Workplace surveillance of employees became widespread in part because of sexual harassment laws, employers suddenly had to protect themselves from litigation.
See:
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/r/ro...
See:
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/r/ro...
Hint: They weren’t trusting. Corporate surveillance follows technology. The bosses are obsessed with watching their workers every second. This is nothing new. What’s new is that we now do most of our work on networked computers, cameras are vanishingly cheap, and data storage is abundant.