A company that handles Amazon customer service calls wants cameras in employees’ homes — even on their kids.
By
For example, the
PR chief of a global outfit named Teleperformance, one of the world’s largest
call centers, was recently going on and on about how “We value our people and
their well-being, safety, and happiness.”
Why did the
corporation feel such a desperate need to proclaim its virtue? Because it’s been caught in a nasty scheme to spy on its own workers.
Teleperformance
— a $6.7 billion global behemoth that handles customer service calls for
companies like Amazon, Apple, and Uber — saves money on overhead by making most
of its 380,000 employees around the world work from their own homes.
That can be a convenience for many workers, but a new corporate policy first imposed in March on thousands of its workers in Colombia is an Orwellian nightmare.
Teleperformance
is pressuring them to sign an eight-page addendum to their employee contracts,
allowing corporate-controlled video cameras, electronic audio devices, and data
collection tools to be put in their homes to monitor their actions.
“I work in my
bedroom,” one employee noted. “I don’t want to have a camera in my bedroom.”
Neither would I,
and I doubt that Teleperformance’s $20 million-a-year CEO would allow one in
his mansion. Uglier yet, the privacy-obliterating contract requires that even
the children of employees can be spied on at home. Nonetheless, the Colombian
worker signed, because her supervisor said she could lose her job if she
refused.
Of course,
Teleperformance Inc. assures us that the data it collects on children is not
shared elsewhere. But how do we know that? Trust us, they say.
Do you?
OtherWords columnist is
a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. Distributed by OtherWords.org.