Garry Wills on the u A Lost Story by u William T. Vollmann Future of Catholicism Vladimir Nabokov Visits Fukushima

HARPER’S MAGAZINE/MARCH 2015 $6.99 THE SPY WHO FIRED ME The human costs of workplace monitoring BY ESTHER KAPLAN

u A GRAND JUROR SPEAKS The Inside Story of How Prosecutors Always Get Their Way by gideon lewis-kraus GIVING UP THE GHOST The Eternal Allure of Life After Death by leslie jamison REPORT

THE SPY WHO FIRED ME The human costs of workplace monitoring By Esther Kaplan

ast March, Jim data into metrics to be LCramer, the host of factored in to your per- CNBC’s Mad Money, formance reviews and devoted part of his decisions about how show to a company much you’ll be paid. called Cornerstone Miller’s company is ­OnDemand. Corner- part of an $11 billion stone, Cramer shouted industry that also at the camera, is “a includes workforce- cloud-based-software- management systems as-a-service play” in the such as Kronos and “talent-­management” “enterprise social” plat- field. Companies that forms such as Micro- use its platform can soft’s Yammer, Sales- quickly assess an em- force’s Chatter, and, ployee’s performance by soon, Facebook at analyzing his or her on- Work. Every aspect of line interactions, in- an office worker’s life cluding emails, instant can now be measured, messages, and Web use. and an increasing “We’ve been manag- number of corporations ing people exactly the and institutions—from same way for the last cosmetics companies hundred and fifty to car-rental agencies— years,” Cornerstone’s are using that informa- CEO, Adam Miller, tion to make hiring told Cramer. With the and firing decisions. rise of the global workforce, the re- the vanguard of big data in the cloud” Cramer, for one, is bullish on the idea: mote workforce, the smartphone and and a leader in the “gamification of per- investing in companies like Corner- the tablet, it’s time to “manage people formance management.” To be assessed stone, he said, “can make you boatloads differently.” Clients include Virgin by Cornerstone is to have your collab- of money literally year after year!” Media, Barclays, and Starwood Hotels. orative partnerships scored as assets and A survey from the American Cornerstone, as Miller likes to tell your brainstorms rewarded with elec- Management Association found investors, is positioning itself to be “on tronic badges (genius idea!). It is to have that 66 percent of employers moni- scads of information swept up about tor the Internet use of their employ- Esther Kaplan is the editor of the Investiga- what you do each day, whom you com- ees, 45 percent track employee key- tive Fund at the Nation Institute and was a municate with, and what you communi- strokes, and 43 percent monitor 2013–2014 Alicia Patterson Fellow. cate about. Cornerstone converts that employee email. Only two states,

Illustrations by John Ritter REPORT 31 Delaware and Connecticut, require standard set of metrics for measuring was introduced as a safety measure companies to inform their employ- R.O.I.” Yet this has hardly when it was rolled out in New York ees that such monitoring is taking slowed adoption. six or seven years ago. Lists were place. According to Marc Smith, a posted at distribution centers to sociologist with the Social Media first got interested in the data- shame the biggest seat-belt scofflaws. Research Foundation, “Anything drivenI workforce not long after I But safety is not the reason given for you do with a piece of hardware moved from a dilapidated apartment telematics on UPS investor calls. On that’s provided to you by the em- in Brooklyn that had a live-in super to those, executives speak instead about ployer, every keystroke, is the prop- a slightly more solid walk-up that does the potential for telematics to save erty of the employer. Personal calls, not. I began to notice something frus- the firm $100 million in operating private photos—if you put it on the trating about my UPS deliveries. They efficiencies, including reductions in company laptop, your company never arrived. When I wasn’t home, fuel, maintenance, and labor. owns it. They may analyze any elec- I’d leave a note asking for packages to Indeed, around the time telematics tronic record at any time for any be left at the laundromat on the cor- was being introduced in New York, purpose. It’s not your data.” ner. I’d get an attempted-­delivery note UPS began to increase the number of With the advent of wireless con- instead. The same thing sometimes stops on each route. At morning meet- nectivity, along with a steep drop in happened even when I was home—I’d ings at the distribution center, Rose told the price of computer processors, find an ­attempted-delivery note, but me, supervisors would announce, “Hey, electronic sensors, GPS devices, and no one had rung my doorbell. Packag- your stop count is going up by ten.” As ­radio-frequency identification tags, es were routinely returned to sender. recently as a decade ago, a driver’s stop monitoring has become common- Then I learned about UPS’s use of count might be eighty-five, but in re- place. Many retail workers now something called telematics. cent years it rose to ninety-five, then a clock in with a thumb scan. Nurses Telematics is a neologism coined hundred. These numbers are reflected wear badges that track how often from two other neologisms— in UPS corporate filings, which show they wash their hands. Warehouse tele­communications and informatics— that daily domestic package deliveries workers carry devices that assign to describe technologies that wire- grew by 1.4 million between 2009 and them their next task and give them lessly transmit data from remote 2013, the years in which telematics was a time by which they must complete sensors and GPS devices to computers being rolled out—and these addition- it. Some may soon be outfitted with for analysis. The telematics system that al packages were delivered by a thou- augmented-­reality devices to more now governs the working life of a driv- sand fewer drivers. Total domestic efficiently locate products. er for UPS includes handheld ­DIADs, employees shrank during the same In industry after industry, this or delivery-­information acquisition period by 22,000. data collection is part of an expen- devices, as well as more than 200 sen- These days, on an average shift, Rose sive, high-tech effort to squeeze ev- sors on each delivery truck that track makes 110 stops and delivers 400 pack- ery last drop of productivity from everything from backup speeds to stop ages. He leaves his house at seven in the corporate workforces, an effort that times to seat-belt use. When a driver morning and seldom gets home before pushes employees to their mental, stops and scans a package for delivery, nine-thirty at night, when he is so ex- emotional, and physical limits; the