Ask Slashdot: When Does Time Tracking at Work Go Too Far? 630
An anonymous reader writes "I work in a call center, full time, for a large mail order pharmacy. Recently, as part of their campaign to better track time spent both at and away from our desks, they have started tracking bathroom breaks. They use a Cisco phone system, and there is now a clock out option that says 'Bathroom.' My question is whether or not this is in any way acceptable in a large corporate environment (Around 800 people work at this same pharmacy) and is it even legal? How invasive would this really be considered, and beyond privacy concerns, how are they going to deal with the humiliation that their employees feel as a result of this? Has this happened to any of you?"
Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
You need a union. It's the only way to fix this kind of thing.
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
You need a union. It's the only way to fix this kind of thing.
This. So much this. You don't have to put up with this bullshit. And it will only get worse unless you fight back.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Unionize (Score:4, Informative)
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True enough, but some push back is required. Some of these clients are finding out that the bottom of the barrel perform on the phones much worse than they perform on their bathroom breaks.
Re:Unionize (Score:4, Funny)
Of course, unless one happens to be one of those people talking out of their ass, there's nothing preventing the combination of the activities. No break needed, problem solved.
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Informative)
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And if they weren't, you'd be hearing "he doesn't care what happens to us -- he doesn't work here."
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>>>laws that allowed them to exist.
In a free country like the U.S. you don't need the permission of the government to peaceably-assemble your coworkers & hold meetings to present a unified voice to the company.
Re:Unionize (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, yes you do. Where the hell did you ever get the idea that the USA is a "free country", or that there's freedom of assembly here? Did you never hear of "free speech zones"? In case you didn't know, it's now illegal [reason.com] to protest anywhere the Secret Service may be; taking part in a protest against the government will now make you a felon and earn you a 10-year prison sentence.
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Try peacefully assembling just about anyplace in the USA now. You'll have paramilitary troops (we call them "police") arresting you, tasing you, macing you, and beating you. Youtube [youtube.com] is full of videos of such incidents.
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In the USA of the late 1800s they didn't need a law to make unions legal. They already had the right to assemble peacefully and exercise the right of free speech or free press to put-out their union protests/complaints. The GP poster made it sounds like law came first to legalize unions. No. The unions came first through the inalienable natural rights of being human (read the Declaration of Independence some time) including the right of free expression, free speech, free assembly, free press, and so on.
Re:Unionize (Score:4)
You're a fucking moron. The prisons are privately run in case you didn't notice; they're run by corporations like CCA and Wackenhut. They turn a huge profit, and they use prisoners as slave labor.
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
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OR... you could just find a new job.
Have you ever changed jobs? I'm not talking about moving from one Starbucks to another three blocks away. It can initially be quite expensive to do so. It could require new commuting expenses or even moving expenses, even if you get help from your new employer, multiplied by the number of people in your family. Unless you're expecting a giant increase in pay, and especially if you aren't, you'd better have an appropriate surplus of cash available to you because you're surely going to need some for both seen
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You don't need to move 3 blocks to change jobs within Starbucks; you can easily do it in just one block, frequently less.
How that place manages to stay in business in this crappy economy, selling massively overpriced poor-quality drinks, I have no idea.
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea migt be shocking to you, but there's nothing wrong with having a union even when things are going well. When labor laws are being violated, you need a union that can draw support from and build upon an established base, so it is actually able to act. Just starting to build one then seems a tad late.
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Informative)
On top of this, I was forced to quit my job there when the union didn't allow me to change my schedule due to lack of seniority. I had my kids coming home for the summer, and there's not a lot of daycares that stay open until 8:00 pm; none that I could afford on my salary.
Unions are great if they really do look after the workers, but this isn't the 50s anymore. If you need any sort of special accommodations, or the union decides some egregious policies aren't really an issue (bathroom breaks, mandatory overtime, etc) then you're screwed either way.
Quit and find a new job. That's my advice; you'll be happier.
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm starting to suspect americans got conned once again, because your description of how your union worked sounds so far removed from how the unions I've been part of here in europe that you might as well be from another planet.
For an example, "I was forced to quit my job there when the union didn't allow me to change my schedule due to lack of seniority." would not happen here, the only instance when the union would care about your schedule would be if you logged more than the legal maximum hours of overtime. The employer would care about your schedule, but here you'd be able to use your paid for parental leave to leave work in order to pick up your kids and there wouldn't be anything they could do about it (assuming they don't just start to making shit up, but that fight is what you supposedly have unions for, so not even that option will be cheap for them).
as I said, accounts like yours makes me confused.
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it could be that he's trolling on behalf of the anti-union folks in this country who would just as soon see us return to slave labor, and his account is bullshit meant to terrify people who know nothing about unions into avoiding them at all costs.
