Addabbo: Hand scanners should not be used for city employees

In the wake of the city’s Department of Design and Construction (DDC) decision announced Friday, February 9 to reverse a policy that required its employees to clock their work hours using a controversial hand scanner, City Councilmember Joseph Addabbo called for a moratorium against the further use or installation of the hi-tech devices in city agencies at a press conference held at City Hall on Tuesday, February 13.
Opponents to the hand scanners and other biometric devices such as iris and fingerprint scanners maintain that they pose health risks and fear they may be used to intrude upon employees’ personal lives in an Orwellian fashion.
Biometric technologies recognize individuals by their unique physiological or behavioral characteristics and are becoming a staple where highly secure identification and personal verification are required.
Means other than the hand scanners could be used to track work hours in the city’s automated CityTime timekeeping system, said Addabbo in a phone interview.
“[Scanners] are not necessary and are not required. I think a moratorium is a good idea,” said Addabbo, chairperson of the Council’s Civil Service and Labor Committee. Addabbo charged that the hand scanners were inaccurate, inefficient and had caused workers to lose pay.
Matthew Kelly, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s office, noted that the city rounds time in 15-minute increments, a method that predates CityTime and is determined by labor contracts. If anything, scanners are more accurate than the old paper-based system, he said.
“That has always been the case, it has nothing to do with the scanners,” Kelly said of the 15-minute rounding.
The CityTime system, first used at the Office of Payroll Administration (OPA) in 2003, uses data collection devices to track information such as employee hours, attendance and leave requests. In addition to the scanners, alternative collection means for the system include desktop computer and kiosks log in.
Addabbo’s move comes following intense lobbying pressure against the scanners by members of the Civil Service Technical Guild, Local 375 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (Local 375).
That union, which represents city architects, engineers, planners and other technical trade workers employed by the DDC and other agencies, considered them “invasive, offensive and degrading,” according to testimony from union first vice president John Forster at a City Council Civil Service and Labor Committee in late January.
“The city trusts us with projects that are worth tens of millions of dollars but they don’t trust us to sign in on time? There’s something wrong with that picture,” said Forster.
The City of New York announced a policy change on Friday, February 2, that would allow the commissioner of each agency to determine how its employees would clock their time. That development led to the DDC decision one week later, according to a Local 375 press release.
Forster also testified to privacy concerns about the scanners with their alleged capability to physically track employees. He said that they were part of a larger city personnel surveillance effort that would eventually use voice recognition and Global Positioning System (GPS) devices to monitor the whereabouts of public workers.
Kelly insisted that was not the case.
“These don’t track employees, there is no GPS technology. All it does is say when you got to work and when you left,” Kelly said. “There is no spy satellite, it’s not true.”
Kelly said that CityTime was an effort to modernize the archaic, paper-based time-keeping system still in place in some agencies, making it more accurate and efficient.
“We are obligated by law to make sure [city employees] are paid for the time they work,” Kelly said, adding that all agencies under Citytime will need their preferred timekeeping system approved by the city’s Law Department and OPA to ensure it is accurate and efficient.