system records the time and loca- hausted that he rarely makes it to bed— claims control over their working tion; it records these details again he grabs dinner and passes out on the and nonworking hours; and com- when a customer signs for the package. couch. “If you go to one of these UPS pensates them as little as possible, Much of this information flows to a facilities at shift-change time, you’d even at the risk of violating labor supervisor in real time. The Teamsters, think you were at a football game, the laws. In some cases, these new sys- the union that represents UPS employ- way people are limping, bent over, with tems produce impressive results for ees, won contract language that says shoulder injuries, neck injuries, knee the bottom line: after Unified Gro- drivers can’t be fired based solely on injuries,” said David Levin, an orga- cers, a large wholesaler, implement- the numbers in their telematics re- nizer with Teamsters for a Democratic ed an electronic tasking system for ports, but supervisors have found work- Union, a reform caucus within the its warehouse workers, the firm was arounds, and telematics-­related firings Teamsters. “It’s fifteen years of rushing, able to cut payroll expenses by have become routine. rushing, rushing, working when you’re 25 percent while increasing sales by One warm day last fall I met with exhausted, working those long days, 36 percent. A 2013 study of five a man I’ll call Jeff Rose, who for the running up and down stairs with boxes.” chain restaurants found that elec- past fifteen years has driven a UPS Rose told me he knows at least ten tronic monitoring decreased em- delivery route in a working-class drivers at his facility who have had ployee theft and increased hourly neighborhood in one of New York knee or shoulder surgery. He suffers sales. In other cases, however, the City’s outer boroughs. He was taking from chronic back pain, but a sur- return on investment isn’t so clear. his two o’clock lunch break at a din- geon told him there was no point in As one ­Cornerstone report says of er on the corner of a modest com- operating—he has so many different corporate social-­networking tools, mercial strip and a leafy residential injuries that surgery won’t help. UPS “There is no generally accepted street. Rose, who asked that I not use coaches drivers to follow eight rules model for their implementation or his real name, said that telematics for safe lifting, which Rose rattled off

32 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2015 the data from a single driver’s shift can be up to forty pages long. There might be a page dedicated to backing-up events, another for stop times, and so on. But sprinting to an apartment and slapping a delivery-­attempt notice on the door without ringing the bell or waiting for someone to make it down a three-story walk-up—well, that’s a shortcut UPS’s telematics system would have no way of catching. After lunch, I trailed Rose on his route for a few hours. He told me that he refuses to sprint anymore—“This job is the long haul”—but from the moment he swung into his seat, he was con- stantly in motion. I lost him im- mediately, on the way to his first stop, when he zipped through an intersection just before the light turned. At his third stop, he pulled a small box from the front of the truck; once he was buzzed in, he bounced up a steep flight of stairs. At the next stop, the boxes were larger, so he had to come around back, pull up the heavy bulkhead, and use a hand truck. At another stop, Rose had to make multiple trips, with a mix of small and large packages. We were nearing rush hour, and many of the cars around us were honking aggressively. With each new batch of boxes, Rose jaywalked across the street; walking to the corner and crossing at the light would have by heart: “Get close to the object; bulkhead—the massive, rolling rear cost far too much time. It was a balmy have your feet shoulder-width apart; door—is open or closed, whether the day, with a clear sky. I tried to imag- bend your knees; test the package for seat belt is engaged, whether the ine him doing this when the streets shifting weight; grab at opposite cor- driver is backing up, and more. In the were icy and the gutters running with ners; lift in one fluid motion; keep it center of the screen, a fourth window slush. I recalled one driver I’d read within your power zone; pivot, don’t shows the number of minutes allotted about who’d been hit by a car while twist.” But, he said, “if I did those per stop and whether the driver is making deliveries during the 2012 eight things for each box, how pro- under or over that target. holiday rush and ended up ductive would I be?” I saw a video capture of a telematics in a ten-day coma. Thanks to telematics, Rose’s super- report from a facility in Queens that visor can answer that question min- made clear just how unrealistic those n recent years, many companies ute by minute. For every driver with- allotments are. Every few stops the haveI followed UPS’s lead: telematics in his purview, he can monitor a driver beats his time by a second, or by is expected to become a $30 billion neighborhood map with the driver’s nineteen seconds, or even by a minute. industry by 2018. David Cozzens is route traced in teal and the stops But more often than not, the driver goes the CEO of Telogis, a company that marked and numbered. Another win- over, by three minutes, or four, or even provides telematics to commercial- dow shows a complete list of address- ten. As I watched, the driver’s cumula- trucking fleets, including those of es on the route and the number of tive over/under number kept creeping AT&T and Coca-Cola. He recalled packages per address. A third window up, until it was north of four hours over. the thrill he felt entering the field shows the driver’s speed, whether the At the same time, safety measures, like only seven years ago: “It was big data. engine is off or on, whether the seat-belt use, got spotty. A printout of It was the Internet of things. It was

