Big Meat Companies Want To Use Smartwatches To Track Workers' Every Move (vice.com) 66
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Two of the largest meat companies in the U.S. have invested in a smartwatch app that allows managers to track and monitor worker's movements. According to a report by Investigate Midwest, a non-profit newsroom covering the agri-business industry, JBS and Tyson Foods have backed Mentore, a start-up that claims it uses surveillance data and AI to improve worker productivity and reduce workplace injuries. Once paired with a compatible smartwatch, Mentore's application uses sensors to collect data on the force, rotation, speed, and directional movement of a worker's arm as they repeatedly complete the same task. The company's algorithm then analyzes that data to determine if those movements are safe and alerts the individual if they are found to be using too much speed or force. According to the report and Mentore's co-founder, Apoorva Kiran, the watch can also detect dehydration.
This raw watch data is then converted to real-time metrics that are made visible to supervisors on a dashboard. At the moment, it seems that Mentore plans to combat uncertainty and issues about transparency about the app by allowing workers to access their current and historical "injury risk" scores, but it's unclear whether they can do anything to challenge the real-time metrics on the watch itself. The app can also differentiate between "intense active motion" and "mild active motion." According to Mentore's site, this kind of data can "improve productivity, turnover, and safety at scale in real-time." [...] According to Investigate Midwest, the system has already been installed on about 10,000 devices across five industries in four different countries, including the U.S, Canada, Chile, and Japan. The move mirrors similar controversial tracking practices that many other companies, including Amazon, have tried to implement over the years in a bid to increase worker productivity. "Besides the tracking and the invasion of somebody's privacy, there is this real safety and health issue," Mark Lauritsen, an international vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) and head of the union's meatpacking division, told Motherboard. He says that requiring workers to wear a watch or any other jewelry would be in violation of health and safety policies, opening them up to workplace injury and potentially leading to contamination of the product.
"We're not going to allow their need to have more money and more productivity endanger people's lives and limbs just so they can make an extra dollar," Lauritsen said. "It's just not gonna happen."
This raw watch data is then converted to real-time metrics that are made visible to supervisors on a dashboard. At the moment, it seems that Mentore plans to combat uncertainty and issues about transparency about the app by allowing workers to access their current and historical "injury risk" scores, but it's unclear whether they can do anything to challenge the real-time metrics on the watch itself. The app can also differentiate between "intense active motion" and "mild active motion." According to Mentore's site, this kind of data can "improve productivity, turnover, and safety at scale in real-time." [...] According to Investigate Midwest, the system has already been installed on about 10,000 devices across five industries in four different countries, including the U.S, Canada, Chile, and Japan. The move mirrors similar controversial tracking practices that many other companies, including Amazon, have tried to implement over the years in a bid to increase worker productivity. "Besides the tracking and the invasion of somebody's privacy, there is this real safety and health issue," Mark Lauritsen, an international vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) and head of the union's meatpacking division, told Motherboard. He says that requiring workers to wear a watch or any other jewelry would be in violation of health and safety policies, opening them up to workplace injury and potentially leading to contamination of the product.
"We're not going to allow their need to have more money and more productivity endanger people's lives and limbs just so they can make an extra dollar," Lauritsen said. "It's just not gonna happen."
the health inspector may put an stop to it / very (Score:2)
the health inspector may put an stop to it / very state to state on if it will get an ok.
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Meat packing is dangerous work. Anything that makes it safer is a good thing. If the company is investing in technology to help you do your job safely that is a good thing. Complaining about this is like complaining that you have to wear a mask or a radiation detector. Anything is oppression to people who just want to do their job.
Sure this can be used for nefarious purposes, but look at it rationally. Firms pay huge sums f
Re:the health inspector may put an stop to it / ve (Score:5, Interesting)
All this micro-managing of people will get twisted into the same sort of shit. But let's be honest: this has NOTHING to do with 'worker safety', it has everything to do with 'micromanaging employees within an inch of their lives' in a misguided, evil attempt to squeeze every last drop of work out of people before they drop. They want to work these people like they're robots. When they don't measure up, they'll cite this 'performance data' and claim they're 'habitually unsafe workers', write them up, then fire them. Meanwhile the workers do want safer working conditions -- but that would mean more overhead and less productivity, having to work at a human pace instead of a machine pace, and they can't do that now can they? They'll lose money! So this is their 'solution': force out the human workers and only keep the ones who can work like tireless robots -- at least until they burn those out, then they'll get rid of them too.
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IANAL, but I thought that even in at-will states, employer fraud (in this case, saying someone was fired for being a "risk" with no evidence - or evidence that most people would laugh out of court), would still open the employer up to a wrongful termination suit.
