Workers fighting compulsory facial recognition with Big Brother Watch – and winning
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By John*
My name is John* and I work as a cleaner. I’d like to tell you about how I fought for workers’ rights not to have to use compulsory facial recognition to clock in and out of work.
Seven of us cleaners, formerly employed by the council at a school, were transferred to an outsourcing company to continue to work as cleaners at the school.
This company gave us a new contract to sign. This contract explained the “clocking in system”, which is via an app, and said by signing the contract we were giving consent to the use of facial recognition. It even said that, if we didn’t have our phones, data and use the facial recognition to log in, we wouldn’t be paid for our work.
In my gut, I did not like the feeling of coercion about this. It felt controlling and dehumanising. It was the icing on the cake of 2020. I felt severely stressed from the day I saw the new contract and started sleeping poorly.
It wasn’t just me. My colleagues were affronted at having to use their own phone, data...
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