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Because they work at a place, same as anybody else? It's OK to have slaves, so long as they work for you.
If you want a better job than they have, quit crying and fucking unionize.
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a flip-side to that and it is management-speak. For example, the maintenance guy who wouldn't change the oil in the manager's personal vehicle is 'not a team player'. The guy who filed a complaint about the rickety ladder with the broken rung is 'a disruptive influence'. The guy who actually expects to be paid for the hours he works is 'goofing off'. Because of that, the unions make it hard to fire people for those things. Unfortunately it also makes it hard to fire people who actually should be fired.
For every union where someone militantly refuses to let the assembly line run 0.01% faster than the contract states, there is a management that tried to boil the frog by slowly speeding up the line.
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Interesting)
It would not surprise me to learn that this guy got bad information. I hear sometimes people complaining to me about things the union won't let them do, aka. things that the organization told them the union wouldn't let them do. Don't believe what HR tells you about your union.
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
corps have huge power.
unions are there to balance it.
balance is needed.
no one said anything about either side being a perfect entity. ideally, unions should neutralize the abuse in business and business should act well enough to its work force that union force is not needed.
if there is only 1 side, its not balanced.
time has shown, that workers without a focused voice, are ignored. do you deny that?
simply let the employers police themselves? you think that works?
unions are not perfect but they DO give at least some balance.
Re:Unionize (Score:4, Interesting)
corps have huge power. unions are there to balance it.
I have this debate with my brother (who hates unions) all the time. I try to point out that unions are a reaction to crappy stuff that companies do to their workers. When you look at what many workers had to go through in order to unionize (like getting their skulls cracked by club-wielding strike breakers, or worse), there's no way you can argue that they went through all of that just for longer lunch breaks or so that it would be harder to fire them. In short, if corporations would stop trying to screw over their employees in every way imaginable, unions wouldn't be needed.
But it's inherent in the system. I actually work at a business college, and we've got a "Human Resource Management" concentration. The notion that human beings are a "resource" (like an oil deposit or a vein of coal) from which the goal is to optimize the "yield"... it just turns my stomach. But this is the world we live in. Adam Smith pointed it out in Wealth of Nations... it's all about self-interest. The whole system is powered by everybody's (the workers', too, in all fairness) innate desire to screw over everybody else and get as much for themselves, so it's folly to expect the shareholders to voluntarily set that drive aside.
As for the short term on how to deal with the OP's problem of being timed on their bathroom breaks: I'd start documenting all of your bathroom visits on RateMyPoo or something. Then, after a weekend of eating Thai food, when your boss asks about your 45-minute bathroom break, you can open your browser and show him/her the fecal carnage unleashed from what used to be your anus.
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
This may surprise you, but in nations that aren't the US (that haven't been brainwashed by their corporations) unions exist, run well, and exist to serve the members not themselves (and are in fact required to by law). And businesses run just fine with unions - even getting along quite well with them most of the time (contract renegotiation time notwithstanding). And you know what? The nations haven't "fallen into the cesspool known as communism" or even "[fallen into] ruin".
Stop listening to Fox News and actually do some research prior to making yourself look stupid.
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
You unionize when labor laws are obviously being violated.
You get a lawyer when labor laws are obviously being violated. You unionise when you want to negotiate with management on behalf of the workforce as a whole, not just on behalf of yourself.
You also unionise when labor laws which don't yet exist (but should) are being violated. The law is often behind technology, so there will always be a place for this.
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
You also unionise when labor laws which don't yet exist (but should) are being violated.
Also, you unionize to combat unfair treatment that can't be addressed very well by laws. Like maybe you don't want to make it illegal for anyone to work 60 hour weeks, but maybe in this case, with this company, given the kind of working being done and the amount being paid, 60-hour work weeks aren't really fair.
It's funny to me how you get free-market types who argue that the free-market is better because it's more flexible and able to deal with context, but then they don't think it's appropriate to complain about legal behavior. So the argument might be, "We shouldn't have laws restricting the numbers of hours that a person can work in a week, because it's too hard to measure what's fair, and not all jobs are equal, and maybe some people *want* to work 60 hours per week. If people don't like working 60 hours per week, then they won't take jobs that require it." Or whatever, something along those lines.
But then the employees get together and say, "We don't want to work 60 hours per week. We're going to unionize and renegotiate."
Then suddenly the argument becomes, "Whoa whoa! You have no right to complain to renegotiate! I'm not doing anything illegal. I should be able to exploit everyone as much as I can until I do something illegal."
