In February, Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, announced that the country was still in a “deep hole” with millions of lost jobs adding that President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief plan could potentially generate enough growth to restore full employment by next year. A former Federal Reserve chairwoman who is the first woman to lead the Treasury Department, Yellen disclosed that the central bank had the necessary tools to deal with any potential threat of inflation even if yesterday she announced that this plan is likely to incur higher interest rates. She added that the urgent need now was to address the immediate problems brought on by the pandemic which are related to the current recession: the many small businesses lost, joblessness and the situation of school closures.
More than this, Biden has made great strides in his first weeks as president, signing sweeping climate actions, emphasizing job creation, stepping away from the government’s previously cosy relationship with corporations by overhauling the OIRA (Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs), and by asking Americans to look ahead at a future without the virus. Now the House has given the final approval to budget plan including Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus, fast tracking the process. But how will the jobs part materialize as more and more of us are witnessing friends and family having to close shop, file for unemployment and even have to tell our landlords that there is no money left to pay rent?
While many small business owners are shuttering their windows, many workers who are still able to work remotely due the nature of white-collar labor in the 21st century, employers who have taken an economic hit are hitting back by surveilling their employees distance working patterns and hours. Just as Zoom made the COVID-revolution barely survivable for many workers, many companies such as ActiveTrak, Hivedesk, and Time Doctor are enabling companies to track the activities of their employees by installing software on their computers. Yes, you read correctly!
While many businesses have used GPS tracking of employees for years, others have turned to time tracking software during the pandemic viewing such practices as their right over workers’ productivity. This presents workers few choices to resist such surveillance in an increasingly fragile job environment few choices for fear that they will be fired as the lines of unemployed men and women is growing by the day. Where this kind of monitoring was not uncommon in pre-pandemic USA, it is was generally reserved for in-office computers and to gain insight into employee productivity while discouraging private email and social media use. In the United States, employers generally have the right to monitor employees computer use while they’re in the workplace and using company equipment under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).
Some, however, are pushing back. Recently, some CBD companies, such as Joy Organics, opened up to me about their mission to bring hope and restore health in these trying times where process is as important as the product. Stressing their vision to bring health and wellness to people suffering post-lockdown, they highlighted the importance of respect and openness in the working environment stressing that the best business operations are those which trust and respect their workers.
With the pandemic, there was little thought exercised about these practices out-of-office. For instance, may employers assumed that their workers already possessed a home computer or laptop to work from with new questions arising as to what percentage of a worker’s rent employees might be asked to pay given the extreme stress placed on the house hold and space. Similarly, questions surrounding the legality of putting an employee time tracker on a worker’s private computer have been rarely addressed.
Along with the creation of jobs that the Biden administration is confronting head-on, the rights of workers who are committed to curtailing the spread of COVID-19 seems to have been left on the back burner. Countries like Germany are starting to address the expenses of workers invested in remote-work, but most countries are lagging far behind the financial and data privacy aspects associated with remote working.
In the coming months, we shall see which choices businesses make in the follow through from long business closures. The choice to respect workers and not invoke spying or tracking platforms that have little to no rationale is one that all business owners can and should make.