Frank Pasquale writes: As an opinion piece by Theresa Brown explains, maintaining proper staffing levels in hospitals is becoming increasingly difficult. Surveillance systems are offering one way to address the problem; work can be performed more intensively and efficiently as it is recorded and studied. But such monitoring has many troubling implications, according to Torin…
Category: Workplace
Boss of the Year – Not
It’s one thing for an employer to try to control how many employees are out at one time by coordinating vacation schedules. It’s another thing to demand that they plan their pregnancies with him or to inquire as to whether they are using condoms. Maria Dinzeo of Courthouse News reports on a case that, frankly,…
SCOTUS holds that search of Quon’s text messages was not unreasonable (update3)
The Supreme Court has issued its opinion in City of Ontario v. Quon (previous coverage here). The opinion was written by Justice Kennedy. Erin Miller of SCOTUSblog writes that the court held that the search of the police officer’s text messages to his colleagues and to a woman with whom he was having an affair…
Employee monitoring: When IT is asked to spy
Tam Harbert reports: Michael Workman, an associate professor at the Florida Institute of Technology‘s Nathan M. Bisk College of Business who studies IT security and behavior at corporations, estimates that monitoring responsibilities take up at least 20% of the average IT manager’s time. Yet most IT professionals never expected they’d be asked to police their…