Then if you suggest that you create a new law to restrict the number of hours a person can work in a week, it drops back to, "Oh, you communists! This stuff should be handled by the market. If people don't want to work 60 hours, they can just quit their jobs."
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never understood the free market argument against unions. Unions are a *function* of the free market. They fit in the role of consumers (of employment) who want to have some control over the product they buy (the work they do). If the free market provided everything the employees need/want, no one would want to unionize.
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Unions are a *function* of the free market.
Yeah, sort of. They're a way to promote workers rights without direct government action, which makes it more "free market" than some alternatives.
But it's a way for workers to exert control over the market in a way that they would otherwise not be able to, which subverts some of the "free market" forces. You know when people claim that free markets drive prices down through competition? Same goes for labor markets. Unions remove some of the competition.
On the other hand, this kind of control over a ma
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
Unions would be okay if they were subject to the same market forces as their employers. But they're not, they're protected by reams of labour law. Unions are allowed to monopolize labour in an industry and force anti-competitive security agreements, which would be considered anti-competitive and illegal in any other contract.
Consider the infamous 'right-to-work' states. What does being a 'right-to-work' state mean? It means unions can't compel people to join. In Germany, for example, the decision to join a union is considered an individual decision, and workers have an equal right to join or not join a union; the right to free association, means you're also free not to associate if you don't want to. But if you disagree with your union in Michigan and want to opt out, good luck making that legal argument.
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Informative)
The thing though is that 'right to work' as implemented is Orwellian in meaning. It is really the right to fire for no stated reason. That reason is often enough union-like activities.
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This isn't Right To Work issue. It is confused with Right to Work, but it isn't the same
What you are describing is At Will Employment.
At-Will doesn't have anything to do with Right To Work. Most States recognize a Contract Exception that allows the Union and Business to negotiate to have At-Will rules not apply in a Union Shop,
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
What a terrible first response. I mean fucking, stupidly, terrible. You don't unionize over a few bad practices, probably put in place by a stupid manager. You unionize when labor laws are obviously being violated.
There is a distinct issue here of medical privacy that is most likely being violated. Tracking bathroom visits could be a way for someone to infer you have a medical condition.
What you should do is seek an attorney who will look at this pro bono. They will probably tell you to start with your HR department with a complaint. It's all about the paper trail.
I will never understand how the political and moneyed classes in the USA managed to convince the working man in that country that unions are the spawn of Satan. While I can see the problem when unions becoming lazy and corrupt I don't really see what is wrong with the vast majority of them who are properly run. I have been a union member all of my professional life. I prefer to have a union behind me to foot the bill if I have to take my employer to court as opposed to the situation in the US where you are frequently up shit creek without a paddle if your employer decides to crap all over you. Another service I get from my a union is legal advice regarding employment contracts. One of the many things the engineers union I am a member of offers to for it's members is to have a legal professional read over your employment contract and point out to you legal land mines your employer sometimes builds into those things like draconian clauses about IP ownership, anti competition stuff and requirements that you relinquish the right to take them to court in favour of private arbitration (no prizes for guessing who gets to choose the arbitrator). It's easy to abuse a single person, it's a whole lot harder for employers to abuse 100.000 of you standing together.
Re:Unionize (Score:4, Insightful)
I will never understand how the political and moneyed classes in the USA managed to convince the working man in that country that unions are the spawn of Satan.
With an enormous amount of assistance from the unions themselves, of course,which have managed to be coopted at various times by the Mafia, the Communist Party, and just plain old-fashioned graft.
Unions continue to do some good things - in particular, I think the delivery drivers' union approach to multi-company pensions is a great idea if you can trust the people who run it not to loot it. But you also have to understand that American labor law is not like that of other countries, and in particular takes the adversarial system used in the courtroom and generally applies it to labor-management relationships. In the US, there are trade associations that offer the same services your union does for a flat fee rather than a cut of every check.
Re:Unionize (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't worry, your union dues are well appreciated by the politicians your union supports in your name.
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
I will never understand how the political and moneyed classes in the USA managed to convince the working man in that country that unions are the spawn of Satan.
It wasn't necessarily the political and moneyed classes that did it. I too see the necessity of unions, but I hope never to have to belong to one. Why? As a contractor who sometimes does work in factories and mines, I have seen first hand the greed, pettiness, laziness, and sense of entitlement that union shops often breed. When one union member files a grievance because an outside contractor is holding a nut into which another union member is turning a bolt, because 'a union employee should be doing that work', (even though there was no union employee immediately available to hold the nut), then unionism is going too far. When work is halted because a light bulb is burned out, (and we're talking about the screw-in kind, within easy reach), because changing the bulb is 'an electrician's job' and the electrician doesn't show up for an hour, the union isn't doing itself any favours. And when union employees *regularly* take 45 minutes to do an easy job that only requires 5 or 10 minutes even for an inexperienced person, then the union is shooting itself in the foot. In too many union shops, demonstrating efficiency, initiative, and overall competence is enough for an employee to be shunned, threatened, or even physically harmed, by his or her 'brothers' and 'sisters' - never mind the union grievance process.
