in the early 1970s. Blood

tests of newborns to screen for phenylketonuria

(PKU), a genetic ailment that causes mental retar-

~Toffice of per~onnel Management, FPM Letter 792-, ‘i Establishing

a Drug-Free Federal Workplace, ” Dec. 27, 1986.

Ss(jffice of TW~olon Assessment, Urine Drug Testing, Technical

Memorandum (forthcoming 1987).

dation and death if not treated early, is called for

in statutes or regulations of 46 States and is customary in the others.39

Genetic screening in the workplace is not yet a

widespread practice. In its 1983 report on genetic

screening in the workplace, OTA found that few

large U.S. firms were using genetic screening in

their personnel selection practices.40 Out of 366

respondents, only 8 said they were currently doing any type of genetic test; 17 had done so in the

past; but 59 had plans to do so in the future. While

these results indicate that genetic screening in the

workplace was not widespread at the time, many

researchers in the field assert that it is difficult to

get good information about firms that do genetic

studies. Such firms may not answer questionnaires

or talk about their policies because of the controversies, including charges of discrimination,

that have arisen when other firms have publicly

discussed screening programs.41

Despite the bad publicity that might attach itself to the concept of genetic testing, screening

might offer some advantages to employers. It is

known that human beings have varying susceptibilities to illness, including illnesses related to exposure to toxic substances at work. Not everyone

who mines coal gets black lung disease, for example, just as not everyone who smokes cigarettes

gets cancer. If firms could determine that certain

people are especially susceptible to a toxin found

in the workplace they could decline to hire them

or otherwise avoid assigning them to work near

the hazardous substance. Thus the employer helps

the employee stay healthy while also avoiding the

possible costs of a future illness that the employer

might have to bear. Employers often pay part or

all of their employees health or life insurance costs.

Group insurance rates depend on the health experience of the group. Thus it would be to an employer’s advantage to identify and eliminate unhealthy or potentially unhealthy employees in

order to keep rates low.

39 Americm Bm Foundation, State Laws and Regulations Governing

Newlorn Screening, compiled by Lori B. Andrews, Chicago, 1985.

‘“U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, The Role of

Genetic Testing in the Prevention of occupational Disease, OTA-BA194 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, April 1983),

41 Interview with Elaine Draper, Ph. D., School of Public Health,

University of California, Berkeley, September 1986. See also Thomas

H. Murray, “The Social Context of Workplace Screening, ” The Hastings Center Report, October 1984.
136 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Technological Considerations

Although genetic screening might appear to be

beneficial to both the employer and the employee,

it is controversial for a number of reasons. The validity and accuracy of most screening tests has not

yet been firmly established. Even if a person is determined to have a particular genetic trait, he or

she may not necessarily develop an illness; and

others may develop a disease even though tests

do not show them to have the genetic markers usually associated with a trait. Because genetic susceptibilities are unequally distributed among

different races or ethnic groups, screening programs can have the flavor of illegal discrimination.

In addition, individuals may prefer to assume their

own risks in deciding what kind of work to do. Finally, some argue that the way to ensure workplace

health is not to exclude hypersusceptible workers,

but to design safe ways to handle toxins so that

no workers are exposed to them. Thus, genetic

screening may offer employers a way to evade

responsibility for designing safe workplaces.

New techniques based on recombinant DNA research show promise of allowing scientists to develop better tests, including tests to detect some

people at risk for common ailments such as diabetes, heart disease, and manic-depressive illness.

Further research is likely to gradually develop tests

that are more sensitive, more specific, and more

reliable. A forthcoming OTA background paper

will look more closely at the technical feasibility

and commercial potential of new genetic tests.42

The possibility of tests for common diseases only

intensifies the controversy about the possible uses

of screening in the workplace. If employers could

justify these tests as a valid form of pre-employment testing, they could be applied to a larger population of workers, not just those who work with

hazardous materials. Possible advantages to employers could be fewer workers’ compensation

claims, lower insurance premiums, and perhaps,

less lost time and wages due to illness.

