New York spends $180 million on biometrics to track employees

Someone To Watch Over Me., originally uploaded by mr walker.

The Bloomberg administration is spending $180 million to install biometric scanners in city workplaces. At some sites, workers are required to scan their hands when they come and go.

Biometric scanning might be more convenient for employees who already punch a clock. I've worked in a lot of buildings where I've had to sign in and out. It's a pain in the ass. Given the option, I'd prefer a palm scan.

On the other hand, I'm really not comfortable with de facto fingerprinting as a condition of employment.

I also have a hard time believing that the marginal benefits of the new biometric ID system will justify the high price tag.

It's troubling enough when palm scans replace punch clocks, but here's an example of biometric monitoring that's truly beyond the pale:

The use of new tracking technologies has been contentious at more and more workplaces. At Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn, nurses carry radio-frequency identification tags that allow their movements to be tracked, a practice the nurses protested in an arbitration proceeding. A lawyer for the hospital, David N. Hoffman, said the system was used to ensure the quality of patient care and not to keep track of nurses who are on breaks. [NYT]

It's degrading to make employees wear the equivalent of tracking collars. These are people, not bears or wolves in a wildlife preserve. Moreover, these are licensed health care professionals. This micro-survelliance is an affront to their professionalism. Do doctors and administrators have to wear these dog tags? I'm guessing not.

If a supervisor needs transponders to keep track of staff, they're a pretty bad supervisor.

HT: Steve. Also, please note that Steve and Jen have moved The News Blog to http://www.thenewsblog.net.

Comments

[togolosh]

I fear that the US is headed down the road taken by the UK - a surveillance society with cameras and tracking devices everywhere. The difference in the US is that the major drivers will be corporations rather than government, though government obviously plays a role.

[JDC]

Actually, many (all?) NYC gov't positions already require fingerprinting. I had to do it for a lawyer job at a mayoral agency 7 years ago.

[The Phantom]

Do not know about the need for biometrics, but featherbedding and no-show jobs was simply rampant in NYC and NY State some years back.

One of the best jobs was working at the subway yards at Coney Island. When the weather was nice, the boys would quit after a few hours and play golf at Marine Park or so swimming across the bay at Riis Park. Some of them had so much practice, they could almost have made the PGA Tour.

Many similar shenanigans went on --don't even ask about what went on at the old Board of Education HQ at 110 Livingston St-- and probably still do.

Many of the union and management workers are fantastic, hard workers --but there are far more malingerers than in any private entity. Private companies usually don't have to "pave" over malingerers -- NYC does.

If any employer needs to do stuff like this, it is the City of New York.