Politically I am fairly far left of centre; I despise the power that corporations have and the abuses they commit, and I'm all for strict government regulation whose invasiveness increases with the size and power of the corporation. For that reason I am in favour of unions. But I also believe in an honest day's work for a day's pay, and I believe that I should be free to work as efficiently and intelligently as I can, without fear of union reprisals, whether official or unofficial. For that reason, I hate unions that abuse the power they have.
In many cases unions are their own worst enemies, pure and simple
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
I was about to hook up our ohm meter one time before I knew the "rules" and was told I would have a grievance filed against me.
This sort of behavior is like a histamine reaction and it does not happen in isolation. It is an overreaction to a minor insult brought on by a historically learned need to be protective of their jobs. There are many tools that management can use to attempt to undermine unions. One technique is to hire non-union employees or contractors to do the sort of work that the unionized employees typically do. Over time you can reduce the size of the union you are dealing with until they become irrelevant. In workplaces where this has been attempted the union workers will tend to get very protective of the work they are supposed to do. The arrogance of doing work intentionally slowly probably has it's roots is some other bit of adversarial relationship with the employer.
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As a few others have stated, there are good unions and bad unions, at least in the US. In general, I respect the nurses' unions. Their demands are usually not only in favor of the nurses but also the patients. Occasionally they defend someone who really shouldn't be in medicine, but by and large, they seem to do a good job.
My dad used to be a staunch union guy. He was in aerospace for about 25 years and there were a lot of layoffs and strikes back in the '80s. One day, while on the picket line, the uni
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
Since I am neither bad, nor lazy, I often make a considerable amount more than my coworkers. Even those who supposedly have the same title and more seniority. If I don't like the job, the environment, or my boss, I can always leave and go somewhere else.
Ditto, but I've also spent 15yrs on the other side of town where unions are often all that's between you and the gutter, doesn't matter how good you are at swinging a mop, without unions there are a hundred more who will do it cheaper.
You seem to think that unions are there to protect lazy people? - Have you have actually tried raising a family while wearing a blue color? Do you have callouses on your hands from all your "hard work"? Do realize that when people call you a "suit", it's not a sign of respect?
Re:Unionize (Score:4, Insightful)
Later, in another job, he wasn't a union member, and the manager started pushing them all to work ridiculously long hours. He got together with his coworkers in the division, and enacted a slowdown, giving the manager the worst numbers in the entire company. After that the manager stopped pushing them to work unfair hours. He did better as a union without an official union than with an official union.
So unions in the general are a good idea, but specific implementations can be trash. In the US, the unfortunate reality is most unions aren't very good. A lot of times they do protect lazy people. I've heard the situation is better in countries like the UK, and I would believe Australia as well.
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USA to china: "when I grow up, I want to be just like you!"
(think about that..)
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and to fight back, any attempt at a layoff causes ALL the workforce to strike.
THAT is why you have a union. 100% that.
its high time we bring back unions. corps have shown they are not good at self-managing and self-policing. left alone, they will squeeze you dry. they used to! study your history!!
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
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that's why you hire teamsters (etc) to 'manage' the picket lines.
to counter a brut regime, you bring in your own hired thugs.
seriously, its the only way to fight fire. the bosses are not about to give in voluntarily. again, study your history. what we lost over the last 50 yrs, we have to fight AGAIN to get back.
the repubs are busy trying to destroy organized labor. and they are winning, too ;(
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Interesting)
Because organized labor is detrimental to the economy and a joke.
Yeah, just look at Germany. Probably the strongest unions anywhere in the world, and look where it's gotten them. The economy in the ruins, all labour outsourced to India, poor hungry people roaming the streets, right? /sarcasm
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Just to bring it back on task, not reporting in great detail the exact time and duration of a digestive anomaly for later tracking, disciplinary, and promotional purposes is now defined as:
thug-backed coercive tactics
I'm curious what you'll define "not wanting to email a picture of the resulting turd using my smartphone to boss to document the event" will be defined as. I'm guessing something like "unamerican socialist terrorist with something to hide"
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Bonus points for cc'ing members of the board, external customers, etc.
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The economic boom of the 1950s coincided with high union membership. The economic collapse we've had since 1980 coincides with low union membership. History says you're wrong.