Seems like the truckers should be lining up to sue, and dragging this "evidence" into court. I can't imagine any jury agreeing that a weird facial expression makes someone a risk, especially when a good portion of them probably are cursing and flipp
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Data is just data, but employer intentions vary (Score:3)
If employers were solely interested in worker health, certainly they would pay the money to provide those workers the best in health care insurance instead of doing the opposite and cutting corporate health care expenditures. Perhaps some employers are altruistic and will only use the data to improve worker safety. However, how many companies do you know that would do such a thing without a monetary incentive, especially when that program itself will cost money? In fact, recent history has shown a financ
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Full disclosure and all: I used to work for JBS and at another employer I worked on "labor standards" which was basically calculating how long it should take someone to do their jobs. Union workers hated labor standards, of course. I can only imagine what we could have done with these watches. We would have been able to pinpoint the exact place and time some worker stopped to pick their nose instead of putting it to the grindstone.
I suspect they are more concerned with chain speed than worker safety espec
Re: the health inspector may put an stop to it / v (Score:2)
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Well the movement on the golf course will show up as work.
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hipaa violations with storeing that data? (Score:1)
hipaa violations with storeing that data?
Re:hipaa violations with storeing that data? (Score:5, Informative)
People throw that around a lot. It doesn't apply. They aren't a health care provider, a provider of health plans, a healthcare clearing house, or a business associate dealing with one of the above.
Even if it were, it'd be pretty tricky to argue telemetry data related to stop-and-go motion on the watch constitutes "protected health care data".
Big Meat Watches Worker's Every Move (Score:2)
I saw a video about that once.
If they put one on each wrist, maybe they can use them to warn workers when they're about to remove a coworker's appendage through proximity alerts. That could really cut costs, and help keep things... cool.
Thanks, don't forget to tip the veal.
I've got bad news for them (Score:2)
If I'm doing a physically demanding job, I'm going to be accidentally breaking/submerging a lot of smart watches.
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And you're quickly getting fired for destroying company property.
Re:I've got bad news for them (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what unions are all about. Keeping workers out of trouble, but not allowing working conditions that incite them to get into trouble in the first place.
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That's what unions are all about. Keeping workers out of trouble, but not allowing working conditions that incite them to get into trouble in the first place.
Yep, good ol' unions. They turn this into an efficiency issue in an industry where worker repetitive strain injuries are a very real problem and not the oooh my wrist hurts kind of problem, but the I'm permanently disabled and can't move my arm anymore kind.
I would argue this union is failing.
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Which wrist? (Score:2)
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You would need one on both wrists to do any good.
It's not a bad idea, repetitive motion injuries are a real thing. But the data could certainly be misused.
And where I used to work people did occasionally wear sound meters or gas monitors or air particulate filters around on shift to see what the cumulative exposure to whatever added up to over a full shift. So there is ample precedent for health and safety monitoring. But keep the detailed results from Management. Health and Safety only.
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Plus the next time E. coli breaks out because some undocumented meat packer failed to wash after a number 2 The Great And The Good will demand tracking and video on everything. Because one life saved is worth it, right?
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If only there were a way to prevent American meat processors from hiring "undocumented" immigrants in the first place . . .
Re:Who's gonna complain? (Score:4, Interesting)
How about we arrest the people hiring illegals instead?
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I'm absolutely on board with the prosecuting of those who hire undocumented aliens. And, by the way, calling THEM "illegals". Since, after all, they broke the law and live in a state of illegality.
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It's a feature, not a bug.
It would be easy enough to put a halt to this - just make it so that any workplace that's reported results in all undocumented immigrants gaining the right to stay in the US and apply for US citizenship, plus a cash reward.
Companies would go out of their way to avoid hiring undocumented immigrants at that point because anyone they do is likely to turn them
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Jewelry / clothing can be a safety issue. (Score:5, Insightful)
He says that requiring workers to wear a watch or any other jewelry would be in violation of health and safety policies,
Personally, I remember working in a restaurant kitchens when I was younger and having to be careful about wearing rings and/or loose clothing around certain equipment. Also, I had a manager when I worked for Unisys at NASA LaRC *way* back in the mid 80's that was missing part of his left ring finger. He said he lost it when his wedding ring got caught on a basketball hoop -- he went up, his ring and finger didn't. Ouch.
Watches seem a bit less dangerous but still... (Score:1)
To me watches don't seem to offer the same risk funds or chains would, in terms of getting caught or leaving hard metals in food - but anything with a loop seems like it could be dangerous in some way...
