Speaker 1: Jack Wesley works in a warehouse in eastern Pennsylvania, and
Speaker 1: his job involves a lot of bending, lifting, twisting, and reaching.
Speaker 1: Every day. Done wrong, all this repetitive motion can lead
Speaker 1: to variety of back injuries that are all too common
Speaker 1: for his profession. So when his boss has recently asked
Speaker 1: him to try out this new piece of technology that
Speaker 1: they said would keep him safer, he said, sure, why not.
Speaker 1: It's a motion tracking sensor that sits on his chest. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Come in the morning, I grab this, I grab my radio.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, trap it right on and go to work.
Speaker 1: It's pretty easy. The device basically warns Jack when he's
Speaker 1: lifting boxes with bad form. He says, it's hot in
Speaker 1: better habits. Yeah, sometimes I noticed, uh, if I was
Speaker 1: bending forward a little more like reaching deeper into a palette,
Speaker 1: that might have been something that would they would vibrate
Speaker 1: on me for but uh started walking around to the
Speaker 1: side of the paletts. Yeah, thanks to the reminder and
Speaker 1: kind of gotten away from that now too. This same sensor, though,
Speaker 1: is also gathering incredibly detailed information on his every movement,
Speaker 1: and it's sending that information to his bosses. It's one
Speaker 1: of the many technologies today allowing employers to monitor their workers,
Speaker 1: especially in blue collar professions, and it's a trend that's
Speaker 1: troubling worker rights advocates. Today, in the show, reporter Joshua
Speaker 1: Bustine investigates the dilemma behind the technology Jack's been testing.
Speaker 1: Tools like it have the potential to bring real benefits
Speaker 1: to high risk jobs, but do workers risk giving up
Speaker 1: too much information about themselves? Amako, you're listening to Decrypted
Speaker 1: Stay with us, Jash. How's it going good? How are
Speaker 1: you good things? I think your story this week is
Speaker 1: something that hits a nerve and a lot of people. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: one really likes the idea of being tracked by their boss, right.
Speaker 1: You know, this is something that's become pretty widespread, I
Speaker 1: think in the blue collar workforce. I've been reading a
Speaker 1: lot about the ways that workers in Amazon's fulfillment centers,
Speaker 1: for example, have been tracked. Yeah, but you're referring to
Speaker 1: are the production quotas that a lot of workplaces use.
Speaker 1: Amazon certainly uses them. The idea being that you can
Speaker 1: track exactly how fast a worker is doing something from
Speaker 1: minutes a minute, and then make sure that they're not
Speaker 1: doing it even the slightest bit slower. The tracking we're
Speaker 1: talking about here is actually slightly different. The company that
Speaker 1: makes the trackers, a startup in Brooklyn called strong Arm,
Speaker 1: says that they are tracking only data to tell how
Speaker 1: someone is moving in an attempt to determine when they
Speaker 1: might be at higher risk of injury. And they're specifically
Speaker 1: saying that they are not trying to track production data.
Speaker 1: Tell me about them strong Arm. Sure. They're a small
Speaker 1: company started by a guy named Sean Peterson, and he's
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting guy. He told me that he always
Speaker 1: wanted to be an inventor. His grandfather invented things for
Speaker 1: the railroads, and then his dad had a construction company
Speaker 1: out on Long Island, where Sean is from, and even
Speaker 1: as a kid, Sean would work alongside him. Said he
Speaker 1: always just really loved the idea of working with his hands.
Speaker 1: He had a pretty amazing workshop, and before he passed away,
Speaker 1: he just taught me how to kind of get into
Speaker 1: the tools and start working at Then my father was
Speaker 1: a rant, a construction company and that contracting company. You know,
Speaker 1: by the time I was twelve, I could lay an
Speaker 1: entire roof by myself. Um, the gratification and work itself
Speaker 1: was just ingrained in me when I was a little guy.
Speaker 1: And Sean actually started getting interested in workplace safety issues
Speaker 1: when he was young and his father was actually killed
Speaker 1: in a workplace accident. Uh, I don't really want to
Speaker 1: talk too much detail about kind of stinking of it,
Speaker 1: but he died on the drop in. They're way way
Speaker 1: too many things that happened that could have recoided that.
