Workers Thumb Palm-Scanners

By MEREDITH KOLODNER

JON FORSTER: Don't fix what isn't broken.

The city has installed new palm-scanners to monitor employees' start-time and lunch breaks at the Parks Department, Department of Environmental Protection, and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, provoking angry responses from the hundreds of workers who will be affected.

The scanners are not yet in use and union leaders are hoping to convince the city to use a different method before the employees begin having their biometric information recorded as part of the city's new time-keeping system.

Earnings Exemption

All managers and civil service employees who make more than $68,000 will be exempt. Hundreds of employees have signed petitions objecting to the practice, which they say is demeaning.

"The decision was made with no consultation and no effort to discuss it with us," said Ricardo Hinkle, a Landscape Architect at Parks. "It's an intimidating presence that suddenly found itself way into our workplace."

Mr. Hinkle, whose Barrett Point Park project made the cover of Landscape Architecture magazine last month, said the last time he was made to use a time clock was about 30 years ago when he worked at Burger King. He and many of the other Architects and Engineers at Parks believe that the scanners undermine the professionalism of the department and communicate an implicit distrust for the men and women who handle the city's multi-million-dollar design projects.

Parks and DEP both referred questions about the City-Time system to the Office of Payroll Administration. OPA General Counsel Valerie Himelewski stated in an e-mail, "CityTime uses computer-based or biometric technology to dramatically improve upon an antiquated paper-based timekeeping process. It is more efficient and accurate, and ensures that city workers are paid for the hours they work."

Docked If Late

Many of the employees who will be scanned complain that the new system is too rigid. For example, if they arrive at 9:15 a.m. instead of 9 a.m., they cannot compensate by working until 5:15 p.m. since work after 5 p.m. is considered overtime and must be officially pre-approved. If it is not approved, their pay is docked for the missing 15 minutes. In addition, if they arrive at 9:08 a.m., the system records their arrival time as 9:15 a.m.

Union representatives say that there have been only intermittent disciplinary problems relating to lateness before now and those problems have been resolved on an individual basis.

"They're trying to fix something that's not broken," said Tech Guild Vice President Jon Forster. "It's not necessary. The system works fine without it."

Mr. Hinkle, who is a union chapter president, said that he also believed that the scanners would create divisions in the workplace, since rank and salary determine who has to be scanned. "It's going to be more often women and people of color who are scanning in every day," the 13-year Parks veteran said. "It's going to make it glaringly obvious who makes what. It has a sinister, Orwellian feel to it."

Presented Their Case

Union officials were scheduled to meet with representatives from the Office of Labor Relations and Parks on Jan. 18 - the day this newspaper went to press - and were hoping to convince management that the new machines were not only unnecessary but counterproductive.

Mr. Forster argued that in addition to the adverse impact on morale, the system would exacerbate the city's ongoing difficulty recruiting top-flight Architects and Engineers, who could make significantly more in the private sector where scanning into a workplace for time-keeping purposes is not a regular practice.

"In the years I've worked here, I've had the most unanimity in terms of opinion against the palm-scanners of any issue we've had," said Mr. Hinkle.