Worker Fired For Declining a Face Scan Awarded $23,200 (stuff.co.nz) 59
A reader shares a report from Stuff.co.nz: Christchurch electrician Tim Fensom has been awarded $23,200 after he was fired for refusing to use a face scanning system. Fensom worked for construction company KME Services for eight months as a lead electrician during the construction of Christchurch's new hospital before he was fired on October 30, 2018, the Employment Relations Authority said in its determination. KME managing director Tim Lane replaced the company's paper-based timesheets with a biometric system that scanned workers' faces when they arrived and left the hospital construction site after two other subcontracting companies started using it. When Fensom raised concerns, he was told to use the system or receive a warning for breaching KME's health and safety policy.
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Fensom was on a two week holiday while the system was being rolled out. When he returned on October 29, Fensom declined to use the face scanner, and instead signed in on a paper timesheet and carried on with his day. That day Fensom was given a formal warning letter for not following KME's health and safety policies. The next day when he refused again, Fensom was fired for serious misconduct. The ERA said KME failed to consult its employees about alternatives to paper-based timesheets before switching to the face-scanning software. KME was ordered to pay Fensom $12,000 as compensation for humiliation and injury to feelings and $11,286 in lost wages.
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Fensom was on a two week holiday while the system was being rolled out. When he returned on October 29, Fensom declined to use the face scanner, and instead signed in on a paper timesheet and carried on with his day. That day Fensom was given a formal warning letter for not following KME's health and safety policies. The next day when he refused again, Fensom was fired for serious misconduct. The ERA said KME failed to consult its employees about alternatives to paper-based timesheets before switching to the face-scanning software. KME was ordered to pay Fensom $12,000 as compensation for humiliation and injury to feelings and $11,286 in lost wages.
How about re-hiring him? (Score:3)
TFA doesn't mention whether he was rehired.
Re:How about re-hiring him? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: How about re-hiring him? (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah but taking the job back would be about as close to winning a lawsuit against a sleazy cop who gave you a bullshit fine. Sure, you won that time, but they'll be on you every day of your life until they have reached some arbitrary level of satisfaction.
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Or it can make you completely untouchable until you are good and ready to leave, since any time they try anything, you pull out your immunity-from-retribution card until they'll give you even more money (and a glowing reference) just to get rid of you
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TFA doesn't mention whether he was rehired.
Why would he want to be? Have you ever worked for an employer you have actively taken to court about firing you? You ever seen that scene in Die Hard 3 where Bruce Willis had the "I hate ni**ers" sign around his neck while walking around in Harlem?
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Who'd want a job in these conditions?
Expect no promotion, no raise, the shittiest tasks, and someone will take note of all the tiniest mistakes you make.
If you win, you can expect the company to compensate you for the the job you lost (is it the "lost wages" part?) but re-hiring you would be madness.
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TFS says, "When Fensom raised concerns..."
What "concerns" would that be? That he can't come into work an hour later than he puts on his timesheet any more?
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And in what way would those "concerns" be different than his timesheet? For myself I would have implemented a key card system, they're much cheaper and easier to manage, but again those same spurious "concerns" arise. I've worked in the construction trades for many years, the reason why the line employees resist accurate time clock systems is because a lot of them pad their hours, and you will find that the worst offenders will be the same people who complain about the new system the most.
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That the problem they purport to solve with the biometrics is a real problem that exists has exactly nothing to do with the matter of what the problems with the proposed solution are, and if it is locally legal in some place to force an employee to accept the results of those problems.
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Biometrics are more often than not a solution in search of a problem. A simple key card system would have accomplished the same thing while being cheaper, more robust, more portable, and generally easier to use and manage. Unfortunately the company fell for someone's sales pitch. The only reason why this is even "news" is because of the biometrics aspect, otherwise it would just be another labor dispute that wouldn't have made it to the back page of the local newspaper.
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They don't like key cars because
A) Unsupervised employees will put together a pool, and one person will have everybody's card and will arrive early to clock everybody in on time, while everybody else arrives later.
B) The employees they have on site, when ordered to spy on them and turn them in, don't do it. Their supervisors are themselves insubordinate to the rulemaker.
C) They're not willing to make the hard decisions that would solve this problem, "for whatever reason." Probably somebody is related to som
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one person will have everybody's card and will arrive early to clock everybody in on time
Although I've seen it claimed many times I've never actually seen it happen in the real world (and I've been on a lot of construction sites). This would be in part because the card reader would be located in the project trailer or break area where there are lots of people around at the start/end of the work day.
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This tells me that you don't actually work these jobs, or if you do, that you're a social outsider to the rest of the team.
Yes, there are lots lots of people around at the necessary time. Yes, that makes it seem like it would be easy to solve the problem. No, in practice the people in the office telling the supervisors to supervise are not respected, they're "pencil necks" who made the rules "by consulting a clipboard."