Unions are not "government-backed". Corporations are -- governments issue corporate charters,
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It's interesting reading this thread which is clearly very pro-union vs reading the thread on teachers unions - a very anti-union thread.
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The 50's also coincided with a time when most of Europe, Japan, China, etc, were rebuilding everything that had been destroyed in the 40's during WWII. America was the world's factory during that time. Kinda makes it easy to have a boom.
There are arguements for unions. 'Things were good in the U.S. in the 50's' is not one of them.
Re:Unionize (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. The right has demonized unions while ignoring that they level the playing field between an employee and an employer. Without them, you get abuses like this. That doesn't mean that a union needs to drive a business into the ground. Typically they both understand that a strong business means a strong profit means a strong workforce. If things get unbalanced too much to one side, you end up with either corrupt management, or a company that goes out of business.
Re:Unionize (Score:4, Interesting)
Unions can be holdovers from a time where people were not so easy to get rid of.
Although you are right to some extent, it is not often as easy as just firing everyone, but what does happen is that while the unions remain in place, all new initiatives head off to places like India or China that have no such things. Eventually, enough of the business moves that the workplaces can afford to lay everyone off in the US who is causing trouble. At that point the unions usually look out for their own survival and start caving in to businesses so that they can keep their members employed at all, and their own pockets lined.
Having been a union member, and having seen the available "benefits", my experience is that for anything where you want an engaged and useful workforce, US unions are awful. I know some people bring up how German unions or some other ones do work better, and I have to do more research on it, but even assuming you can create a union that does not turn into a corrupt and useless feature that keeps the jobs of lazy "senior" employees on life support while making everyone join their closed shop, unions as they stand in the US are *not* what we need.
The ways unions are, I wouldn't be surprised if the US-style unions did their best to force German-style unions out of their turf. Because that is what it comes down to sometimes with organized crime and political parties using unions as cash cows.
Re:Unionize (Score:4, Insightful)
Hate to say it but it's not a highly technical job. If people start complaining they just outsource to India.
Re:Unionize (Score:4, Insightful)
and then we need to counter that with laws (and tax codes) that, uhm, 'motivate' against such anti-american behavior.
I'd be all for it.
since corp ethics is on 'perma vacation', we need some teeth in the law system to stop this kind of continuing bad corp behavior.
if we don't take care of our own people, we will slip into being a 2nd world country. you want that??
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the solution has to be government interference of some kind. There is no world government (thankfully), but the downside is that nobody mandates fair trade or labor practices between countries. That's up to the countries themselves.
Consider an example under way right now in the solar panel industry. Domestic solar panel makers build factories that cost $10 million dollars to produce panels that cost $5,000 each. A Chinese factory with a leftover billion dollar chip factory (they upgraded to a $10 billion dollar factory to make state of the art chips) now starts making solar panels much more efficiently and with much cheaper labor, for $1,000 per panel. Domestic makers can't compete and will soon go out of business. Chinese factory will raise prices to $10,000 per panel. Domestic consumers will then be paying twice the price of domestic solar panels for foreign imports. Everyone in the U.S. knows that if a new domestic maker tries to enter the market to sell $4,000 panels, the Chinese will lower the price to $1,000 until the domestic factory is out of business, then raise them back to $10,000.
That's monopolistic behavior, and would be illegal under the Sherman Act. Under current trade practices, it's perfectly legal for the Chinese to do it.
There is no way to compete in a global market when domestic producers have to follow domestic laws that do not apply outside our borders. And those domestic laws are there to prevent domestic companies from doing exactly the same thing, which we already agree is bad for all consumers.
The answer is punitive tariffs, (aka government interference.) We shouldn't try to balance everything out and derive a "fair price" for solar panels, and tax the Chinese solar panels until they're competitive with domestic solar panels. We should look at the behavior in this case, and say "you profited at $10,000 panels, you drove an American company out of business with $1,000 panels, the tax on all imported panels is now $10,000 and the tax on all solar panels from China is now punitively set at $20,000." If we do this in every case where industries practice dumping on us, the Chinese will get very mad at the factory owners who keep trying to screw the U.S., and will take care of the problem internally. Meanwhile, the $10,000 tax will prevent gray market panels from China making an end-run through other countries. And in the U.S., domestic companies will be free to compete with each other for our business, selling panels at fair domestic prices of $5,000 or $4,000.
We're never going to take care of our own people until we protect them.
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Informative)
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Corporations are a government-created entity that allows investors to concentrate their wealth. If the government is going to create them, it must regulate them in the public interest. If you want more corporations, in order to allow more competition, you have to create a regulatory environment that prevents them from eating each other or getting too big to allow competition.
That is incorrect. The Government does not create corporations, individuals do. Government recognizes them and provides a legal framework. That is a very big difference.
