New CDT Report: Bossware Threatens Employee Health and Safety
Bossware is software that allows supervisors to monitor employees at all times and automate the task of surveilling them in unprecedented detail. It’s being used more and more across different industries, and is enabled by the limited privacy protections that American law affords employees and the wide latitude that it gives companies to dictate workers’ on-the-job activities.
In a new report from CDT, we look at how these tools — which aim to squeeze every possible drop of productivity from workers — threaten not only their privacy, but also their health, safety, and well-being.
It also discusses how current legal protections, like the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and federal wage and hour law might apply. If enforced and implemented more strongly, these laws could help shield workers from some of the most harmful effects of bossware while workers wait for lawmakers to enact more comprehensive protections.
Employers are already tracking today’s workers with a previously unimaginable level of detail, but without serious attention from policymakers, bossware could become even more intrusive and harmful to our health and safety.