You have to actually put up cameras, fire the people who sabotaged the cameras, repeat th
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This would certainly be the case in the factory where my dad worked for many years, but maybe the folks in the construction trades where you live are different than here (Pacific Northwest). Admittedly I've only worked big jobs like Microsoft and Amazon buildings, new hospital wings, and the like, but I have seen very little of the attitude you describe. Of course Mortenson, Hoffman and the like are considered exceptional employers too, which undoubtedly makes a big difference. (They have to treat their
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And in what way would those "concerns" be different than his timesheet?
I'm okay with signing a paper, I'm not okay with my face being stored in a database forever (and sold to God-knows-how many entities). I can legally change my signature if it's forged. Much harder to change my face.
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What do you think happens to the picture on your drivers license? The CCTV image of you walking into the mall? The Christmas photos that include you that your family members post to Facebook?
Sorry, but I think that horse has already left the barn.
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Driver's license picture is mandatory by law.
The CCTV image of me walking into a mall can be avoided if I choose not to go there. Plus, it's a low quality image of me as a whole, not my face specifically, and it can't be tied to an identity (at least not directly and without a doubt).
As for what's posted on Facebook, you won't find my face there. Well, actually you can but I am not tagged in any of them and it's tied to a nickname.
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it's a low quality image of me as a whole, not my face specifically, and it can't be tied to an identity
For the first, it would depend on the camera(s) installed. Some malls are doing facial recognition (now that it finally works) to watch for trouble makers or known shoplifters. For the second, it would be tied to your cellphone, which the large malls monitor so that they can track traffic patterns and charge more for high-traffic storefronts. Now that most drivers licenses and almost all credit cards have RFID chips in them they'll probably change to chip readers in the future, unless chip-blocking walle
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"Some malls are doing facial recognition"
Some malls in some countries which allow it. Luckily I live in one which doesn't allow that. The GDPR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation) disallows non-consensual identification and personal data usage, under heavy penalties.
Also RFID chips can't be read from a distance.
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You're a bit behind the times, this is from 2009:
https://it.slashdot.org/story/... [slashdot.org]
There was a competition at Defcon a year or two before that where contestants were able to read a standard RFID from 69 feet away, but I'm not able to find the article at the moment (and I know it was on Slashdot). The Defcon 2010 conference shows a talk that has the following summary.
https://docs.google.com/spread... [google.com]
If you think that RFID tags can only be read a few inches away from a reader you haven't met EPC Gen2, the tag
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In New Zealand , workers have legal rights and the means to pursue them.
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Yeah, more likely you will get some cushy position where you can't complain, regular increases and bonuses etc.
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Maybe in the States things are as you say. Here in my 3rd world country, there have been cases of abusive dismissal of people and they went to court. Law says that during trial, the company must keep them employed, and if they win, the company has to maintain them employed. Some people left the companies themselves afterwards. Some keep working there and everything is fine. Some companies tried giving shit to said employee, were sued again and lost again.
Here's an example, the series of articles is in Roman
Seems like the false pretenses was ignored (Score:2)
Calling the timesheet system part of their "Health and Safety Policies" in order to ramp up the seriousness of the transgression and fire him more quickly seems to have been ignored by the judge. So I guess that was A OK then.
Re:Seems like the false pretenses was ignored (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite - from TFA:
"[KME] said the compulsory use of the face scanner [...] also was a commitment to workers' health and safety, tracking them in case of emergencies and evacuations.
The authority doubted KME's health and safety rationale because workers did not need to use the system if they were going away on lunch breaks.
The authority said [KME] admitted Timecloud's real benefits were to reduce time fraud."
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RTFA, the system was used both for time accounting and for evacuation procedure, the latter being the health and safety part (the system ensures automatically that everyone who entered the construction site has in fact evacuated in case of an emergency). Such automatic system works much faster than have workers line up during evacuation to scan their ID cards, so that rescue efforts can be initiated quickly, not wait for everyone to scan in, look for people who didn't scan in outside first, etc.
Why didn't you RTFA before asking others to? (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA, the system was used both for time accounting and for evacuation procedure, the latter being the health and safety part (the system ensures automatically that everyone who entered the construction site has in fact evacuated in case of an emergency).
RTwholeFA
The authority doubted KME's health and safety rationale because workers did not need to use the system if they were going away on lunch breaks.
Seems like you could come and go as you pleased after you scanned in.
Re:Seems like the false pretenses was ignored (Score:5, Insightful)
Only complete morons would trust that such a system ensures all employees have evacuated. Because that's what you do in case of an emergency -- stand in front of a scanner on your way out the door.
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In case of an emergency everyone needs to line up at an assembly point and a roll call can be done to back up the initial head count.
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So, if you've evacuated, how exactly does someone access the system to see who was there that day? Especially if the power is off (not at all unlikely under many conditions that would result in evacuation)?
