CWU to meet with Telstra on GPS monitoring
The CWU has requested a meeting with Telstra to discuss recent changes in its use of GPS monitoring of field staff.
The changes were notified to the CWU late last month. They involve providing real time email alerts to managers about employee start and end of day activities.
Under the new arrangements:
- A system alert will be generated if there is no vehicle movement after an employee’s scheduled start of day.
- An alert will also be generated if a vehicle has returned to the garage address during an employee’s rostered shift time (greater than 6 hours after shift start time and more than 15 mins prior to shift end time).
- An alert will be generated to advise if a CT has not returned to their garaged location 90 mins after their scheduled end of day.
Currently managers are able to manually inquire about an employee’s movements via the Teologis GPS system and can access a weekly log of such GPS-generated information but are not automatically notified of such details at the time.
Telstra says that the information that will be provided under the new system will be no different from the data already available to managers and that the changes will, among other things, assist in improving health and safety monitoring.
Obviously, however, the real time alerts also have the potential to increase the intensity and frequency of managerial oversight of individual employees – that is their purpose.
While it is early days, the CWU wants to hear from members about any impacts this change is having on them to date, along with any other issues related to Telstra’s use of GPS monitoring.
