IN THESE TIMES
You’ve been fired. According to your employer’s data, your facial expressions showed you were insubordinate and not trustworthy. You also move your hands at a rate that is considered substandard. Other companies you may want to work for could receive this data, making it difficult for you to find other work in this field.
That may sound like a scenario straight out of a George Orwell novel, but it’s the future many American workers could soon be facing.
In early February, media outlets reported that Amazon had received a patent for ultrasonic wristbands that could track the movement of warehouse workers’ hands during their shifts. If workers’ hands began moving in the wrong direction, the wristband would buzz, issuing an electronic corrective. If employed, this technology could easily be used to further surveil employees who already work under intense supervision.
Whole Foods, which is now owned by Amazon, recently instituted a complex and punitive inventory system where employees are graded based on everything from how quickly and effectively they stock shelves to how they report theft. The system is so harsh it reportedly causes employees enough stress to bring them to tears on a regular basis.
UPS drivers, who often operate individually on the road, are now becoming increasingly surveilled. Sensors in every UPS truck track when drivers’ seatbelts are put on, when doors open and close and when the engines start in order to monitor employee productivity at all times.
The technology company Steelcase has experimented with monitoring employees’ faces to judge their expressions. The company claims that this innovation, which monitors and analyzes workers’ facial movements throughout the work day, is being used for research and to inform best practices on the job. Other companies are also taking interest in this kind of mood-observing technology, from Bank of America to Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc.
These developments are part of a larger trend of workers being watched and judged—often at jobs that offer low pay and demand long hours. Beyond simply tracking worker performance, it is becoming more common for companies to monitor the emails and phone calls their employees make, analyzing personal traits along with output.
Some companies are now using monitoring techniques—referred to as “people analytics”—to learn as much as they can about you, from your communication patterns to what types of websites you visit to how often you use the bathroom. This type of privacy invasion can cause employees immense stress, as they work with the constant knowledge that their boss is aware of their every behavior—and able to use that against them as they see fit.
Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute at Cornell University, tells In These Times that the level of surveillance workers are facing is increasing exponentially.
“If you look at what some people call ‘people analytics,’ it’s positively frightening,” Maltby says. “People analytics devices get how often you talk, the tone of your voice, where you are every single second you’re at work, your body language, your facial expressions and something called ‘patterns of interaction.’” He explains that some of these devices even record what employees say at work.
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Stop this.
This was reported by both the Guardian and the Independent so it’s very much a reality
so not to be marxist on main but the workers need to seize the means of production
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An excerpt from Andrew Scott’s story of the same title, published in WEREWOLVES VERSUS: SPACE.
More of Andrew Scott’s work can be found here.
The first to go were the chickens. Three to start with, more the next couple of nights. It was inevitable – Greg was always a cheapskate when it came to building materials. First the door falling off the tool shed, and now this. Cheap-ass chicken wire had no chance against the ‘yotes, and could be bypassed entirely if you couldn’t be bothered to bury the bottom. Greg snapped at the suggestion, however, and marched all six heads of the council to the coop to reclaim his reputation.
Walking round every inch of the twenty foot enclosure revealed not a single sign of damage, tampering or anything else that could account for the animals’ disappearance. Glen joked that the poultry might have been raptured ahead of the rest of the world. Pastor Deane set his jaw, a look similar to one Gideon had seen on him as they stood in the church’s smouldering skeleton back in Chatham.
A few weeks later, the goats went. They found them not far away. What was left, at least. The curve of their ribs jutting up into the air, the tatters of flesh catching the breeze like flags, and the grass made sticky and redolent with stale blood. They pored over the line of the pen, looking for a tuft of fur, a snapped wire, any sign of how the attacker had entered or the goats had escaped. The worst they could find was a leaning fencepost.
Two months down the line, they heard it get the milking cow. Gideon was first up, Deane not far behind him, still sprightly for his 60’s. They rounded the barn and saw… it.
It looked like a coyote, but no coyote got that big. It was nearly as large as the two of them put together. It crouched over the spluttering cow, shook its head with its teeth clamped deep into its neck. It tore out a huge lump, snapping down and swallowing in greedy gulps. Then it stood up.
Read the rest in WEREWOLVES VERSUS: SPACE! Download the entire issue for any price on Gumroad or Itch.io! Your purchase will benefit all of the contributors to this issue.
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