Employers have an eye in the sky

By Adam Geller
Associated Press

DANBURY, Conn. — Ciro Viento commands a platoon of 110 garbage trucks, so when a caller complained after seeing one of the blue and white trash tanks speeding down Route 22, Viento didn't know which driver to blame. Until he checked his computer.

Ciro Viento uses a satellite-based global positioning system to monitor a platoon of 110 garbage trucks. Installing the system cut overtime claims by drivers from 300 hours to 70 hours a week, he said. Douglas Healey • Associated Press

More employers are adopting technology like the system used by Viento's company. As they do, many workers who have long enjoyed the freedom of the road are rankling over the boss' newfound power to watch their every move via satellite.

The technology, global positioning systems, is hardly new. But using GPS to track workers and vehicles is catching on with a growing number of business and government employers.

"If you're not out there baby-sitting them, you don't know how long it takes to do the route. The guy could be driving around the world, he could be at his girlfriend's house," said Viento of Automated Waste Disposal Inc., a commercial and household trash hauler doing business in western Connecticut and neighboring New York counties. "Now there's literally no place for them to hide."

Some long-haul trucking companies have used GPS to manage their fleets for several years. But the range of employers adopting GPS — usually fitted in vehicles or in cell phones and other devices workers carry on the job — is broadening, particularly among companies dispatching large numbers of service technicians in the building trades and others whose workers span wide territory.

UPS Inc., for example, will distribute new hand-held computers to its 100,000 U.S. delivery truck drivers early next year, each equipped with a GPS receiver. The company says the feature will not be used to monitor workers, but to alert them when they're at the wrong address or help them identify an unfamiliar location.

But for many of the employers adopting the technology, including many smaller firms, the primary benefit is not just the ability to smooth business operations. They want to keep closer track of workers who aren't always doing what they're supposed to be doing.

Last summer, for example, managers at Metropolitan Lumber & Hardware in New York worried when a new driver dispatched to a delivery just six blocks away still hadn't arrived after three hours. But using GPS, dispatchers soon tracked him down, "goofing off" on the other side of Manhattan, said Larry Charity, the company's information technology manager.

Companies are harnessing GPS to tell them how long their employees and vehicles have been at a specific location, what direction they're heading in and how fast they're moving.

At Automated Waste Disposal, Viento says that before he installed the system, drivers of his 22 front-loaders were clocking about 300 hours a week of overtime. Once the company started keeping tabs of the time they spent hanging out in the yard before and after completing their routes and the time and location of stops they made along the way, that plummeted to just 70 hours — substantial savings for a company whose drivers make about $20 an hour.

"It's kind of like Big Brother is watching a little bit. But it's where we're heading in this society," said Tom McNally, a driver for Automated Waste Disposal.

"I get testy in the deli when I'm waiting in line for coffee, because it's like, hey, they're watching. I've got to go."

Other workers see it is as more invasive.

In Boston, 200 snowplow operators staged a protest last winter after the Massachusetts Highway Department said it would require all independent contractors to begin carrying cellphones with GPS, as a way to track their efficiency.

The city's school bus drivers also objected to a plan to install the receivers.