REPORT 33 cloud computing; it was mobile; it the presenter said, “As you can see, ing their time quotas by that much was really a new market, with low there are a lot.” Another presenter without sprinting the entire day and penetration.” He champions the said that managers are exerting “more recklessly cutting corners on safety. technology as a way to boost work- pressure for more detail. More, more, A UPS spokesperson told me that force productivity while also being more!” Someone expressed a wish for telematics has improved safety over- environmentally friendly. UPS claims a “killer K.P.I.,” a supermetric that all and lifted seat-belt compliance to that in 2010 telematics saved 1.7 mil- could boil all of the data down into a an “almost perfect” 98.8 percent. But lion driving miles, 15 million minutes single big, shiny, decisive number. UPS drivers tell a different story. One of idling time, and 103,000 gallons of At one point the conversation wrote on an online forum about a gas. (Total daily gas usage in the shifted to drivers’ reactions to the new hire who was beating his quota United States is 368 million gallons.) new technology, which surveys have by an hour and a half to two hours Cozzens said some Telogis clients shown to be overwhelmingly nega- every day. “This guy has literally told have realized efficiencies that al- tive. One poll of fleet managers in me he will buckle the seat belt be- lowed them to eliminate as many as the U.K. found that almost 80 per- hind him and not wear it,” he wrote, 10 percent of their vehicles. “Project cent had experienced resistance saying the driver also has high back- that on a broad scale. Those are big when implementing telematics; half ing speeds, an “absurd amount of numbers in terms of sustainability.” of them had experienced a “signifi- bulkhead door events”—driving with A Telogis system plugs into a vehi- cant amount.” I spoke with one wom- the back door open—and many mis- cle’s electronic control system, where an at the conference who was a fleet delivered packages. it pulls information on everything manager for a firm that supplies hos- “People get intimidated and they from braking time to ­windshield-wiper pitals with rental equipment such as work faster,” Rose told me. “It’s like when use; this is combined with GPS and ventilators. When she introduced they whip animals. But weather data, current and historical telematics to her fleet, she said, driv- this is a mental whip.” traffic information, and specific -no ers worried that they’d get fired for tices about, say, tunnel height or going to the bathroom or stopping for henever you drive up to a washed-out bridges that are collected lunch or speeding. Many were. Some W­McDonald’s window, or push your from the 140,000 vehicles using the supervisors, who were now able to see grocery cart to a Stop & Shop company’s navigation software. Some real-time data on speed and idle time, checkout line, or head to the register Telogis clients use the systems to save “probably watched it more than they at Uniqlo with a blue lambswool fuel, by reducing idling time and op- needed to,” she said, and responded sweater in hand, you, too, are about timizing routes; others seek to maxi- “with a harshness.” to be swept up into a detailed system mize use of their fleet. Still others are Another woman told a workshop of metrics. A point-of-sale (P.O.S.) looking for productivity improve- that at her firm, drivers got paid by system connected to the cash register ments from their drivers. Industry how many jobs they delivered. “So captures the length of time between adoption of telematics, a Telogis we’re telling them to produce as the end of the last customer’s trans- spokeswoman estimates, is around much as you can—but don’t speed. action and the beginning of yours, 20 percent to date. “Now it’s starting It’s a catch-22.” Steve Jastrow, a con- how quickly the cashier rings up your to be, ‘I have to have it,’ ” Cozzens sultant at GE Capital Fleet Services, order, and whether she has sold you said. “ ‘How are we going to harness advised managers to describe on the new Jalapeño Double. It re- this data? We’re not going to be suc- telematics as a safety initiative, just cords how quickly a cashier scans cessful if we don’t do it, because our as UPS had done. “How you present each carton of milk and box of cere- competitors are going to.’ ” it to the driver may be different than al, how many times she has to rescan In workshops at a National Associ- how you present it to senior manage- an item, and how long it takes her to ation of Fleet Administrators confer- ment,” he said. initiate the next sale. This data is ence in Minneapolis last spring, the “The important thing is where the being tracked at the employee level: rush to adopt telematics was apparent. power lies,” said Zingha Lucien, an- some chains even post scan rates like Firms that had already installed the other fleet consultant. “Drivers might scorecards in the break room; others systems had done it so quickly that not be happy being measured, but in have a cap on how many mistakes an managers were struggling with imple- the end they will yield.” employee can make before he or she mentation. Forty-four telematics ven- Jeff Rose saw evidence of this in a is put on probation. dors were exhibitors at the expo, and Daily Recap I obtained from a UPS Until recently, most retail and there were entire workshops devoted center in New York. The document fast-food schedules were handmade to “K.P.I.’s”—key performance contains a summary of each driver’s by managers who were familiar with indicators—in which fleet managers metrics. He pointed out that all of the strengths of their staff and their gathered in the hope of learning how the drivers were over their allotted scheduling needs. Now an algorithm to adapt to these new systems. “You times by at least an hour or two, ex- takes the P.O.S. data and spits out can’t manage what you can’t mea- cept for a handful of trainees, some schedules that are typically pro- sure,” a slide in one workshop ex- of whom came in as much as two grammed to fit store traffic, not -em plained. After a list of dozens of po- hours under. Rose told me that ployees’ lives. Scheduling software tential K.P.I.’s flashed on the screen, there’s no way drivers could be beat- systems, some built in-house, some

34 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2015 by third-party firms, analyze histori- Carrie Gleason, a former union cal data (how many sales there were organizer who now runs a national on this day last year, how rain or a campaign called the Fair Workweek Yankees game affects revenue) as Initiative, recalled that back in 2005, well as moment-by-moment updates when she first began organizing retail on the number of customers in the workers, employees at stores like store or the number of sweaters sold JCPenney were still mostly full-time, in the past hour or the pay rate of and many had health insurance. each employee on the clock—what “Over the years I heard more and Rain or shine the Banjo Paterson is the Kronos, one of the leading suppliers more workers talk about how they perfect crossover hat, at home in the city or of these systems, calls “oceans of weren’t getting enough hours,” she country. Roan leather sweatband, valuable workforce data.” In the said, “and how their managers ignored Barramundi hatband. 