The Fingerprinting of Employees (Law Professors Blog Network)

[chat_noir]

Beginning today, Aramark Corp., the giant Philadelphia concessionaire that sells that overpriced beer, is requiring its Fenway employees to be fingerprinted. "Please stop by on Wednesday, July 26, 2006, or Thursday July 27, 2006, between 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. to pick up your paycheck and your new ID badge & to get fingerprinted," management said in a memo to employees. "New ID badge & fingerprinting is part of the new time clock system and it is a condition of employment."

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All this is part of a profound corporate expansion of Big Brother in the workplace -- the so-called biometric technology revolution that uses everything from fingerprinting to retinal scans to facial recognition to keep tabs on a company's suspects, otherwise known as employees. In particular, Aramark thinks its new Fenway time-clock system will put an end to ``buddy punching" -- the practice of having a co-worker punch in for you.

I don't think under current law there is an invasion of privacy tort or anything like that as long as the employer is using the information for business-related purposes. Of course, there is a potential for abuse when this type of information is gleaned from employees, especially with all the advances in technology.

I was listening to a radio program while I was in Pittsburgh a few days ago, and they were talking there about making traveling employees use GPS devices so that their employees knew that when they were out doing business that they were actually going where they said they were going. Again, nothing on its face that troubling, but measures should be put into place both for the protection of the employer and the employee when such information is being gathered to make sure it is not being utilized for improper purposes -- like keeping track of the employee when they're off-duty.

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/laborprof_blog/2006/08/mike_mccann_mis.html

[Redstone]

1. I'd fucking quit first.

Redstone

[no_hypocrisy]

4. I did quit.

Back in '84 I was working for an NYC daycare center as a teacher. Then the child abuse scandals in another borough tainted my career. The quick fix was to institute fingerprinting of existing and future employees. I went to the union, asking for protection against being fingerprinted if I were be arrested. All the union was interested in achieving at the time was getting three more minutes for lunch break. The deal was either you got fingerprinted or you got fired with the reason why you were fired as refusing to submit to fingerprinting.

I chose none of the above. I quit before the day I was scheduled to get printed and my record was intact, but I stopped teaching.

My suspicions about the inaccuracies were confirmed as I watched my former coworkers get false positives and be suspended without pay.

I know, I know, it's children. Small children. But my point was a criminal investigation was possible without fingerprints. Now it's a regular standard of being hired in all schools.

I miss the kids, but I'd quit all over again.

[agentkgb]

6. All schools?

Do all schools require fingerprinting of teachers, or just some states/age groups?

[toadaway]

8. Janet Reno's rise to fame began with prosecutions of daycare center

workers who were fingered as "child abusers" by children that had been coerced into making false claims against them. Ironic, in light of many things, including the rumors about her own private life.

[seemunkee]

2. HSPD12

Presidential directive 12 states that by this October every Govt agency will roll out a biometric ID card. I forget what the time table is but eventually every govt employee and on site contractor will have to carry one. The plan is to use 2 fingerprint matching and maybe later add iris scan.
Retinal scanning is dead. Two of the top biometric manufacturers don't even offer it and most other companies are not considering putting any effort into it. Retinal scanning can diagnose medical conditions and also requires shining a laser into the eye. Iris scanning is just pattern matching same as fingerprints.

[shain from kane]

3. Reminds me of Charles Spiesel.

"Then Dymond zeroed in for the kill. Was it not a fact, he asked, that when Spiesel's daughter left New York to go to school at Louisiana State University he customarily fingerprinted her? Spiesel replied in the affirmative.

Dymond then asked if it were not also a fact that he customarily fingerprinted his daughter again when she returned at the end of the semester. Again, the witness acknowledged that this was true.

Dymond then asked him why he fingerprinted her. Spiesel explained that he did this, in effect, to make sure that the daughter who was returning from L.S.U. was the same one he had sent there."

Have to make sure that the same person arrived on the job to WORK.

[Franknable]

5. Not just Big Brother; but also The Holding Company

Politics is the doing of the public's business for private gain, and employment/workplace rules like this one serve both Big Brother (Gov't) as well as The Holding Company (corporate America).

Wouldn't YOU like a piece of the fingerprint (& related) industrial complex? I would. Expect more of these kinds of intrusive rules. There's too much money involved for "connected" people to ignore, and too many opportunities for lazy and corrupt folks in the criminal justice (sic) industry. See, it's a win-win situation. For them.

[stevenstevensteven]

7. Questions

Is there a legal basis for fighting this fingerprinting of employees practice in the courts? Who are the groups that are attempting to fight this...and what tactics are they using?

What liabilities do the employer face when they share the fingerprint information with other databases. Certainly, given the value that this data will have, employers will want to trade in this information just as they currently trade in marketing info about consumers.