Speaker 1: And as he got older, Sean combined these two principles
Speaker 1: of his and he wanted to invent something that would
Speaker 1: help prevent workplace injuries um in the future. And so
Speaker 1: Sean started a company. It's called strong Arm Technologies, and
Speaker 1: its main product is a small device that sits on
Speaker 1: your chest and tracks all of your movements. And the
Speaker 1: idea is that if people in manual labor jobs warthies
Speaker 1: all day, you would gather enough information to tell who
Speaker 1: was making movements that were associated with injuries and then
Speaker 1: be able to deal with them. So, Josh, what what
Speaker 1: does the device look like? So the device is a
Speaker 1: small black box. Basically, it's a rectangle. It's about the
Speaker 1: size of a small smartphone maybe, and it fits into
Speaker 1: a little harness you wear kind of over your shoulders.
Speaker 1: So it sits right against your chest, left shoulder, it's
Speaker 1: gonna come around your waist. And that's Alex Teller. He's
Speaker 1: another strong Arm executive. And what you're hearing is him
Speaker 1: actually helping me put on the device. Feel a buzz
Speaker 1: in your hand, Yeah, but already warning me that I'm doing.
Speaker 1: And this device tracks your movement kind of like a fitbit.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like a fitbit, but gathering detail at
Speaker 1: a much greater level. A fitbit counts your steps, which
Speaker 1: doesn't actually tell you all that much. This thing counts
Speaker 1: exactly the way that you bend from moment to moment
Speaker 1: for the entire day, So you know, it's taking the
Speaker 1: fitbit and it is like massively increasing the detail that
Speaker 1: the device gathers about your physical activity throughout the day.
Speaker 1: And Josh, where's this thing being used? So strong Arm,
Speaker 1: for such a small company, actually has a very impressive
Speaker 1: list of clients. I talked to Toyota about a pilot
Speaker 1: that they just started with strong Arm at a plant
Speaker 1: in Indiana. They're used by some facilities that Heineken runs.
Speaker 1: And I also visited a warehouse in eastern Pennsylvania that's
Speaker 1: run by a company called geodas friends, and what was
Speaker 1: it like. So it's in an area where everything is
Speaker 1: logistics facility. It was actually right next door to an
Speaker 1: Amazon fulfillment center, which was interesting and really just enorm
Speaker 1: a facility. Workers picking things out of boxes, packing them
Speaker 1: into smaller boxes. There were conveyor belts and fork cliffs,
Speaker 1: and the workers there were wearing strong Arms device. So
Speaker 1: strong Arm is currently in a pilot phase at this facility. Jack,
Speaker 1: this is Josh, Josh, Jack, Are you good yourself? So
Speaker 1: that's Jack Wesley. He's the warehouse worker we heard from
Speaker 1: at the top of the episode. Jack works in the freezer,
Speaker 1: which is maybe the most dangerous part of the Geodas warehouse,
Speaker 1: and he's actually wearing the strong Arm device when I
Speaker 1: talked to him, even in the interview, he said he
Speaker 1: puts it on every day just as part of his routine.
Speaker 1: Jack and all the other workers you spoke with, did
Speaker 1: they seem a little skeptical or worried about this idea
Speaker 1: of being tracked all day by this device. I talked
Speaker 1: to a handful of workers and all of them were
Speaker 1: a little bit worried at first. They had some misconceptions.
Speaker 1: Here's Jack again. When it first came out. You know,
Speaker 1: I heard from some of the other people myself included.
Speaker 1: It had a video camera, you know, microphone things like that,
Speaker 1: but it's just monitoring your movements, make sure you're bending properly,
Speaker 1: and yeah, that's all. That's all it does. So once
Speaker 1: we figured that out, everybody was kind of they were
Speaker 1: more relaxed about it. And you're comfortable with that because
Speaker 1: you feel like that is a benefit to you opposed
Speaker 1: to if they're taking video of your then like if
Speaker 1: you're rolling your eyes or something, they'll figure that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, like, uh, it's not like a chest cam
Speaker 1: at a traffic stop or anything like that. It's uh,
Speaker 1: just making sure you're you're bending properly. We don't want
Speaker 1: any injuries at the workplace. It's worth noting that the
Speaker 1: workers are tracked in other ways as well. The warehouse
Speaker 1: is full of cameras and Geodas also uses a production
Speaker 1: tracking system where workers are measured on how fast they're working.
Speaker 1: People at Geodas make between twelve fifty and fifteen dollars
Speaker 1: an hour to start, but if they work fast enough
Speaker 1: they can get bone to say, up to five dollars
Speaker 1: extra per hour. Wow, So that's a lot of ways
Speaker 1: that they're being tracked. Yeah, and as I understand it,
Speaker 1: this isn't an unusual level of monitoring for the industry.
