Labor Landscape
Is your boss spying on you?
American Airlines flight attendants are angry about a new scoring system designed to keep tabs on every move the attendants make from passenger reviews to their activity on Microsoft Teams – igniting accusations of workplace surveillance and putting California’s tough privacy laws in the spotlight.
The Me@Work program, launched in April, tracks a year’s worth of employee data before generating individual score, according to the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), the union representing the carrier’s flight attendants.
But American has told the union the platform is meant to help employees monitor their performance and development and not serve as a disciplinary tool.
The score pulls from a long list of workplace practices, including passenger satisfaction surveys, attendance, operational performances, flight attendant-related delays, compliance with company procedures, Microsoft Tams usage and how quickly incident reports are filed.
Flight attendants argue many of the measurements are influenced by factors they can’t control.
“With the way some passengers have been acting, there are probably lawsuits coming with this new monitoring system because it clearly is difficult to control some passengers, ‘’ according to Robert Strauss, a professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.
Just last week, for example, a man was arrested for unruly behavior on an American Airlines flight causing it to divert to Balitmore October 1, airline investigators reported.
Arthur Lundeen, 67, of Arizona was restrained to his seat with duct tape and his hands were restrained with zip ties, according to Maryland Transportation Authority police, which arrested him after the plane landed.
The incident took place on American Airlines Flight AA 618, which took off from Dallas on route to Newark, the airline reported.
APFA said it is seeking additional details about how Me@Work operates and insists flight attendants must be able to review and contest performance-related information tied to their records.
“We saw the rise of workplace surveillance as more people worked remotely from home and as new technologies develop for this monitoring,’’ said Karen Litzinger, owner of Litzinger Career Consulting in Pittsburgh, Pa.
Thousands of employers are keeping tabs on the whereabouts, productivity and communications of workers with technology that was adopted widely during the pandemic. A vast array of digital tools still are being used to track locations, collect data on task completion rates, and access work-issued smartphones and laptop cameras, raising concerns about how much privacy employees gave relinquished, even at their own homes.
The union fight has drawn increased attention in California, where some of the nation’s strongest consumer privacy protections also extend to employees of many businesses.
Under the California consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as expanded by the California Privacy rights Act (CPRA), California residents, including employees covered by the law, have the right to know what personal information is being used and collected, how it is used, access that data and request corrections to inaccurate information. Businesses must also notify people about their data collection practices.
The flight attendant union argues that under the law, workers have the right to know when employees are monitoring them, what information is being collected and how that information is being used.
The current controversy comes as the airline grapples with a sharp squeeze on profits and higher fuel costs, despite reporting record revenue.
American posted quarterly revenue of $16.74 billion, up 16.3 percent a year earlier. But net income plunged 88 percent to $71 million, while its operating margin fell to 2.7 percent from 7.9 percent.
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