A related question is how insurance companies

will use the results of genetic testing. If really good

tests for susceptibility to common ailments become

available, their results might be used to raise the

price of coverage or to deny coverage to certain

groups.

Legal and Ethical Concerns

A number of experts in the area have worried

that extensive use of genetic screening in the work42U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Applications of

Biotechnology ot test for Human Genetic Disorders, forthcoming (1987).

place could create different classes of workers

based on genetic fitness or unfitness. One researcher noted that people whose tests show a likelihood

of developing a disabling disease might be denied

employment or training opportunities in certain

professions. Airlines, for example, might prefer to

hire pilots who are likely to have a long career, in

order to justify the long training; no one wants

pilots who are likely to have early heart attacks.”

The opposite type of discrimination might develop

in jobs where training is cheap but pensions are

expensive; short-lived people might be preferred

for routine jobs.

Even putting aside the question of employment

discrimination, a number of other privacy issues

arise, particularly regarding the question of access

to test results. While tests may be performed by

a company’s medical personnel, the records may

circulate within firms to nonmedical personnel who

make management decisions about the worker. A

confidential physician-patient relationship usually

does not exist in the workplace. This aspect of

privacy, which would apply to any kind of medical

test, is even more sensitive in this case because

decisions may be made on the basis of the future

possibility of disease, rather than actual illness.

There is also the possibility of stigmatization and

diminution of future job prospects because test

performed by one employer could become part of

the public record, perhaps through workers compensation records or employment clearinghouses.

Medical records are sometimes subject to inspection by third parties as well-unions, government

agencies, insurance companies, epidemiologists doing research, etc.

That these concerns actually could become a

problem seems to be indicated by the current response of employers and insurers to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The situation

with AIDS is not exactly analogous because AIDS

is not a genetic disease, and is also a very frightening and fatal ailment that is widely misunderstood. Employers have dismissed workers who

showed symptoms such as sudden weight loss,

which might be indicative of AIDS. They have also

required employees and job applicants to take the

currently available AIDS test. In a sense this is

a predictive test because it only reveals the presence of an antibody, not the disease itself. Some

people have lost their jobs because they tested positive. In addition, insurance companies have used

43 Harold M Schmeck, Jr., “Advances in Genetic Forecasts Increase

Concerns, ” ZVew York ‘ll”mes, Aug. 19, 1986, quoting Dr. Kenneth Paigen, University of California, Berkeley.
App. B—Privacy and Civil Liberties Implications of Testing Employees in the Workplace ● 137

these tests to screen applicants for insurance coverage, and some have withdrawn from the market

in areas where such screening is forbidden by law.

Brain Wave Research

State of the Technology

Brain activity that underlies psychological processes can be recorded from the surface of the head

and body in the form of weak electrical and magnetic signals, or “brain waves” as they will be called

in this section. Many of these signals are not well

understood by scientists despite decades of research. However, some are known to reflect cognitive (memory, language, learning) or sensory (vision, hearing, touch) processes stimulated by

external stimuli. These signals, often called “eventrelated brain potentials” or ERPs, are extremely

weak (typically on the order of a few microvolt,

or millionths of a volt), but they can be monitored

through sensors attached along particular regions

of the scalp.” Magnetic recordings of brain activity are also possible by using a specialized magnetic detector termed SQUID (superconducting

quantum interference device).

“Cognitive processes are identifiable through ERPs that occur between about 100 and 700 thousandths of a second or more following

each stimulus; sensory processes are reflected in ERPs that occur within

100 thousandths of a second following the stimulus.

Research on electrical and magnetic recordings

of human brain activity is being conducted in a

number of government, government-supported,

and academic laboratories. Government funding

for research is provided by a variety of Federal

agencies, including the National Institutes of

Health, the National Science Foundation, and the

Department of Defense.

