How your boss is watching you at work | The Business | ABC News [Video]

Workplace surveillance systems are expanding and becoming more powerful. Employers say they boost productivity and reduce fraud, but unions argue they are overreaching.
State and federal government committees are trying to determine limits on what employers can monitor as surveillance of workers is largely unregulated.
Remote work and cheap artificial intelligence (AI) tools have massively boosted the ability of bosses to watch their workers.
Some workers are subject to more surveillance than others. For example, truck drivers with closed-circuit television (CCTV) systems are watched as they drive, with their braking and acceleration monitored.
Staff in many retail jobs have every transaction timed and analysed.
Nicole McPherson, the national assistant secretary for the Finance Sector Union, believes her members are the most scrutinised in the nation, as ‘key logging’ is one of the most insidious forms of workplace surveillance.
Instead, she said, a lot of value created in companies is in elements more difficult to count, like thinking or talking to a colleague.
Business groups say surveillance can help to deter inappropriate workplace behaviour, assist in investigations into damaging behaviour or complaints and monitor communications to ensure technology is not used in unlawful acts.
It also helps companies meet obligations to employees, such as to pay them correctly and keep them safe by reducing accidents.
New South Wales’ parliament completed a report on the issue in 2022, and detailed an Amazon style situation, where stock pickers in massive warehouses are timed to the second with constant measuring of work performance.
In Victoria a parliamentary hearing is on-going and looming over it all, is a review of the federal Privacy Act.
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