Take your phone to the bathroom! (Score:5, Funny)
Better than unionizing -- just take your wireless headset to the toilet. You can stay on your calls, and there can be an LCD monitor in the stall if you need to reference information, read from a script, check your Facebook page, etc.
At the end of a particularly annoying call, the sound of a toilet flushing would be entirely appropriate, too!http://slashdot.org/story/12/09/16/1213226/ask-slashdot-when-does-time-tracking-at-work-go-too-far#
Re:Unionize (Score:5, Interesting)
There are no laws that prohibit or restrict the employer from tracking bathroom breaks but the employee must be paid for all breaks less than 20 minutes. Also, from what I've read, there is nothing to prevent an employer from letting an employee go for excessive time away from their work area.
As far as 'when does time tracking go too far?' An employer should definitely be able to track when employees are NOT actually working, I don't see a problem here unless the employer is restricting bathroom usage.
Short answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Time to start sending out resumes.
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I was thinking the same thing.
The job market's bad, but it's not THAT bad.
Re:Short answer (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Short answer (Score:5, Interesting)
They can't. If they hit the bathroom break button, it changes their state, and they won't get any calls.
I'm the lead dev / product manager for a software VoIP callcentre solution. We've had to develop features such as "don't allow an agent to take a bathroom break if there aren't enough agents available, or the waiting queue is too big, or if the estimated waiting is over X".
Supervisors will spend the day looking at the monitor, constantly checking how many calls are waiting, how long each agent is on the line. They will put themselves in "whisper" mode, so they can yell at the agent, without the customer hearing anything. If you're ever on the line with a callcentre drone, and he suddenly starts taking time to answer, or suddenly starts having trouble finding his words, it's probably a sign you're using up too much of his allotted per-call time, and getting the poor lad into trouble.
We operate in France, so we've had to deal with a lot of employee-protection laws, but more often that not, our customers (the callcentre) will force us to override specific settings (the mandatory 2 second break after each call can be revoked if the last call was too long; hence not effective enough), even if they violate the law.
Honestly? (Score:5, Insightful)
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..not to offend hard working call center people, but wouldn't that be the usual recommendation to anyone working at one regardless of if they're tracking bathroom breaks?
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, getting out is the only sane option. I used to work at a place which implemented a tracking scheme like that, and after two weeks they had lost about two thirds of the people. Too many to have the remaining people work overtime. I was among the people who left, but heard from someone who stayed that they stopped that silliness only a month after introducing it.
So getting out will make one of two things happen: Either you are free from a horrible employment situation, or you help make them see the erro
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
you don't 'stick it to the man', when you unionize, you equalize what HAS BECOME an increasingly unlevel playing ground.
you show social responsibility when you fight to get a union installed in a bad company. and this surely sounds like they need some EQ there..
and while it may be bad for those fighting, they'll make life better for those that follow.
we USED to care about stuff like that. we used to. what happened to us? why do we have this 'got mine, fark you!' mentality?
your grandparents - that fought for unions and a better work life for you - feel you have abandoned them and all the hard work they fought for!
You're assuming (wrongly in most cases), that unions exist to make life better for the employees. Certainly they do sometimes make things better, but unions often become large and corrupt, and the leaders there are just as corrupt as any politician. Was the labor movement important to our generation? Absolutely. But when labor unions are able to raise enough money to affect political outcomes in society, or coerce members of their union to vote a specific way, they become just as bad as the corporations t
Re: (Score:3)
You need the right environment for a "new" union. The fact is that any "new" union will be living in the same ecosystem as the old one. To get a good US union out of the crap we have, we need better laws. Good luck doing that until the old unions aren't there and in control of the Democratic party.
Further, you appear to be suggesting that a new union would be awesome, until it sucks like all the other ones. That means you're okay with getting what you want, at the expense of the jobs of the people in th
Re: (Score:3)
You see the thing is, corporations can be corrupt, but that is actually not their problem. When a corporation is corrupt, people are stealing from *it*. The problem with corporations is that they seek to minimize costs at all cost to increase profits, but they do so stupidly.
The real way to get corporations to see the light is to show that corporations will be better and more profitable when they work on their own to treat their employees well. And this can be done. The original 40 hour work week was ag
Re: (Score:3)
Because unions don't stick it to anyone. They just collect dues from your paycheck.
Oh, as a founding member *you* might be okay in your closed shop because you will get seniority. But the people who come after you will be doing the same job as you did before, with tracked breaks and everything, and they will pay union dues on top of all of that.