Five areas of focus characterize much of the current research:

1. assessment of neurological function and neurological disorders;

2. assessment of mental disorders;

3. analysis of normal cognitive processes, including perception, memory, language, and decisionmaking;

4. analysis of cognitive disorders; and

5. human factors applications.

Table 24 shows some of the recent research in this

area.

The potential benefits to society appear to be in

several main areas-as a tool for medical diagnostics and cures, for developing optimal learning and

educational techniques, and for enhancing manmachine interfaces. This technology is already in

use as an aid to diagnosing brain tumors, multiple

sclerosis, dyslexia, epilepsy, and strokes. It has

also been used to test for mental retardation, coma,

and autism.45

45Carol Truxal, “Watching the Brain at Work, ” IEEE Spectrum,

Marc, 1983, pp. 52-57.

Table 24.—Examples of Research on Brain Waves

Research center Areas of investigation

National Institutes of Mental Health Predict risk of psychiatric disorders; tendency toward behavioral

problems (sbstance abuse, antisocial personalities).

University of California Analysis of sensory and cognitive processes diagnosis, e.g., deafness.

La Jolla, CA Man-machine interface: Analysis of mental workload, e.g., attention and

(ONR, NIMH, NSF funds) concentration

Veterans Administration Medical Center

Westhaven, CT

University of Illinois

Champagne-Urbana, IL

Harvard Medical School

Boston, MA

Advanced Research and Development, Inc.

Columbia, MD

{NASA funds)

Air Force Aerospace Medical Research Lab

Dayton, OH

University of Florida at Gainesvile

Detect neurological disorders, multiple sclerosis and make more precise

neurological diagnoses.

Understanding brain structures and processes responsible for surface

electrical activity.

Cognitive processes, e.g., memory, learning, decision-making.

Man-machine interface

Brain electrical activity mapping for detecting mental disorders, e.g.,

dyslexia, Alzheimer’s disease

Man-machine interfaces, e.g., aircraft pilots

Man-machine interfaces; analysis of mental workload

Lie detector test (ended 1986)

(CIA funds)

SOURCE Office of Technology Assessment, 1987
138 ● The Electronic Supervisor: New Technology, New Tensions

Workplace Testing Applications

The examples above of brain wave research at

least raise the possibility that brain wave analysis could lead to usable technologies with possible

applications in the workplace. If developed as practical systems, they could be used to gather extensive information about a subject’s psychological

state, genetic propensities, or honesty; they might

be useful in new means of measuring or pacing

work.

Some predictive tests that might be of interest

in the area of work monitoring or worker testing

could be derived from the above avenues of research. These could include the following:

●

●

●

●

●

predicting whether a person is at risk of certain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease or

alcoholism;

determining whether a person is concentrating and predicting the speed of mental response to stimuli;

determining recognition of persons, places,

and objects;

testing for knowledge of a specific subject;

detecting lies.

Brain waves are also being explored as a possible means of improving man-machine interfaces.

Future systems are envisioned that would monitor the operator’s ability to cope with information

flows and to make decisions. On the basis of the

information about his performance, the system

could either adjust the rate of information flow to

the operator or automatically take on some of the

operator’s tasks to optimize his performance. Some

future applications could include pilots, air traffic

controllers, and other computer-based work.

If practical brain wave systems could be developed, the implications for privacy would be tremendous. In the case of workload measurement, for example, the distinction between monitoring the

work and monitoring the worker completely disappears. In the case of something like an improved

lie detector, such technology might actually give

the ability to “read the mind, ” removing all possibility of a person’s keeping information private.

Whether practical systems can be developed,

however, is another question. There are serious

limitations on our understanding of brain waves,

and at least one researcher worries about the “polygraphization” of brain wave research.% By this he

qG~manuel DonChin, psychophysjolo~”c~ Mom”ton”ng: Possibti”ties

and Prospects, contractor report prepared for OTA, September 1986.