Meanwhile, surely you don't expect people to run for their lives then queue up in an orderly fashion to scan out. I'm sure that by the 100th time the scanner errors out and says re-scan, nobody will just say screw it and head for safety.
Contrived (Score:4, Insightful)
That fine is ridiculously small for such an offence. The amount the employee got may be reasonable but the fine would have been questionably small at ten times the size.
Someone had a bright idea to keep the workers "under control". To make it harder for them to object to this visit by big brother, they pretended that this was relevant to health and safety. It was really to keen the peasants in their places.
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It's really not that much, and it sure as heck isn't punitive for a large construction company.
For reference, if we stilll have some USian users, 23,200 New Zealand dollars is about US$15,533.
A cursory search reveals NZ electrician wages [google.com] to be between NZ$21.40 to NZ$35.50 per hour (US$14-24.00). As noted in the summary, Mr Fensom was the lead electrician, so it seems reasonable to assume his pay was closer to the top of that scale.
$NZ11,286/35.00= 322 hours: 8 weeks pay at 40 hours, or much less if the pro
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>I do think that companies should be held to the fire more than the individual... but in most countries, companies have the same rights as an individual.
Which is where a system inspired by Germany's speeding fines can be useful: They recognize that a fixed-amount fine has very little deterrent value for the the wealthy (who happen to also own most of the fastest cars), and so instead charge fines proportional to income.
Such a system could scale naturally to corporations - if, say $23k is actually deeme
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I am not going to argue that the fine was too small, perhaps it was.
I would like to ask a dumb question though: What is the difference between a log book or electronic key card/NFC chip reader attached to the building entrance to log comings/goings?
What if the guy registered a mask as his facial scan and would only be recognized by the system when wearing it. Now it is something he has that is removable.
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What if the guy registered a mask as his facial scan and would only be recognized by the system when wearing it.
What if company policies was not to wear masks on site?
You're trying to circumvent something that is purely a policy. It will work once and be quickly amended.
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That fine is ridiculously small for such an offence.
Why? What happened here is that they incorrectly fired a single employee based on that employee not following a company rule.
There was no discussion on the company rule itself and what the company did wasn't correct either. The fine was levied due to the heavy handed application of a rule that had no consultation period.
It's not illegal to fire employees who don't follow rules, and it's not illegal to require this form of sign-in. So what was the fineable offence that you deem so severe? The only thing the
Only $23k? (Score:3)
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It presumably is enough to cover the lost work, as part of the amount is "lost wages" not "some of the lost wages". Remember this is a story about New Zealand, not the US, and the amounts are in NZ$ not US$.
As far as lawyers etc go, it's typical in non-US jurisdictions for the losing party to pay the winning party's court costs, albeit after a review of those costs by the court to ensure they're reasonable. I don't know for sure that's the case in New Zealand, but have no reason to doubt that.
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That's not nearly enough to cover the lost work, unemployment, lawyers... Pathetic. Should have gotten $50k or more.
Except it was enough to cover lost work and was calculated exactly based on the work he wasn't doing. Unemployment doesn't come into it. Lawyers fees are always covered by losers so it's not listed in the settlement.
Please keep your stupid American "yay cash windfall, sue the world" system out of the rest of the world's far more sane courthouses.
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Please keep your stupid American "yay cash windfall, sue the world" system out of the rest of the world's far more sane courthouses.
Our problem is that we have too frelling many lawyers, all of whom went into law with the goal of getting rich. Unfortunately most of our judges agree that enriching lawyers is the purpose of the court system, and most of our politicians were originally lawyers who decided to get rich writing the laws.
Feelings? (Score:1)
>"pay Fensom $12,000 as compensation for humiliation and injury to feelings and $11,286 in lost wages."
Injury to "feelings"?
I wish I could get big dollars every time my "feelings" were "injured." I am no fan of forced biometrics, but let's get real.
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The "feelings" in this case were the shame in being fired on trumped-up charges. That leaves a stain on ones employment history, and makes getting the next job more difficult. This isn't a case of "waaah! he called me a poopy head!".
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It amazes me that people grow to adulthood in a society without a basic understanding of the rules by which it operates.
No, you are not entitled to compensation, even for *physical* injuries, unless the other party commits an act which the law characterizes as wrongful -- a "tort". When the other party commits a tort, you are entitled to compensation for even *entirely* emotional injury. For example in a slander case the only injury might be is how you feel about the false things people believe about you,
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The court's statement that the $12,000 was for "humiliation and hurt feelings" is an odd one. The employee was harmed financially in multiple ways, above and beyond the loss of wages. He was fired from his job (in a manner which potentially looked bad to future employers); he had to spend time finding a new job; he had to spend time fighting the case in court; and although he eventually received his lost wages, he received them late, which may have caused additional financial issues for him (late-payment
injury to feelings (Score:1)
I wish I got $12,000.00 every time someone hurt my feelings.
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I'm sure you do you whiny piece of shit.
Saruman (Score:2)
Rules Hobbitland.