INAL, but it seems that the wording in the agreement leaves open the use of surveillance software on employees, as long as it's not for the purpose of "evaluating the employee's work product (i.e. job duties assigned to the employee), the time an employee took to complete their work, or disciplining an employee in protected concerted activity."
The company could still use such software on employees and claim it was doing so for security purposes, for instance, or maybe even just to make sure the employee was working (without evaluating the work product).
Why not prohibit the user of such software on employees entirely?
You are right that the language could be stronger. This was the outcome after a few rounds of proposals and counter-proposals. I believe that in the context of an overall agreement with a "just cause" provision, which we have tentative agreement on, we don't have to worry about "bossware" at all.
> The company could still use such software on employees and claim it was doing so for security purposes, for instance, or maybe even just to make sure the employee was working (without evaluating the work product).
This article will be incorporated into a larger collective bargaining agreement that specifies people can only be disciplined or terminated for "just cause". The most common "just cause" for termination is a failure to perform one's job duties. Our employer could not use information gleaned through software surveillance to demonstrate just cause, much as police officers can't introduce evidence obtained illegally in court.
> or maybe even just to make sure the employee was working
That would fall under "time taken to complete the work".
"Our employer could not use information gleaned through software surveillance to demonstrate just cause, much as police officers can't introduce evidence obtained illegally in court."
Interesting that you should mention this, as police have been known to use "parallel construction"[1] to get around such attempts to restrict what they're allowed to do.
If companies can still surveil their employees, they might also resort to something like parallel construction to come up with other excuses to discipline/terminate their employees, even when the real reason they did so was a result of surveillance.
The company could still use such software on employees and claim it was doing so for security purposes, for instance, or maybe even just to make sure the employee was working (without evaluating the work product).
Why not prohibit the user of such software on employees entirely?