To Log Workers' Hours
DDC Palm-Scanner Use Now Optional

By RICHARD STEIER

In a victory for the Civil Service Technical Guild, the Bloomberg administration has made a program using palm-scanners for time-keeping voluntary in a key agency.

CLAUDE FORT: A timely victory.

The Tech Guild, which is Local 375 of District Council 37, for months campaigned against the scanners as an intrusion on employee privacy, although they were first utilized at the Law Department in 1995 and had since been implemented at nine other city agencies.

Can Now Use Computers

Earlier this month, however, the Mayor's Office of Labor Relations told union officials that it would make the program discretionary at some agencies, and the Department for the Aging opted not to use them while the Department of Finance said that employees would be asked to do so on a voluntary basis.

A Feb. 9 memo from Department of Design and Construction Commissioner David Burney - whose agency was one of those where opposition to the scanners was most intense - stated that employees would now be permitted to log in and out of work by computer each day, using "a software change to the CityTime program." The palm-scanners will remain in place only for those who choose to use them, the memo stated.

DAVID BURNEY: Software solves conflict.

One administration official, who spoke conditioned on anonymity, contended, "This is not a change in citywide policy. It's an application enhancement" made possible by the new software program.

Tech Guild President Claude Fort was jubilant about the change, however it was characterized. "Together with the members, the union won this fight," he said in a phone interview.

The Tech Guild's first vice president, Jon Forster, had called the scanners unnecessarily intrusive, saying "they can track you everywhere you go, including to the bathroom."

He had also charged that because the scanners recorded time in quarter-hour increments, someone who clocked in at 9:08 would be credited with starting at 9:15, and that employees in some instances had to remain at work for more than a half-hour past the end of their shift to ensure that their work time was properly credited. He claimed last week that a "climate of fear and intimidation ... had accompanied the installation of the scanners."

Mr. Fort had said that anger about the program ran particularly high at DDC because those earning $62,000 or more were not required to use the scanners.

The union had filed two improper practice petitions against the program, and in one brief cited a state ruling that management had an obligation to bargain over a work rule that placed additional time-recording responsibilities on employees.