I could think of neat technical applications like measuring effective chop (strength and form) and offering ways ro improve, but altogether I think I am with the notion that you should leave behind anything strapped to your body, especially near the end of an appendage.
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I worked in the kitchen at a Pizza Hut when I was a teen. The uniform included a neck tie, which was a potential problem around the power- dough roller and giant stand mixer. I always kept the tie tucked between the shirt buttons when using that equipment.
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The uniform included a neck tie, which was a potential problem around the power- dough roller and giant stand mixer.
Holy cow glad you are still alive! That seems crazy dangerous looking back.
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Metal rings and loose clothing items are banned in many workplaces for this safety reason. Most watches however are not comparable, be they metal watches or smart watches. The brand links or silicon will snap/tear before any significant injury occurs and what you're usually left with is only a contamination issue.
Simple solution (Score:2)
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We'll give you a $4/hr raise if you perform this self-mutilation surgery so that we can increase our profits.
I'm pretty sure I've seen that concept floated within a movie or two. It seems very dystopian.
just checking (Score:2)
they really just want to check to see how often you wipe or shake after using the restroom - bunch of perverts.
The data itself is value extracted from workers (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's totally for your safety, you guys, totally not a dataset to train a model for robotic hands to replace you with, plz trust us".
This is just one of the first instances of many.
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Re:The data itself is value extracted from workers (Score:4, Insightful)
This is just one of the first instances of many.
And this is a good thing. We should automate away manual labour, especially injury prone tasks and free up the human race to do other activities. The most fascinating idea we have come up with is this silly concept that a task needs to be done by a human simply because a human is doing that task now, and that human is incapable of spending their time doing something else equally or perhaps even more productive.
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I'm all for robots. What the usual neoliberal spiel of "bigger pie, you'll get bigger slice" loves to omit is who gets to own the robots. Datasets like this are not opensource by any stretch. The earlier you start mining it privately, the more of a headstart you have.
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loves to omit is who gets to own the robots.
Irrelevant. The world has always been owned by rich who had an early start at something, even well before the industrial resolution to say nothing of robots. The fact that someone will make money shouldn't preclude human advances. Our entire race is literally built and sustained by those who made money.
The ideal that all information should be free and equal and that the human race only works for a common collective good is a fantasy best left to sci-fi novels. Yeah it would be nice if we started with an ope
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> The world has always been owned by rich who had an early start at something, even well before the industrial resolution to say nothing of robots.
Technology now creates eternally entrenched incunbents which is for the most part unprecedented. Oh right, Google is irrelevant because Bing exists, lol.
> The ideal that all information should be free and equal and that the human race only works for a common collective good is a fantasy best left to sci-fi novels.
The know-how eventually does spread, on acco
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"It's totally for your safety, you guys, totally not a dataset to train a model for robotic hands to replace you with, plz trust us".
This is just one of the first instances of many.
I'm waiting for them to require employees to wear full "protective" gloves that actually have fine motion tracking in them... then build a bunch of other plants where the robots are actually being directly controlled by the employees at the one and only staffed one... XD
I see (Score:3)
"Once paired with a compatible smartwatch, Mentore's application uses sensors to collect data on the force, rotation, speed, and directional movement of a worker's arm as they repeatedly complete the same task. "
More like collecting data when the worker DOES NOT do that task.
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Not very subtle, are they? (Score:1)
Soon, it will be "cameras everywhere from many angles" that will give the company all it needs to know about your movements.
Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon.
Depends on the task and the environment (Score:2)
If you're operating spinning or moving machinery, then anything on your appendages or around your neck (rings, bracelets, watches, lanyards/badges, etc) is straight out.
If you want to monitor motion, you need something like stick on patches or totally non contact methods like video tracking.
If you're on the line operating a knife, maybe it's possible to do safely, but the conveyor belt would be a big red flag.
Theoretically you could design a bracelet with two breakaway sections on opposite sides of the hand
1984 (Score:3)
Big Meat Companies want to treat their workers... (Score:1)
... like meat.
In related news ... (Score:3)
Alternate Title: (Score:2)
Big Meat Companies Want To Treat Employees As Machines And Not As People
big brother (Score:1)
Mining Companies also being to use this technology (Score:2)
Only in the restrooms (Score:2)
Look at it this way: they can't put cameras in the restrooms to make sure the workers wash their effing hands so they need some way to track that. Combine it with UWB localization and they can tell when people relieve themselves and walk out without first going to the sink. NFC in it would also start the water and dispense soap and track that people have used it.
Out of Touch (Score:2)