Speaker 1: The businesses who work in logistics and transportation are really
Speaker 1: data hungry. They're trying to gather as much information about
Speaker 1: their facilities as possible. Here's Mike Conius, he's the chief
Speaker 1: operating officer at GEODAS, and he explained to me how
Speaker 1: he wants to eventually be able to take all these
Speaker 1: different data streams and put them together to learn new
Speaker 1: things about his operations. So I pulled my productivity data.
Speaker 1: It shows exactly the type of speed and productivity this
Speaker 1: person was doing by the minute. We can actually break
Speaker 1: it down by the second. Then you apply the ergonomics
Speaker 1: data to it on the exact same timeline, and you
Speaker 1: can see the motions of the person bending and what
Speaker 1: they're doing, and you can see that right along the
Speaker 1: same timeline as the productivity. And then you can put
Speaker 1: the robotic side on it and you can see all
Speaker 1: that play out. And then all of a sudden, from
Speaker 1: there you can look at, Okay, is there an opportunity
Speaker 1: we have a little bit idle time? Was there some
Speaker 1: lifting there? That created the operator, you know, our teammate
Speaker 1: to slow down and can we correct that. In the past,
Speaker 1: traditionally we haven't been able to see that, And in
Speaker 1: the meantime, Geodas is actually already making some changes. There's
Speaker 1: one place in the warehouse that I saw, and it's
Speaker 1: a conveyor belt. Workers stand alongside it and they're picking
Speaker 1: boxes up and moving them off to the side. And
Speaker 1: what the company noticed was that there were certain parts
Speaker 1: along the conveyor belt where people were just twisting too far.
Speaker 1: So they had a manager go talk to people who
Speaker 1: work on this part of the operation and say, hey,
Speaker 1: watch out for this right now, it's just a coaching opportunity,
Speaker 1: But Geodas says it may also use this information to
Speaker 1: change the layouts of the conveyor belts in the future
Speaker 1: so that people don't end up making these motions inadvertently. So, Josh,
Speaker 1: it sounds like people are pretty happy about this, but
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm worried that this could go very wrong. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: both strong Arm and the clients I talked to put
Speaker 1: a very cheery face on this, but other people who
Speaker 1: I've spoken with are really concerned about worker surveillance and
Speaker 1: put this into that bucket, and I think they're worried
Speaker 1: first of all, that just any sort of data you're
Speaker 1: gathering about workers in this situation is going to be
Speaker 1: used to just squeeze a little bit more productivity out
Speaker 1: of them, And workers don't like that because they're already
Speaker 1: working super hard. Yeah. I who wants your boss to
Speaker 1: tell you, oh, you have to work at your absolute
Speaker 1: capacity every time? And also I know what your absolute
Speaker 1: capacity is. And once you're determining just how fast everybody
Speaker 1: can work, you could see employers wanting to punish those
Speaker 1: people who don't work quite as fast as everybody else.
Speaker 1: And why are workers so worried about that? So a
Speaker 1: lot of workers feel like their bosses have plenty of
Speaker 1: power over them already, and giving them another tool that
Speaker 1: they might use to punish them is just not need Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just feels like it's further tipping the balance. And
Speaker 1: the final thing that I heard when talking to people
Speaker 1: about this was that if you're gathering information about workers health,
Speaker 1: there is bound to be a tie in to workers
Speaker 1: compensation claims. Yeah. I can see this being freely contentious,
Speaker 1: especially in a field of work where the rate of
Speaker 1: injury is so high. Yeah, I think this comes down
Speaker 1: again to whether or not workers trust their employers. And
Speaker 1: you know, the people I talked to at geodas said
Speaker 1: they did, but that's not universally true. So what does
Speaker 1: strong arms say about all this? These are not criticisms
Speaker 1: that strong harm has not heard before. The first thing
Speaker 1: they say is that they do not measure productivity data,
Speaker 1: and they have discussions with their clients in which they
Speaker 1: say they do not want the trackers to be used
Speaker 1: to punish individuals. But I also talked to Sean about it.
Speaker 1: He said he hadn't seen clients do anything that even
Speaker 1: got close to problematic, but that if they did, he
Speaker 1: would be willing to take the technology back or just
Speaker 1: cut off certain types of data. And we trust the
Speaker 1: clients to do the right thing with that right now,
Speaker 1: and if we start to see clients not doing the
Speaker 1: right thing, we can further adjust the dissemination of some
Speaker 1: of that information. So it sounds like these concerns haven't
Speaker 1: materialized yet, but it does sound like this would be
Speaker 1: something that labor unions would have a lot of problems with.
