I rise to make a contribution on the Legislative Assembly Economy and Infrastructure Committee’s report Inquiry into Workplace Surveillance, which was tabled on 13 May this year. This report focuses on workplaces with workers who find themselves in situations where there is surveillance undertaken while they are at work. It was something that caught my eye when I was looking through the list of the many reports that have been tabled in this place over the last 12 months, because if I cast my mind back a couple of months – it could be six months – I was in Laverton North and I attended a United Workers Union picket line with hundreds of workers out the front of a Woolies distribution centre in my electorate. I turned up to speak to locals – they were mums and dads living in my electorate who had secure work at this distribution warehouse in Laverton North – just to find out what was going on and what they were doing there. I think they had been locked out of work and were at the picket line 24/7. It went on for some time – I am going to say days, but it could have been weeks; I cannot quite remember.
The conversations that I had with some of those workers were specifically around workplace surveillance. I must admit that at the time I had no idea that they were working there in this warehouse under 24/7 surveillance, including every time they had to go to the bathroom. These were just your average mums and dads. They were pretty vulnerable; I would say a lot of them came from multicultural backgrounds. Many of them had worked for this company for a long time and had been doing this work for a long time. They enjoyed doing the work and they were keen to go back to work. But one of the issues that they had – and the reason they had decided to strike and were there on that picket line – was that they were under enormous stress and pressure and had been enormously unhappy over the last couple of months at work. A lot of that and a lot of those conversations centred around workplace surveillance.
They were able to convey to me just how stressful it is knowing that you are being watched 24/7 and having your manager come and have a ‘friendly chat’ to you about how often you went to the bathroom and how long you spent in the toilets. Imagine having a minister that could see that you had gone into a bathroom and needed to talk to you about how long you had been in the bathroom. The people I spoke to found that incredibly demeaning and dehumanising and, quite frankly, I think they were right. When I saw that the Legislative Assembly Economy and Infrastructure Committee –
[Interjection]
It is. I used to be on that committee when the chair was the Honourable John Eren. I think it was one of the first committees I was on here in this place. It was wonderful to see that they had done a deep dive into workplace surveillance. Some of the things in the terms of reference they looked at were the effectiveness of current privacy and workplace laws when it comes to workplace surveillance; the current practices of employers; the manner in which surveillance data is collected, stored, disclosed and disposed of, because, remember, you are being watched at work; the ownership of the surveillance data; the protection of the privacy, autonomy and dignity of workers; the personal impact – I thought this was important – of workplace surveillance on Victorian workers, such as their physical and mental safety; and the impact of workplace surveillance on the balance of power in the workplace and the effect on workers rights.
There were some tremendous findings and fantastic recommendations that came as part of this report, and I know that those workers there at that Woolies distribution centre may never see this report. They may never read these findings and recommendations, but the recommendations in this report would afford them better protection in their workplace – more appropriate protection from an employer that, yes, does use surveillance to increase productivity and efficiency. I think one of the findings that came out in this report was that that efficiency and productivity is questionable. It is a great report. I recommend that everyone read it.