4 ½" crown, 2 ¾" brim. world of retail, all of this information their availability.” The news filtered Made in Australia of rabbit fur felt. points toward one killer K.P.I.: labor in from the retail workers she spoke Sizes: 6 ¾ - 8. Heritage Fawn or Charcoal. cost as a percentage of revenue. with: the Gap was scheduling four- #1622 Banjo Paterson ...... $185 In postwar America, many retail- hour shifts; DSW salespeople were ers sought to increase profits by max- getting only twelve hours of work a imizing sales, a strategy that pushed week; at some stores Zara was chang- stores to overstaff so that every cus- ing employees’ schedules without no- tomer received assistance, and by of- tice, leading many to snap photos of fering generous bonuses to star sales- posted schedules to avoid getting dis- people with strong customer ciplined for missing a shift they relationships. Now the trend is to weren’t aware they had; Abercrombie keep staffing as lean as possible, to & Fitch employees started receiving treat employees as temporary and re- entire schedules composed of on-call placeable, and to schedule them ex- shifts that never materialized. Face- actly and only when needed. Charles book pages began to crop up for work- Hummingbirds DeWitt, a vice president at Kronos, ers desperate to pick up extra hours— The dark beak and bronze gorget set off the calls it “the era of cost.” or to get someone to cover a shift green patina on these hummingbirds Workforce-management technolo- they’d been saddled with on little or in flight. Highly detailed bronze lost wax gies make productivity visible and no notice. Employees were slowly be- castings by Cavin Richie. Made in USA. measurable, allowing employers to ing turned into day laborers. The fed- Shown full size. distinguish between labor time that eral Bureau of Labor Statistics has generates profits and labor time— reported that the number of retail down to the minute—that does not. employees involuntarily working part- Kronos systems promise to “optimize time more than doubled between 2006 the workforce” to deliver “the lowest and 2010, from 644,000 to 1.6 million. cost schedule.” The system doesn’t The experience of Allison Santana, necessarily lead to clients cutting a mother of four in Chester, Pennsyl- employees’ hours, DeWitt told me. vania, illustrates the new normal. She “If they don’t have these tools, was hired as a Starbucks barista two #KB-65-2BN Pendant, 20" Sterling Chain... $145 they’ll understaff, which will lead to years ago. The starting wage was #KBE-3-FH Earrings, Fishhook ...... $62 customer dissatisfaction. It only low—$7.60 an hour—but she thought takes two to three bad experiences she could scrape by with the twenty- Add $9 handling per order. for a customer to leave a brand for- eight to thirty-eight hours a week she ever.” But he said that overstaffing was promised. She got far fewer, how- can be a bigger problem: “If you ever, usually eighteen hours, made up Shop davidmorgan.com have chronic overstaffing, you’re just entirely of four- or five-hour shifts. or request our catalog not going to be competitive and “Instead of having four people work you’ll drive yourself out of business.” seven a.m. to three p.m., like at a regu- A large company can easily pay lar job, it would be me and someone $1 million a year for a third-party else opening the store at four a.m., service. Kronos, whose client roster then at six another person, then may- includes retail giants such as Star- be at seven-thirty another person bucks, Stop & Shop, and Payless, comes in. And most of them wouldn’t Akubra® Hats from Australia brought in $1 billion last year. Occa- stay till three,” she said. “It’s cutting Wildlife in Bronze sionally such software systems are that labor, saving that labor, that’s the Panama Hats woven in Ecuador customized: at Macy’s it is My whole deal of the software.” Schedule Plus; at McDonald’s it is Santana supplemented her Star- called R2D2. bucks earnings by working nights at a ^ 800-324-4934 davidmorgan.com 11812 N Creek Pkwy N, Ste 103•Bothell, WA 98011 REPORT 35 hotel. Her manager knew about the terialized. An employee at Club Mo- Larry Mentzer, Century 21’s chief job, but that didn’t stop the software naco told researchers that if sales revenue officer, said such problems from spitting out shifts that started weren’t high enough, managers would were rare. “We’re a big believer in the while she was still at the hotel. She give workers a single guaranteed shift Kronos electronic scheduling system,” used state-subsidized day care for her each week—plus four on-call shifts. he told me. “We had a few small children, but the facility required her A third of the employees in the study glitches when we rolled it out, and by to specify her schedule in advance, had dependent children and were a few I mean you could count them and Starbucks rarely gave her enough forced, like Santana, to piece togeth- on your two hands. But we fixed it notice to do so. Plus the day care was er child care to cover their increas- and we’re very happy with it.” Max only open Monday to Friday, and Star- ingly erratic working lives. Bruny, president of U.F.C.W.­ Local bucks mostly gave her weekend hours. Most low-wage workers juggle two 888, which represents Century 21 She lost her spot at the facility and to three jobs just to get by, said Allen workers, told me the problems were ended up leaving her kids with her Mayne, director of collective bar- more widespread: “With Kronos, they mom, who was juggling three young gaining at ­R.W.D.S.U., a retail work- organize it in terms of buckets. They children of her own. Santana’s child- ers’ union that helped found the Re- ask for your availability. Say you have care troubles were not considered an tail Action Project. But it’s almost one hundred percent availability, they acceptable excuse for missing a shift. impossible to get a second job if put you in the bucket of thirty-five to Her manager wouldn’t even excuse you’ve already promised away a claim forty hours. If you say you can’t work co-workers who missed work for a on each of your waking hours. I weekends, you’re put in another buck- child’s graduation or a loss in the fam- asked Mayne whether an employee et, where you get maybe twenty-five ily. In exchange for twenty hours of could get fired for missing a shift that to thirty hours. And that was the low-wage work each week, staffers gave she was given at the last minute. “In nightmare. So people who used to get up control over their lives. (Last Au- a nonunion environment?” he said. forty hours­—because you have re- gust, in the wake of a New York Times “Oh, yeah. Fine. See you.” strictions, now you’re not.” Bruny’s exposé, Starbucks announced a new Labor costs have long been a pres- union filed several grievances in the policy that will give employees a sure point in retail, but the impact of first year Kronos was implemented week’s notice of their schedules; mean- data-driven software systems is dra- and even filed charges with the