Biden administration urged to probe worker-monitoring technology

The Biden Administration should investigate and regulate how companies use technology to surveil and punish workers, a Democratic senator urged in a letter to the US labor secretary.

“The implementation of novel technologies to track, monitor, manage and discipline workers is growing due to an imbalance of power in the workplace and a lack of legal protections or regulatory restrictions on these behaviors,” US senator Bob Casey wrote Friday to Secretary Marty Walsh. The letter urged the Labor Department to take on “the largely unchecked spread of invasive and exploitative workplace surveillance and technologies across the United States.”

Casey’s missive cited a 2021 Bloomberg News article detailing complaints from Amazon.com Inc. Flex delivery drivers, who said performance-tracking algorithms unfairly penalized and even terminated them while ignoring real-world hurdles such as traffic jams and locked apartment complexes. The gig drivers also said they had little recourse beyond sending emails to generic support addresses that seldom responded to their specific concerns. (Amazon said their experiences were unrepresentative and that all appeals from drivers are investigated.) 

The Pennsylvania Democrat’s letter also cited a recent New York Times investigation into the spread of workplace productivity monitoring, which is now used to assess workers including lawyers, therapists and chaplains.

Casey, a former state auditor general and treasurer who sits on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, urged the Labor Department to study “novel and high-risk technologies” such as “facial and emotional recognition, biometric monitoring, wearables, productivity management systems and algorithm-driven employee performance systems,” which he said could harm employees’ physical or mental health. 

He suggested the agency follow the example of the Federal Trade Commission, which earlier this month announced it was “exploring rules to crack down on harmful commercial surveillance and lax data security.”

Amazon and the Labor Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

–With assistance from Spencer Soper.