Big Tech call center workers face pressure to accept home surveillance
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
Tbh This sort of <insert rude word here> shouldn't be legal unless the company pays rent for said room that is turned into a work place(market price for the area). While not a lot can afford the extra room at least those that don't have a choice get a boost to help them move to bigger housing.
You're trying to make compromises which is dangerous if the opponent aims high to begin with, with an unreasonable take.
Even that should not be legal, and it actually is not legal in The Netherlands to monitor employees like that. It has to be in proportion.
For example, if laptops keep getting stolen at Friday afternoon, it makes sense to monitor who's there at that time, and use devices to catch the thief red handed. But it is not appropriate to force employees into Big Brother 2.0 with cameras and microphones.
Right now, students are forced into such submission as well (via forced remote studying due to COVID), and I very much doubt it holds up in court.
That's why we need protective laws and regulations for the workers. What governments aren't allowed to do, companies should probably not be allowed to do either.
And unions! The collective bargaining position may be strong even if the individual bargaining position is weak.
My concern is that these teleperformance jobs have a huge voluntary rotation rate (people leaving the company). So I wonder how effective will this new surveillance policy be.
If somebody insisted to install a camera at my home I would let them and then work nude 100% time.
Albania was a single-party communist state until 1995. Colombia was effectively a narco state until maybe a decade ago. They're both pretty fast growing now, but I don't think the root of these laborers' problems is they got a humanities degree in a STEM market, and the "market" for their labor may not be much more than this or go work for a local crime lord, who might pay better but definitely will not treat you better.
It'd be nice if we as Americans or generally wealthy OECD westerners could be less provincial in our views of how labor deserves to be treated. They're not all in the same situation as us with the same options. When the program I work on told us we all need to have cameras on in meetings, I told them to pound dirt. I only half own this house, and if my wife wants to walk around naked, that's her prerogative. Don't like it, find someone else. Great for me, because I'm in a situation where they need me more than I need them. But I'm not going to act like that's a common situation globally, and these people are no less deserving of giving their families a right to privacy than I am.
I don't know what to do about this from a policy perspective. Better labor laws are great and all, but the entire reason companies like Apple and Amazon contract out work like this to the lowest bidder who then hires in Albania is they don't need to adhere to US labor laws.
OECD westerners gave themselves, and their children, options. They were hard earned.
Some people are okay with this, some are not. Some companies want this, some do not. There are plenty of different employees and employers out there, and they can balance their respective wishes on a free market.
Working at a call center is akin to emergency medical care, but for financial surviving.
The result was that various firms like Teleperformance and the like placed call centres in areas of high unemployment, and thousands of people were put on the phone lines with insufficient training, made to work under sub-par conditions for six months, before getting promptly sacked for arbitrary reasons just before their probation period was over.
These are just businesses abusing the system. Not accepting the job offers would have meant financial ruin. The people who are subjected to this usually have no other options available, and they're then run into the ground and promptly discarded once they were no longer useful.
Their entry level positions require only a High School degree and fluent English. And pay more than what a Master Degree could earn in other companies.
For example, in El Salvador they pay twice than other jobs, always comply with overtime and night working hours payment rules, offer English improvement classes, University compensation, and offer private medical insurance as a benefit. This benefits are higher than what most small/mid businesses can offer.
Employees don't have much choice, faced with the decision of turning on a webcam for a $800+ per month job + benefits, or working in another job for minimum wage for $340 per month (and working on site under CCTV)
That's absurd. Even if you make a (false) claim that they're only able to work at a call center and all other professions are closed to them, there are many different call centers that all compete for the same labour.
> Working at a call center is akin to emergency medical care, but for financial surviving.
If you want to provide care, you can do it. I do it myself. But it's completely immoral to put it as a responsibility on somebody who just buys these people's services. When you go to buy groceries, you don't suddenly become ethically responsible for the grocer's financial situation, do you?
To be fair, being call center agent sucks in many places. Maybe you don’t get a camera installed in your home, but breaks are short, shifts are long and you get 5 minutes to eat lunch.
You can always go work for Amazon at the warehouse. But I’ve heard it’s not that great either.
Labour law exists for a reason, and it changes over time for a reason. The fact that there is no single absolute truth does not imply that we should not be setting limits.
A company has an obligation to protect their customers' data, due to GDPR and a variety of other privacy rules. If one of their people - employee or contractor - has access to customer data, the company must mitigate it being stolen. In an office environment, they could do that by limiting personal devices, barring notes and other information going out.
When these positions become WFH - even with a company owned/managed device - they have an entire new class of threats to mitigate: personal devices, shoulder surfing, etc by not the employee but someone standing next to them.
While I hate the surveillance aspects, I want my account information protected and I don't see a better approach in an uncontrolled/unknowable environment.
These workers seem forced to accept these conditions by the fear of losing their jobs. This isn't a free choice but an imposed one.
Advocating for any form of forced surveillance of a persons home and family for the sake of consumer quality/safety is disgusting. Why is the threat of consumer data loss more important than the threat to their personal freedom? Do they not have inalienable rights too?
There are other ways, most don't allow WFH.
But obviously, you have some ideas so please share them. I'd love to learn more.
The tasks performed in these contexts are mostly just different types of data transformations. Allowing operators to execute a transformation without exposing the actual state of the data itself should be possible with a well designed system but the details would very much depend on the specific context. Splitting data processing steps between operators would also minimize risk (even if it is a little more cumbersome). Automating sensitive processes like authentication and payment processes may also be an option in some cases.
Hacking employment contracts may be a cheaper solution for the companies involved but the cost to human dignity and liberty is far too high and it is being borne by the people least able to do anything about it. This simply isn't the type of business practice that we should tolerate anywhere in our supply chains even if it could mean slightly more customer "friction".
You either go back in to the office, where companies can ensure the security of their networks and environments, or you don't have a job. I don't agree with this, but in terms of security, when people are working from home there are standards that we simply cannot meet, which could potentially cost a small business large contracts.
Scoping is important and these issues will have to be figured out now in the post-pandemic world.
We passed our yearly ISO 270001 audit last month, and we all work from home most of the time until going to the office is reasonably possible again, and even then we will remain hybrid. In the end it doesn't really matter where someone is physically working from if they follow basic security precautions if you are in IT (unless you are doing national security type of things; most of us aren't of course), and ISO 27001 just wants to see that you have such policies in place and that risks are mitigated.
You're able to be compliant even without being in the office. Most of the compliance is covered by < 5 mins auto lock, security updates turned on, VPN and a yubikey.
Nearly everything else in these are documented processes and separation of roles and responsibilities.
exactly this is my point, too.
People still played on their smart phones and vaped weed in the office.
Technology and rules to maintain security, all are nearly worthless when wages and morale aren’t priorities.
Let's just go with the assumption your comment is sarcasm.
the customer care employee who is WFH and has access to your bank / income / health records can click your details on their phone and share with cops / telemarketing companies / criminals that will come after you .
you okay with that ?
Besides that, as others already stated, there are a lot of jobs that have a lot more access and they are not subject of those invasions.
This invasion with camera's and microphones etc to monitor the employee and it's surrounding is simply not ok. And specially not when it's about their HOME. No matter how you try to defend it.
Some competent Apple engineers could have created some privacy/security focused systems. And for the cases where this engineers can't create such a system have this type of operation forwarded to a different support person in a higher level.