Na- while, Santana has been promoted matic. In August 2013, less than two tional Labor Relations Board. Under and her hours have stabilized. A weeks after the teen-fashion chain pressure from the union, Gibson’s spokesperson said that company poli- Forever 21 began using Kronos, hun- manager overrode the Kronos sched- cy allows up to four days of bereave- dreds of full-time workers were noti- uler and gave her back her old hours, ment leave and that store managers fied that they’d be switched to part- and the union ultimately won the “work hard to give partners time and that their health benefits right to a fixed ­forty-hour schedule for the hours they want.”) would be terminated. Something anyone with at least ten years’ seniori- similar happened last year at Centu- ty. But most shops where Kronos has 2010 management survey led ry 21, the high-fashion retailer in been implemented—including Star- byA Susan Lambert of the University New York to which people make pil- bucks and the Gap—are not union- of Chicago found that 62 percent of grimages for discount Versace, Kate ized, which makes it far more difficult retail jobs are now part-time and that Spade, and Burberry. I spoke with for employees to push back. “We took two thirds of retail managers prefer to two saleswomen who had worked at a different path from other stores,” maintain a large workforce, to maxi- the flagship store near the World Mentzer said, “because we chose to mize scheduling flexibility, rather Trade Center for a combined forty- retain our workforce.” than increase hours for individual four years. They said they had always Lisa Disselkamp, a consultant workers. In 2012, a study of retail had consistent and full-time sched- with Deloitte, is the author of three workers conducted by the Retail Ac- ules until the chain expanded and manuals on workforce-management tion Project and Stephanie Luce of implemented a Kronos system. With- technology. “I think it’s natural that the City University of New York in the space of a day, Colleen Gib- it will start to change behaviors,” she found that unstable scheduling, with son’s regular schedule went up in said of the scheduling software. “It radical changes from week to week, smoke. She’d been selling watches focuses people on a metric. And was common, as was extremely short from seven in the morning to three- there’s a fear, right? I need to make notice. Only 17 percent of surveyed thirty in the afternoon to accommo- that number. But if you meet that workers—and just 10 percent of those date evening classes, but when that number, and only that number, what who were part-time—had a set sched- availability was punched in to Kro- does it cost?” ule; only 30 percent received their nos, the system no longer recognized Kronos’s promotional videos em- schedule more than a week in ad- her as full-time. Now she was getting phasize the risk of time theft by vance. Schedules often had set start no more than twenty-five hours a employ­ees—“In a few minutes late? times, but many shifts ended abruptly week, and her shifts were erratic. Taking a few extra minutes on a as soon as business declined. One in “They said if you want full hours, break? It adds up”—and some of the five workers had to keep her schedule you have to say you’re flexible,” she firm’s most invasive systems, which free for “call-in” shifts that rarely ma- told me. require employees to clock in with

36 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2015 a finger scan, are meant to prevent business picks up in a half hour, “buddy punching,” when an em- they’re screwed.” According to the ployee clocks in a co-worker who plaintiffs, McDonald’s managers Yosemite Valley hasn’t yet arrived. would routinely tell employees to John Durkalski, an attorney who clock out and wait in the break room has represented union workers with for minutes or hours without pay, un- wage and schedule complaints til revenue picked up enough for the against Kroger, Safeway, and Super- workers to clock back in. Or manag- Wine Country & Yosemite valu, said that time theft by employ- ers would tell employees to clock out National Park ees is far less common than wage before the end of their shifts but in- theft by employers. “Store managers sist they finish certain tasks before change time sheets, lop off overtime, going home. (A company spokes- Aff ordable Guided Vacations+tax,fees tell people to clock out and keep person told me, “When McDonald’s Guatemala & Tikal 10 days $1295 working, and fine, if you don’t, you’ll learns of pay concerns in restau- Costa Rica 9 days $1095 be on the manager’s bad side,” he rants which we own and operate, we Panama Tour & Canal 8 days $1195 told me. If the software subtracts review the concerns and take ap- Nova Scotia & P�E�I� 10 days $1395 Canadian Rockies 9 days $1595 thirty minutes for an unpaid meal propriate action to resolve them. . . . Grand Canyon & Zion 8 days $1395 break regardless of whether a worker [W]e caution against drawing broad California Coast 8 days $1295 took one or not, or fails to properly conclusions based on a small num- Mount Rushmore 8 days $1295 account for paid sick leave, it can be ber of lawsuits.”) New England, Foliage 8 days $1295 extremely difficult for an employee to Though the plaintiffs in the Brilliant, Aff ordable Pricing detect. The scheduling systems also McDonald’s cases are not talking to “—Arthur Frommer, Travel Editor ” increase the pressure on supervisors the press, Larika Harris, a McDonald’s to break the rules, Durkalski said. employee who lives in Memphis, Ten- “That pressure is that buzzer that nessee, described a similar work ex- goes, ‘Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, perience. Harris was typically as- Caravan�com 1-800-Caravan you’ve hit your costs!’ If you hit your signed to the overnight shift, when costs on the twenty-first day of the there’s just one person at the win- month and you’ve got nine days left, dow and one person on the grill. Guided Vacations Since 1952 what are you going to do? The pres- “We couldn’t take breaks,” she said, sure is to cook the books or get the not even to run to the bathroom, employees to work off the clock.” In “but the breaks got put in.” She was industries where workers typically often paid only for her official eight- SUBSCRIBER ALERT work three- or four-hour shifts, he hour shift, even when her supervisor said, “if you can get everyone to work didn’t let her leave on time. If she Dear Harper’s Magazine Readers, fifteen minutes off the clock, you’re was scheduled for seven in the eve- gaining almost a whole shift! Over ning to three in the morning, she It has come to our attention that the course of the week that will real- was rarely out of the door till three- several of our subscribers have ly keep costs down.” thirty; on her eight-to-four