Electronic surveillance

New Means of Workplace Surveillance

In the last twenty years or so, workplace surveillance has attracted a great deal of attention from academics and the mainstream media.1 This is explained by the proliferation of new electronic means of workplace surveillance, which are increasingly adopted by employers. It is now possible to track the movements of employees, record their conversations, register and analyze their performance in real time, and use biometric information for identity and access control, just to name a few examples. Most existing academic analyses of these developments emphasize how new surveillance technologies have enhanced the capacity of employers to monitor employees, often undermining various labor rights, particularly workers’ rights to privacy and equal treatment.2 In different media outlets—including some of the most influential ones, such as the Financial Times, New York Times, BBC, CBS, and Week—discussions of new surveillance technologies have also focused on the increased invasion of employee privacy.3 Most discussions in this area additionally addressed workers’ rights, including the right to privacy and to be free from discrimination.4

Importantly, however, workplace surveillance and the invasion of employee privacy have always been present under capitalism. The fact that human labor power is traded as a commodity that employers purchase and then seek to maximize surplus out of, requires some form of monitoring and evaluation, which necessarily involves a certain degree of interference with workers’ privacy.