Companies tend to become even more soulless with a union involved because then it becomes an adversarial relationship where the company has to allow certain things
"Bathroom" can easily be renamed.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Bathroom" can easily be renamed.... (Score:4, Insightful)
They should use the same methods for tracking management and the employees.
eat a lot.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:eat a lot.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll eventually see that people in your apartment spend a LOT of time "asking questions/helping customers" and almost nobody has to poop anymore.
And you've just discovered the REAL purpose of rolling something like this out. Anyone mgmt likes (hotties, brownnosers, relatives, etc) will ignored when they falsify records, but anyone they want to get rid of (wrong race, wrong church, wrong political party, whatever) will be fired with cause due to documented fraud resulting in no unemployment benefits because they were falsifying timesheet documents by taking a dump instead of "asking questions". I mean they'd got a timesheet showing you were "asking a question" and a avi file from the security cameras clearly showing you walk into the bathroom, it seems an open and shut case?
This also goes higher level than just employee. Now any team lead / supvr / manager can be disciplined at any time for allowing the falsification to happen ... or perhaps not disciplined ... depending on how much the boss of the lead / supvr / mgr likes the victims race, church, political party, etc.
+1 parent please... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the real evil of overly draconian regulations or laws. Sure, the subjects can choose to ignore them, and the authorities can choose not to enforce them -- but the authorities can also choose to enforce them, at their own discretion, and with no apparent legal recourse for those they single out. As far as I can tell, "everybody else was doing it" is not a valid defense.
don't overthink it (Score:4, Insightful)
You're in a call center, so when you get up today, you already have to hit something to stop receiving calls that were in queue. I would say the purpose of that button is to separate out a bit more detail on the reporting side vs, checking up on individuals. I came from a prior call-center environment, on the backend network/telephony team, and having to "check-in/out" each time you walk away from the phone/cube was normal. This was a 600 person call center, also healthcare.
These anuses must not have anuses. (Score:3)
You can be pretty confident the management doesn't impose this on themselves.
It's up to a human manager to determine if you're abusing bathroom breaks or not. Sometimes there are good reasons. A robot isn't going to give any leeway.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Make that break permanent. (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree with the general opinion (Score:4, Interesting)
I worked for a couple years in a helpdesk organization where breaks were tracked. In my country you are legally entitled to 10 minutes break every hour. You can take 10x 1 minute, or 1x 10 minute, or even skip a few breaks and take a larger one. At the end of the day though, you should not have more than 90 minutes of breaks.
This was tracked through Avaya CMS and usually there was no action taken even if those breaks were exceeded, as long as the offended didn't blatantly exceed his break quota for an extended amount of days.
It depends a lot on how does the employer interpret that data. In my company, the processes and procedures are lax, there's usually no follow up unless someone really abuses breaks.
Another reason for monitoring is capacity management. You wouldn't want all your employees to go on breaks at the same time (some tend to group up when going for a smoke, that affects call flow and customers). There was a live report publicly displayed on every center using projectors, so that everyone could see whether they affect call flow or not by going in a break. Sometimes agents had a particularly nasty call and they needed to lay off the pressure by stepping away for a few minutes, and all they needed to do was ask for an exception, that was always granted. There was a guy who tried abusing that as well, so I had to talk to him for a few times and he finally got back in line.
Monitoring your behavior while at work is okay. being absurd about the data is not. Fine line between those two.
Very short conversation (Score:4, Funny)
I can give you an answer, but it'll have to take less than three minutes to explain. More than three minutes gets rounded to six minutes, a billable tenth of an hour.
Legal as well as Morally inept. (Score:4, Insightful)
Most countries this is 100% legal. They can also listen in on all phone conversations work related or not. They can also place a video camera pointed at your face from 1 foot away.
Is it good for the people working there. NOPE.
Does it instil a sense of corporate loyalty. NOPE.
I've been through these call centres. I feel depressed just entering the floor. It's a cattle station with better flooring.
Get a trade, skill, education, anything and move on out.
When they start out-lawing overhead (Score:4, Interesting)
Lots of companies force employees to track their time. Even salary employees who legally do not have to punch a clock to get paid. That's fine. It helps them for future estimates and proposals involving labor hours. It can be a very valuable tool.
However, all too often management begins to use these time tracking systems to try and shift overhead expenses to something billable to a customer. You walk in and read e-mails on billing guidance on how regular staff meetings, training, and even fire drills are billable to customers. Then another e-mail on billing guidance informs you that the normal overhead related billing is now forbidden unless given explicit authorization (that you will never get). Essentially, they are lying to themselves, that they have zero overhead when running their business. That nothing ever goes wrong and no one has to wait for anything.
But the one thing they forget is that by charging their customers for everything, they are charging them too much for services. The business is now vulnerable to any other business that can provide the same service and not charge their overhead to the customer.