overnight received renewal notifications Last March, workers filed class- shifts, she was usually not allowed to from an independent magazine action lawsuits against McDonald’s leave until five-thirty. One pay- clearinghouse doing business stores in California, Michigan, and check, she said, was missing eleven New York, alleging systematic wage hours of compensation. With an in- under the names Magazine Bill- theft. Some of the practices listed in fant and a toddler at home, she had ing Services, Publishers Process- the legal complaints are closely to pay her babysitter for those extra ing Services Inc., and American linked to the stores’ in-house data- hours even though McDonald’s Consumer Publish Assoc. These collection systems. The software it- wasn’t paying her. companies have not been autho- self was not telling managers to vio- “You’re told to ‘manage the labor,’ ” late the law, said David Dean, the said Kwanza Brooks, a former shift rized to sell subscriptions on be- lead attorney in the Michigan suit. manager who worked at several half of Harper’s Magazine. But every fifteen minutes, the soft- McDonald’s restaurants in Baltimore ware calculates labor costs as a per- and in Charlotte, North Carolina, If you receive a renewal notice centage of revenue—the “labor num- over twelve years. “Your labor, that’s and are unsure of its authenticity, ber”—and reports whether you’re what McDonald’s calls it, is your main please call our subscriber ser- under or over your target. “The vio- focus.” Managers are supposed to give lations result from managers being out unpaid thirty-minute breaks, vices department and order your told, ‘You have to get your labor Brooks said, but the staffing is too renewal through them. You may costs under control: you’re over, lean to make that possible. After she’d contact subscriber services by you’re over,’ ” he said. “The problem been at McDonald’s about five years, calling our toll-free number, is, if they send somebody home and an assistant manager showed Brooks (800) 444-4653, or via the Web at www.harpers.org.

REPORT 37 how he fixed that problem. He no- ment than not,” he said. “And the freelance marketplace. The site ticed that her labor number for one more closely they were monitored, links 9.7 million freelance computer shift was high, 23 or 24, rather than the greater the stress.” As far back as programmers, marketers, graphic 17 or 18. So he said to go in and man- 1990, a major study by the Commu- designers, copywriters, and transla- ually add in breaks, and showed her nications Workers of America found tors with 3.8 million businesses how to scroll down the list of employ- that electronic performance monitor- looking for part-time employees. ees and add “break in” and “break ing was associated with anxiety, de- According to a September survey out” times for each one. When one pression, anger, severe fatigue, head- commissioned by Elance-oDesk and employee challenged the practice and aches, and musculoskeletal injuries. the Freelancers Union, 53 million started asking for a printout of her Another effect was the evapora- American workers, a third of the hours at the end of each shift, Brooks tion of collegiality. “If you monitor U.S. workforce, are now engaged in was instructed not to release any someone very closely, and previously contract, temporary, or freelance more printouts. they had the feeling that you trusted work. Gary Swart, the former CEO I asked Brooks about other methods them, they may no longer have that of oDesk, calls the company part of managers used to hit their numbers. feeling,” he said. Managers who were a “profound revolution in the work- “Say you’re supposed to come in at four once able to supervise employee per- place” resulting from the rise of out- o’clock and you get there early. They formance in a way that was per- sourcing and remote work. “In this might tell you to help but not clock in. ceived as positive “now spend half economy, buyers are looking for Or they might clock you out on a break their time monitoring.” Aiello also more cost-effective ways to get but keep you working. Or they might found that if a task being monitored things done,” Swart said in 2010. say, ‘I’ll send you home,’ and then was difficult or complex—such as, “They have to do more with less.” there’s a rush, and they’re going to say, a UPS driver navigating heavily That year, he said, while hiring at make sure you help get those customers trafficked streets—employees “actu- American companies was stagnant, out whether you are on the clock or ally show, under monitoring, impair- ­oDesk job postings nearly quintu- not.” Managers, she said, “might have ment of performance, because a bit pled; the firm’s freelancers earned half the people working for free.” They of their attention is diverted to the $900 million in 2014. don’t just want a low labor number, she fact that someone is watching them.” The signature feature of ­oDesk is said, “they want their number to be the Finally, Aiello’s studies suggest that what it calls the Work Diary. If you, lowest and best in their area.” A 2014 electronic monitoring is often associ- as a freelancer, agree to work survey of fast-food workers by Hart ated with work speedup. Once em- ­hourly—as opposed to on a project Research found that 89 percent ployers have metrics, managers use basis—and to have your hours said they had been victims them to increase the goals—and tracked in the Work Diary, oDesk­ of some form of wage theft. they keep doing so even after the in- will guarantee payment. “It’s really creases become unrealistic. about building trust on both sides,” ohn Aiello of Rutgers Universi- Aiello’s most recent research fo- Rich Pearson, a senior vice president tyJ is a veteran of the small academ- cuses on telecommuters. There are at oDesk, told me. For workers scrap- ic community that researches the some 3 million Americans who tele- ing by on irregular freelance in- electronic monitoring of workers. commute full-time, and a far larger come, who can spend months trying He started studying call-center number who work remotely one or to collect on an invoice, ­oDesk’s workers in the early 1990s, after two days a week. Usually, Aiello guarantee is well worth the 10 per- numbers began to appear at the said, a company computer is sent cent fee it costs to use the site. But bottom of their screens to count home with the teleworker, and su- to get that guarantee, you must al- how many seconds they’d been on pervisors “have the opportunity to low the company deep inside your the line, along with the call-time look in on it anytime they want.” He personal computer. quotas they had to meet. Aiello said companies typically use moni- Pearson described the Work Diary asked the workers, “How do you toring software at least part of the as “the