The Financial Services Union (FSU), the peak body representing the sector’s employees, has called for new laws to prohibit excessive surveillance of workers by employers, with concerns artificial intelligence (AI) may turbocharge and bias monitoring activity.

The FSU’s National Assistant Secretary Nicole McPherson, speaking at the Victorian Government’s Inquiry into Workplace Surveillance on Tuesday, called for a wide-ranging prohibition on surveillance activity.

The Union has expressed its support for the introduction of a Privacy in Working Life Act, first advocated by the Victorian Trades Hall Council.

Among the proposed protections, the FSU has called for the Act to include:

1) A ban on worker surveillance, except where it is required for regulatory reasons, such as for ensuring the safety of workers or in limited circumstances to supervise processes.

2) advanced notice to workers of any proposed surveillance by organisations, with the opportunity to opt out of any surveillance not required for regulatory or work health safety compliance;

3) An assurance that no disciplinary or performance management process can be based on information gained through surveillance;

4) And a right for workers to access any information generated through surveillance on them.

“We have called for the introduction of a Privacy in Working Life Act that would prohibit unnecessary surveillance and ensure that workers are informed and consulted about any monitoring that does occur,” the peak body said in a statement.

“Additionally, we advocate for the right of workers to access any information collected through surveillance and to ensure that such data cannot be used in disciplinary or performance management processes.”

Widespread monitoring and surveillance of workers remains “rife” and “largely unregulated” in Australia’s finance sector, the FSU said, with “every moment of a finance worker’s day monitored… from keystrokes to communications and even movements within the workplace”.

“Their activity is measured as a crude and inaccurate proxy for productivity,” it added.

“Workers do not know how their employers are monitoring them. They do not know what information is being recorded. They do not know how this information is stored, used or disclosed.

“And even when this information is used against a worker in disciplinary or performance management processes, employers too often refuse to disclose it, citing that it is ‘proprietary’ or ‘confidential’.”

Members of the FSU, it said, had also raised concerns about employers likely monitoring communications between them and the Union.

Regulation failing to keep pace with monitoring tech

As well, the FSU expressed its ongoing concerns with the rapid uptake of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, which has not only served to accelerate monitoring activity but potentially even skew the results of collected surveillance data.

“Artificial intelligence (AI) crunches this data and forms views on whether they worked hard enough and whether they were happy enough doing it.”

Workplace surveillance regulation, the FSU contends, has ultimately “failed to keep pace with the rapid technological advancements in worker monitoring and surveillance”.

“Concerningly though, workers are seldom advised of the role of AI in analysing the data collected on them, or in drawing conclusions from it.

“Even where a worker does attempt to interrogate a decision made by AI, often the employer themselves is not fully aware of the decision-making processes used by the technology so is unable to explain them to a worker.”