People start to make stuff up (Score:4, Interesting)
This defeats the purpose of installing these types of systems. Instead of simply not knowing exactly what employees are spending their time on, they now have an inaccurate or down-right false picture of what employees are doing. This can lead the management to make the wrong decisions on things such as when to hire or how to allocate resources, especially when they believe the data over their lower level managers.
Manager here (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a manager at a call center. We track time away from calls, not because we care how long it takes you to take a smoke, or to take a crap, but for metrics. We have over 25,000 people on the phones world wide and how many minutes a call takes vs. how many workers are available for a call vs. how many workers are away from their desk (for whatever reason, we don't care) is critical to improving wait time.
As usual for the paranoia gang around here, it's not really about you. It's a big wad of data that is considered on the whole to make better business decisions.
Now back to your extended shitter break.
Re:Manager here (Score:4, Interesting)
This. I also work in the industry. There is a massive amount of truth to what you say here, but there is some truth to the submitters fears.
I deal daily with several large call centres all over the world. Each want different things from their "Bathroom break" metrics.
1) Some outsourcer call centres' clients pay for these metrics. Usually as a summary figure on the campaign they paid for. These cleint pay big money for a campaign to be run, so they want to know everything... time waiting for a call, time on a call, time wrapping, time crapping etc etc.
2) Call centres themselves want to know about their own figures. Everyone has targets, SLAs to work to. Knowing how productive you have been is sumarised, and not focussed on individuals. Sure if 50% of the day was spend in the bathroom, you need to do something about it!
3) To use as ammo. If you have an underperformer, pain int he arse, or otherwise undesirable person you want rid of, this is good ammo. Getting rid of someone for putting "bathroom break" while actually smoking/talking/whatever is great for a falsifying records offense. Sickening but have seen done.
3 is a little tinfoil hat, but I have seen this done more than once.
In short, there is probably nothing to worry about here, its pretty normal in call centres.
Also, submitter, dude, you posted on slashdot with a reasoned question... Surely a call centre is not for you? (ignore me if I am not seeing some big picture)
Use it wisely. Game the system. (Score:3)
When I worked in a call center, it was the reps' responsibility to hit a button on the phone so that after the call our phone would be put into a special mode, not dropped right back into the queue. This let us have enough time to document the call. After documenting the call, we were supposed to hit the button again to be dropped back into the queue to get another call.
We had to have an average of less than 30 seconds per call in this mode.
At the times of day when we weren't getting calls, I wouldn't hit the button. I'd go straight back into the queue and know with about 90% certainty that I wasn't going to get a call.
I kept track of the number of times I went straight back into the queue, and at the times when we were getting slammed the hardest, I'd use up the extra time I had saved up, and stay out of the queue for a minute or 90 seconds, until we stopped being slammed again.
I was really good at the job, and my average call time was about half of the average of most people on the floor, and for the ~6 months I was there, my lowest review was 97%.
Piss on the floor (Score:5, Funny)
If they're going to treat you like a small child, act like one.
is it even legal (Score:3)
Yes, yes it is, tho it may not be good for morale
You get x minutes of break time according to your contract/law. Bathroom breaks come out of that time, not the companies time.
If you ever worked on an assembly line, or a construction job site you would already know this is how it works. Office people really don't have a clue these days on what real work is it seems.
opinion (Score:3)
I used to work full-time in an elected position representing employee interests, so I do have a bit of expertise on the subject.
That said, I can not comment on "legal", because that is a matter of your local laws, and I only know my local laws well enough to say that.
Aside from legal, however, this is completely inacceptable. The employer does have an interest to track whether or not you are working, but when you are not working, you are spending private time, and what you do in your private time is your business.
If you are in a position to negotiate, ask what the real interest of the employer is. Almost certainly, he doesn't really care if you take a piss or bone his secretary. What he wants to know is that you are not working and probably what kind of break you are taking in the sense of an answer to the question how soon you will be back. A solution here would be to make two options of breaks, one regular and one short break, where the short break option does the employer that you'll be back shortly (duh).
Then again, he just might be a Big Brother control freak, in which case you need to get enough support from co-workers to put pressure on him and tell him that you and lots of others are not willing to accept that invasion of your private time and that either the bathroom breaks are paid time, or you will continue to book them as regular breaks and he can take you to court if he thinks he stands a chance of winning. Do consult a lawyer before telling him that last piece, though. In my country, you would almost certainly win, but your laws may vary.
Re:Canadian call centres do it too (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you know the question asker isn't in Canada? They seem to assume that all /. readers are also mind readers who can answer "Is this legal?" without being told which jurisdictions are relevant.