equivalent of being able to cheat to get to your goals?” He time, simply because they can. walk up to someone’s desk and see learned that many of them would “There are no federal laws that gov- how they’re doing.” But it is much hang up whenever a call got too ern this,” he pointed out. “The orga- more than that. Once every ten long; the computer couldn’t tell nization can pretty much do whatev- minutes while you’re logged in, the whether they’d ended the call or er it wants.” Studies show that program takes a snapshot of your the customer had. Aiello was inter- people tend to work more hours at computer’s desktop. It’s a detailed ested in the potential productivity home than when they’re in the of- image that shows, for example, all gains of monitoring, as well as the fice, he said, but watching their em- the tabs open on your Web browser. workarounds it ­inspired—like the ployees work gives managers “a sense The program also records minute-by- seat-belt-avoidance techniques at of security.” minute keystroke and mouse data, UPS. He also wondered whether it This sense of security is one of along with a productivity rating. increased stress. “In virtually every the features on offer at ­oDesk, The exact timing of the snapshot is study it was the case that people felt which merged with Elance last year unpredictable. It could happen at greater stress in a monitored environ- to form the world’s largest online the moment you open iTunes­ to

38 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2015 Precision that tells start a new playlist. Or when your over to project-based fees as soon as boyfriend sends you an instant mes- possible, to escape the Work Diary’s the weather story. sage. An icon pops up on your watchful eye. Quality that enhances it. screen whenever a screenshot is cap- The Work Diary poses a real risk tured, and you can review them and of wage theft too. If no screenshot is delete any troubling images. “The taken, you don’t get credit for that application is not a surveillance sys- work increment. “This isn’t a prob- tem,” oDesk’s online Help Center lem on a small scale,” he said, “but says. “You have full control over what over the course of a week it can be a it records . . . deleting those [screen- big problem. If I do a five-minute fix shots] you choose not to share with for six different clients, then I’m not your client.” But the Help Center getting paid for a half hour of work.” fails to note that for each screenshot If Nolan thinks something’s going you delete, you sacrifice ten minutes to take only five minutes, he often of guaranteed pay. won’t bother logging in. And then it I spoke to a few high-volume takes fifteen. Last summer he kept a oDesk freelancers to find out what it stopwatch on his desk to see how was like to work inside what looks, many hours he was really working— indeed, like a surveillance system. A mainly on oDesk jobs—versus how For a FREE catalog of our man I’ll call Sean Nolan, a graphic many he was billing. By week’s end weather instruments and weather designer and illustrator based in up- there was a ten-hour gap. stations, contact Maximum or state New York, has been freelancing I decided to try oDesk myself and visit our website. for nine years, his entire working life. posted that I needed some transcrip- 508.995.2200 (He asked that I not use his real tion work for this article. Within a www.maximum-inc.com name for this article.) Over the past day, I got several responses, from year oDesk has become the primary freelancers in India, Serbia, Saint way he finds clients. He got his Lucia, the Philippines, and through- B.F.A. at a small art school in Vir- out the United States. I hired a ginia and said he’s told all his class- woman from Texas with a five-star mates about oDesk because he loves rating, who had logged 1,300 hours it so much. But he described the of oDesk work. We had a quick Work Diary as “something akin to email exchange about the deadline the devil.” and her rate before I uploaded sever- arper’s Magazine is accept- “Being a creative, so much of my al audio files to Dropbox. ing applications from col- work is not in front of the computer,” Then I began to spy on her. Hlege students and gradu- he said. “So I had a really tough time The first time I opened her Work ates for its editorial and art internship getting used to it. It feels like some- Diary, it was empty. But the follow- programs. one is always looking over your ing evening, sitting in bed with my • Editorial interns serve full-time for shoulder. You can’t really produce laptop, I opened it again, and there it three to five months and gain good work that way. Part of my mind was: a series of eight screenshots, practical experience in critical read- is worried about how people are go- snapped between 8:41 and 10:12 p.m. ing and analysis, research, fact- ing to perceive the work I’m doing. A As I clicked on each image, it filled checking, and the general work- lot of the work I’m doing is messy; it’s my screen. I could watch the tran- ings of a national magazine. Each not client-ready, and knowing that scription unfold, from a few lines to a intern works with an editor on one someone’s watching the process, it’s full page and beyond. For each section of the magazine and harder to take risks.” He also misses screenshot, her activity level was rat- takes part in the creation of the taking his sketchbook out to the ed by a green bar on a scale of one to Harper’s Index. park for inspiration. ten. She had almost all tens. • Art interns serve part-time for three When Nolan goes to the bathroom I was reminded, uncomfortably, to five months and view current ex- or to get a cup of coffee, he said, he of a not very proud night some hibitions at museums and galleries, gets an inactivity alert. The same years ago when I clicked through take part in the selection of art for happens whenever he does work in the open email account of a boy- the Readings section, and gain skills the nondigital world, like taking a friend I suspected of cheating. Now in electronic page layout and art moment to leaf through a book of I clicked on the Work Diary’s green and photo research. photographs. Nolan said that “oDesk bar, which showed me my tran- All interns are encouraged to gener- makes the business aspect incredibly scriber’s keyboard strokes and ate ideas, read widely, and approach easy. But you lose all of the freedom mouse clicks in one-minute incre- problems creatively. Both positions that comes with being a work-at- ments: from 8:42 to 8:43, 256 key- are unpaid. home, self-employed freelance artist.” strokes, no mouse clicks. 8:43 to He said he tries to move his clients 8:44, 226 keystrokes. 8:44 to 8:45, For further information and an applica- tion, call (212) 420-5720. Please specify which program you are applying for.

