High tech scanning timecards
NEW YORK (AP) - March 26, 2008 Employees at a growing number of businesses around the nation
are starting and ending their days by pressing a hand or finger to
a scanner that logs the precise time of their arrival and departure
- information that is automatically reflected in payroll records.
Manufacturers say these biometric scanners improve efficiency
and streamline payroll operations. Employers big and small buy them
with the dual goals of curtailing fraud and automating outdated
record keeping systems that rely on paper time sheets.
The new systems, however, have raised complaints from some
workers who see the efforts to track their movements as excessive
or even creepy.
"They don't even have to hire someone to harass you anymore.
The machine can do it for them," said Ed Ott, executive director
of the New York City Central Labor Council of the AFL-CIO. "The
palm print thing really grabs people as a step too far."
The International Biometric Group, a consulting firm, estimated
that $635 million worth of these high-tech devices were sold last
year.
Protests over using palm scanners to log employee time have been
especially loud in New York City, where officials are spending $410
million to install an automated attendance tracking system that may
eventually be used by 160,000 city workers.
Scores of civil servants who are members of Local 375 of the
Civil Service Technical Guild rallied Tuesday against a plan to add
the city medical examiner's office to the list of 17 city agencies
which already have the scanners in place.
The scanners have rankled draftsmen, planners and architects in
the city's Parks Department, which began using them last year.
"Psychologically, I think it has had a huge impact on the work
force here because it is demeaning and because it's a system based
on mistrust," said Ricardo Hinkle, a landscape architect who
designs city parks.
He called the timekeeping system a bureaucratic intrusion on
professionals who never used to think twice about putting in extra
time on a project they cared about, and could rely on human
managers to exercise a little flexibility on matters regarding work
hours.
"The creative process isn't one that punches in and punches
out," he said.
A spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Matthew Kelly, said the
system isn't meant to be intrusive and has clear benefits over
old-style punch clocks or paper time sheets.
The city expects to save $60 million per year by modernizing a
complicated record keeping system that now requires one full-time
timekeeper for every 100 to 250 employees. The new system, dubbed
CityTime, would free up thousands of city employees to do less
paper-pushing.
Another benefit of the system is curtailing fraud. Several times
each year, New York City's Department of Investigation charges city
employees with taking unauthorized time off and then filling out a
false timecard later to make it looked as though they worked.
Other cities have embraced similar technology.
Cities as big as Chicago and as small as Tahlequah, Okla., have
turned to fingerprint-driven ID systems to record employee work
hours in recent few years.
Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies, a manufacturer of hand
scanners based in Campbell, Calif., said it has sold the devices to
Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's franchises, Hilton hotels and even to
track civilian hours at Marine Corps bases.
The systems have been introduced into plenty of workplaces
without much grumbling by employees, especially those already used
to punching a clock.
Still, union officials in New York said they are concerned that
the machines could eventually be used not just to crack down on
employees skipping work, but to nitpick honest workers or invade
their privacy.
"The bottom line is that these palm scanners are designed to
exercise more control over the workforce," said Claude Fort,
president of Local 375. "They aren't there for security purposes.
It has nothing to do with productivity ... It is about control, and
that is what makes us nervous."