One of the earliest times that such technology has been employed to make a worker reimburses their boss for not doing their job.
Karlee Besse, a former staff member at the Reach CPA accounting firm in Vancouver Island, claimed that they owed her $5,000 in unpaid wages and severance pay since she was wrongfully discharged.
On the other hand, Besse’s employer stated that they terminated her due to her time theft, and filed a countersuit for more than $2,600 in wages that were paid to her while she was supposedly not performing her duties, as well as part of an advance that was given to her before the beginning of her employment.
The court decision has been made in response to the increasing number of businesses that have started to use tracking technology on the computers of their employees. This software is used to observe keystrokes and clicks to make sure that the remote workers are concentrating on their job-related tasks. Certain people have objected to this practice, arguing that it is a form of spying and violates employees’ essential rights.
In the autumn of 2019, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) was concerned with the increasing use of electronic surveillance by employers and its potential to impinge on the privacy of workers.
Jennifer Abruzzo, NLRB General Counsel, declared her intention to “safeguard employees as much as possible from intrusive or oppressive practices associated with electronic surveillance or automated management that could obstruct Section 7 rights.”
Workers are safeguarded in their ability to withhold certain activities from their employer, as outlined in Section 7.
Here’s How Karlee Besse Captured on Camera while Involved in Time Theft
In February of 2022, Besse reported that she had meetings with her supervisor to increase her work output. In response, her employer put in place TimeCamp, a time-tracking software, on her work computer.
After a month, Reach discovered that Besse was not meeting her deadlines. Additionally, they noticed a difference between what she indicated on her timesheets and what the tracking software showed.
From February 22 to March 25, the company found that Besse claimed to have worked for about 51 hours, but the software did not detect any activity related to her job.
Canada’s first online court, the Civil Resolution Tribunal, found that the screen-capture videos recorded by TimeCamp ultimately corroborated her time theft. The software was able to differentiate between work and non-work activities, like streaming video, and was able to classify the activities as either “personal” or “work” based on the duration for which documents were opened and interacted with.
Besse declared that she had printed the relevant papers and was using the hard copies, yet never conveyed this to Reach. Her boss asserted that her printing activity was limited and that she couldn’t have printed the great number of documents required to do her job.
Ultimately, the court rejected the claim of the plaintiff and mandated her to reimburse Reach in the amount of $1,506.34, which was based upon her salary.