REPORT 39 264 keystrokes. It was eerie. I could Whenever Katrina finishes a But these systems are still new; see her desktop background, I could transcript, she proofreads it without their biases may not be locked in yet. see the transcription program with logging in to ­oDesk. She figures Susan Lambert, the retail-­industry its volume setting, I could see the that when she’s proofing, her key- researcher, told me that the most so- open Word document, and I could board activity is so minimal the phisticated software-­scheduling sys- see a list of her other oDesk­ clients. tracker would probably log her out tems have the capacity to reduce, I was pricked by feelings of guilt, for inactivity anyway. So she typi- rather than exacerbate, volatility in but monitoring her became addic- cally takes four hours to transcribe the lives of retail workers. These sys- tive. For the next few days, until an hour of audio, which she does on tems use elaborate regression equa- she finished the job, I’d find myself the clock, and about an hour and tions that predict sales volume for pulling up the Work Diary every ten minutes to proofread it, which any hour of the day on any day of few hours. she does on her own time. She says the year, as well as how much staff- In academic papers about big that while her $15-an-hour rate ing will be required. Store managers data and electronic monitoring, Mi- doesn’t compensate her for off-the- often get those numbers several days chel Foucault’s metaphor of the clock hours, “it saves any misunder- before the start of the month, she panopticon, from Discipline and standings, which is important.” It said, yet they’re often afraid to fully Punish, often comes up, and I also keeps her competitive with assign the hours because they might thought of it again here. “He is freelancers from Pakistan and the get adjustments from their regional seen, but does not see; he is the ob- Philippines who are ready to work manager based on actual foot traf- ject of information, never a subject for less than minimum wage. fic. To play it safe, managers keep in communication.” My transcriber, “It’s an optional program,” workers on call, send workers home like the inmate in the panopticon, oDesk’s Rich Pearson says about the the moment there’s a lull, or wait was potentially observable at all Work Diary, which is true: freelanc- till the last moment to announce times. I suppose that put me in the ers can opt for manual time sheets if their employees’ schedules. position of the prison guard. they’re willing to work for a stranger Lambert’s most recent study in- After the job was done and I’d halfway around the world with no volves a national chain of women’s closed the account, I emailed the guarantee that they’ll be paid. clothing stores that gave her complete transcriber to ask her about ­oDesk. Technically, Katrina volunteered to access to payroll data for eighty stores. Katrina—she asked that I use only be surveilled, and then, to optimize When her team looked at the adjust- her first name—used to work in re- her metrics, she chose to steal her ments made to the initial labor alloca- tail, but she moved around a lot be- own time. tions, they were minuscule—two to cause her husband was a defense She said that ­oDesk recently three staff hours per store per week. contractor. She had trained as a selected her as an “all- The algorithms, they discovered, were transcriber so that she wouldn’t have star” freelancer. predicting labor needs with 90 percent to quit her job every time they accuracy, yet that 10 percent variation moved. When I asked about the he current mythology of big was driving enormous instability in Work Diary, whether she found the “Tdata,” according to Kate Crawford, workers’ lives. “We’re trying to say, experience of being so minutely ob- who holds research positions at MIT, ‘Just look at those original predic- served strange, she shrugged it off. “I NYU, and Microsoft, “is that with tions,’ ” she said. don’t have a problem with it whatso- more data comes greater accuracy and As Zeynep Ton wrote in the Har- ever,” she said, “because I don’t have truth.” Big data in the workplace vard Business Review, companies anything to hide.” holds out the promise of true equality such as Costco and Trader Joe’s that But as we spoke it became clear of opportunity, in which Moneyball- invest in higher pay, more training, why she had nothing to hide, and style analytics unearth hidden talent. and more convenient schedules bring why her activity meter almost al- Yet Kronos’s metrics-based hiring soft- in far more revenue per employee ways posted a ten: any work that ware is currently under investigation than competitors that do not. Both scored low on the metrics she sim- by the Equal Employment Opportu- companies are Kronos clients. ply did off the clock. Katrina said nity Commission for discriminating Charles ­DeWitt, the Kronos execu- that when you log in to the Work against people with disabilities. Even tive, said that retailers are better Diary, the first screenshot is always the knowledge-sharing metrics used served when they see employees as taken before a full ten minutes by companies like Cornerstone to as- potential profit centers, and not just have elapsed, so the activity meter sess elite knowledge workers may re- as “a big bucket of costs” to be cut. associated with that slot registers produce inequity. As Marc Smith, the Still, the dominant paradigm re- lower productivity. “I always delete sociologist from the Social Media mains what Lisa Disselkamp, the that,” she said. This means that ev- Research Foundation, pointed out, Deloitte consultant, calls “the high- ery time she sits down to work—and “The diversity of your connections is ly optimized system,” one organized with four kids at home, she usually a proxy for your wealth.” In other around minimizing labor costs. Per- works in short increments—she words, firms that reward their opti- haps you can’t manage what you starts by sacrificing as many as nine mally networked employees risk fur- can’t measure. But the measuring has minutes of pay. ther increasing inequality. taken on a life of its own. n

40 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2015