6 Ways That Workers Are Being Treated Like Machines

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/labor/6-extreme-ways-companies-are-trying-get-workers-behave-machines



***SNIP

1. Productivity Surveillance

In the mid-1980s, UPS bought two technology companies to develop tracking equipment. In the early 1990s, it partnered with four major telecommunications companies to build the first nationwide cellular service. The newest tracking system links up with drivers' handheld devices in addition to their cars.


***SNIP

2. Shared Services

What could be wrong with sharing? When it means pulling staff from different departments and divisions, throwing them all into a new office, dividing and reallotting tasks, and merging departmental responsibilities for maximum efficiency, it can cause systemwide confusion and kill employee morale.


***SNIP

3. Value-Added Teaching

If Bill Gates has his way, all classrooms will be fit with flipcams—ostensibly for teachers to diagnose their own performance, but with nothing stopping higher-ups from using them as blunt devices for evaluation and control. “Everyone needs a coach,” Gates said, in a May TED Talk. “Unfortunately, there's one group of people who get almost no systematic feedback to help them do their jobs better.” Feedback-by-camera, he said, “wouldn't just make us a more successful country, it would also make us a more fair and just one, too.”


***SNIP

4. Corporate Wellness

Michael Bloomberg doesn't need to ban soda when corporations can do it for him.

In corporate “wellness” programs, workers report health measures like body mass index, weight, cholesterol, and blood pressure. They can receive bonuses for improving on these metrics—and penalties for declining to report the information or failing to improve. In many cases, those with identified health risks are matched with health “coaches.” Some programs, as Steve Early writesin the Nation, include “health risk assessments,” which mandate information about off-the-job activity like sex, drug use and alcohol consumption.