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could see my family, and it almost cost me my life,” he said.
Trevor had been away from home all week, and he wanted to spend the night
there before he was back on the road the next morning. Racing against time
isn’t anything new for truck drivers, but accounting for every minute is. Since
2017, long-haul drivers in the United States are required to be monitored by
ELDs that keep track of their location and speed to schedule how they space
sleeping and driving.
“If I wanted to be micromanaged, I would have gotten a desk job,” Trevor said.
And he’s not wrong. If you’ve ever wondered whether you measure up at work,
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same ways that you can monitor how many steps you take in a day and the time
you spend looking at your phone, your place of employment can track your
productivity, surveil your daily routine, and scrutinize who you spend the most
time with at work.
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are captured by keyloggers and other software, but physical tracking—
accomplished with wearable devices such as Fitbits, brain-wave-monitoring
helmets, and even implanted microchips—could feel like a violation. Moreover,
there is an element of turning the human workforce into a robotic one that
threatens their livelihoods.
The reality is that signing a job contract can be much like agreeing to the terms
and conditions of a phone app: You might not realize what rights you’ve signed
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of monitoring means that acceding to their provisions is necessary. The more
workplaces that adopt monitoring technologies, the fewer options there are for
employees who resent the presence of this monitoring in their lives.
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activity is covered under the law, and it’s the same when objecting to being
tracked at work. Of course, the ethics of any given employer’s conduct are up
for debate.