Also, Dr. Charles Wood, Department of Neuropsychology, VA Medical

Center, Westhaven, CT, and Dr. Steve Hillyard, Department of Neuroscience, University of California at La Jolla, concurred with this view

in telephone interviews with OTA staff, September 1986.

refers to commercial applications of scientific discoveries before the underlying principles are

thoroughly understood:

Polygraphization occurs when the commercial development is done without an anchor in the scientific community. Actions are taken to assure the

profitability of the product, and caution and control become less critical. . . I emphasize that all this

is done well within the law. But, it remains the case

that it is quite possible to have what appears to be an

impressive instrument that is essentially worthless.47

The danger of using such a device in the workplace, of course, is that decisions affecting people’s

lives will be made based on flawed technology or

flawed principles. Due to the complexity of the

nervous system, it is likely that only very general

links will be drawn between physiological processes

like brain waves, and psychological ones like lying

or concentration. Even these tests may only be

valid in a very structured environment, such as in

a controlled laboratory setting. A workplace setting would introduce too many uncontrollable

variables.

Other researchers, however, are more optimistic about the possibility of developing practical systems. Researchers at Westinghouse Research &

Development Center have, for a number of years,

been exploring the use of brain waves, in particular a wave called the P300, to determine an individual’s level of attention and cognitive processing. A Westinghouse researcher has predicted that

within the next 10 years, Westinghouse could market “a complete system capable of monitoring the

mental processing effort of employees as they

worked. ’48

In a slightly different direction, a system for

using brain wave analysis for determining whether

a person is intoxicated on alcohol or drugs is already on the market. Called the Veritas 100

Analyzer, it is marketed by National Patent Analytical Systems. The Analyzer is small, about the

size of a personal computer, and is designed to be

used at the workplace. A disposable headband is

placed on the subject’s head, and the analyzer examines the corneal-retinal potential transmitted

along the vestibular nerve. According to the manufacturer, the system recognizes the characteristic brain waves that this nerve group produces

when the subject is under the influence of particular substances. The signal is unique because each

drug produces a specific “fingerprint,” a waveform

known as a “drug-evoked potential,” according to

47 Emanuel Donchin, Psychophysiolop”cal Mom”toring: Possibti”ties

and Prospects, contractor report prepared for OTA, September 1986.

48 Michael Schrage, “Technology Could Let Bosses Read Minds, ”

Washington Post, June 3, 1984, p. Cl.
App. B—Privacy and Civil Liberties Implications of Testing Employees in the Workplace ● 139

the inventor.” Results of the test are available

within a few minutes. The analyzer shows a report

on the screen and also prints out a report and stores

a record of the test.

The manufacturer claims accuracy in the 99 percent range. The device is currently undergoing independent testing, but the results were not available to OTA at this writing. The Veritas Analyzer

has already been used by several police departments and in some workplaces.

ing pits the interests of the employer in reducing

costs, increasing workplace safety, limiting liability and exercising managerial control against employee interests in maintaining personal dignity

and privacy. Some of the legal questions involved

in testing are discussed in chapter 4 of this report.

In addition, listed below are some OTA analyses

dealing in detail with the topics of polygraph testing, drug screening, genetic screening, and with

the constitutional issues involved in workplace

testing:

Conclusion

●

While somewhat different issues are raised by

each type of employee testing discussed above, ●

there are some common themes. In general, test-

●

49S. Thomas Westerman, et al., “Qualitative Measurement of Drugs, ” ●

Laryngoscope, vol. 94, No. 2, February 1984.

Review of Defense Department Polygraph

Test and Research Programs-Health Staff

Paper (March 1987);

Tests for Human Genetic Disorders (forthcoming, 1988);

Urine Drug Tests—Health Testimony (June

10, 1987);

Science, Technology, and the Constitution

(forthcoming, 1988).

US GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : QL: 3 - 1987 0 - 63-982