Speaker 1: One thing that made my ears really perk up in
Speaker 1: my first conversation with strong Arm was there, claims that
Speaker 1: they worked closely with organized labor. Because I'm like you, Aki,
Speaker 1: I've had conversations with organized labor about technology before, and
Speaker 1: this just didn't seem like something that they would be
Speaker 1: particularly enthusiastic about. So I was eager to talk to
Speaker 1: those unions. And when I asked strong Arm to put
Speaker 1: me in touch with some of them, they balked, So
Speaker 1: what did you do? Well? I tracked down union local
Speaker 1: in Lynn, Massachusetts that took part in a strong Arm pilot.
Speaker 1: The guy I spoke to was Adam Kazinski. He's the
Speaker 1: current president of i U e c W, a local
Speaker 1: two oh one. Adam was a shop steward at the
Speaker 1: time that strong Arm showed up at his workplace, and
Speaker 1: he did say that there were lots of injuries amongst
Speaker 1: the folks who worked there. I was in an area
Speaker 1: that requires a lot of twisting and turning and pushing
Speaker 1: and pulling bench work, sheet metal spot well, and we
Speaker 1: had had high rates of ergonomic injuries in the area.
Speaker 1: And even though Adam acknowledged that there was a real
Speaker 1: problem where he worked, he was really skeptical of this idea.
Speaker 1: He thought that this was giving his employer a lot
Speaker 1: of information that he wasn't sure it needed, and he
Speaker 1: told me that he actually advised other members of the
Speaker 1: union not to participate in the program, which was voluntary. Well,
Speaker 1: when you work with your body, ergonomic data is production.
Speaker 1: By the way, when Adam says armstrong, he means strong arm.
Speaker 1: So you know what, whether Armstrong says that's their intention
Speaker 1: or not, there are clients or potential clients to see
Speaker 1: your value in tracking productions through monitoring people's bodies. He
Speaker 1: just didn't believe that this sort of tracking would end
Speaker 1: up benefiting workers, no matter how was pitched initially. You
Speaker 1: know that I don't have to speculate about why people
Speaker 1: are interested in it. It's because they want to do
Speaker 1: more with less. They want workers to work faster, longer,
Speaker 1: and increase production while mitigating workers. Comps claims, that's I
Speaker 1: mean clearly what this is about to me. You know
Speaker 1: that's surprising given what strong arm told you. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was certainly surprised. So what ended up happening. Adams says
Speaker 1: that a lot of people didn't want to wear those
Speaker 1: trackers and that those who did soon stopped wearing them,
Speaker 1: and the pilot kind of fizzled well, that they didn't
Speaker 1: collect an up data to tell him anything, and that
Speaker 1: people kind of dropped off before they were able to
Speaker 1: get any good data, and that no one was impressed
Speaker 1: with the program and the way it went down, so
Speaker 1: basically just flopped. I a strong arm about this, and
Speaker 1: they took issue with the idea that it flopped. But
Speaker 1: they did say that they didn't finish the pilot program,
Speaker 1: that they weren't able to kind of gather all the
Speaker 1: data and implement any of the sort of changes that
Speaker 1: they've done in other places, and that basically this was
Speaker 1: um a learning experience for the company. Josh. At the
Speaker 1: start of this episode, we talked about how widespread workplace
Speaker 1: surveillance has become in blue collar industries, but the reality
Speaker 1: is that this is everywhere right and in white color
Speaker 1: work too. Yeah, I think the tension is really across
Speaker 1: the working world in both blue collar and white collar workplaces.
Speaker 1: It's just easier to gather more and more information about
Speaker 1: what your workers are doing and then do something with it.
Speaker 1: The company makes a good case that it can gather
Speaker 1: more data about how you move at work and use
Speaker 1: it to reduce the rates of injuries, but it can't
Speaker 1: get away from the fact that when it does that,
Speaker 1: it's also creating all this information that employers might use
Speaker 1: for other things as well. And I think that fuels
Speaker 1: a real broader vulnerability going on here, which is that
Speaker 1: everyone's aware that there's more and more data being collected
Speaker 1: about us in the workplace, other places online, and we
Speaker 1: know that there's a lot of power in this information
Speaker 1: being gathered and analyzed, but we don't have a mechanism
Speaker 1: to say, hey, let's stop and figure this out before
Speaker 1: we go forward, and so it just kind of progresses
Speaker 1: whether we like it or not. Joshua Bristine, thanks for
Speaker 1: coming on the show today. Thank you. Decrypted is hosted
Speaker 1: by me as Sean When is Our Executive producer, Ethan
Speaker 1: Brooks mikes a show today and Francesco Levie is ahead
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg podcast. We'll see next week.