Türkiye: new survey exposes real impact of digital surveillance on metalworkers

The report describes this shift, in which pace is increasingly set and enforced by software rather than a human supervisor, as "digital Taylorism".

How workers experience digital monitoring

Digital monitoring in Turkish metal workplaces is now widespread and layered. Workers reported being tracked by turnstiles and card readers (49 per cent), workstation and machine screens (35 per cent), personnel time-and-attendance systems (31 per cent), cameras (17 per cent) and handheld devices that assign and time individual work orders (15 per cent). The average worker is monitored by two systems at once.

The toll this takes is significant. A third of workers (34 per cent) said digital monitoring and pace leave them mentally exhausted by the end of the day, 29 per cent said feeling constantly monitored puts them under stress and 22 per cent said their craft skill has been devalued, replaced by instructions delivered on a screen. Eighteen per cent said they have no way to object to or correct a decision made by the system and 14 per cent said their risk of dismissal has increased since these systems were introduced.

Performance scoring carries real consequences where it is used. Twenty-four per cent of workers said they are assigned a performance score and of those, around two in three said the score affects their wage, bonus or continued employment, at least in part.

Occupational safety experienced as control

A significant share of workers said that systems introduced on occupational health and safety grounds function, in practice, as instruments of control rather than protection. Thirty-three per cent said they had been compelled to breach safety rules because of pressure on speed and 21 per cent said that what is monitored under the name of "occupational safety" is, in reality, how much they work.

The report also tested whether workers accept the safety justification given for these systems. Only 26 per cent agreed that digital measures and monitoring are effective in preventing accidents, while 54 per cent disagreed.

Why some systems feel worse than others

The report found that the sheer number of systems monitoring a worker makes almost no difference to the pressure they report. What matters is whether a system targets the worker individually. Workers monitored by handheld work-order devices reported markedly higher stress than those who were not (2.72 against 2.43 on a five-point scale), as did those monitored by camera (2.67 against 2.44). Turnstiles and time-and-attendance systems, which register workers collectively rather than individually, showed no such effect.

Cameras produce this effect by a different route to handheld devices. Camera monitoring showed no link to how strongly workers felt their pace was being measured, but it was strongly linked to a fourfold rise in workers reporting their in-factory location was tracked (44 per cent, against 17 per cent for those not camera-monitored) and a rise in workers reporting their breaks and stoppages were tracked (56 per cent, against 33 per cent). Unlike a turnstile, which registers a worker only at fixed points in the day, a camera watches without interruption throughout the shift.

The report also notes that workers in the same workplace, even doing the same job, often give different answers about which systems monitor them at all. Being monitored, it concludes, is as much about a worker noticing and naming a system as it is about the technology itself.

A transparency gap

Only 26 per cent of workers said they know exactly how the systems assessing them reach their decisions; 56 per cent said they do not. Transparency was the demand raised most consistently by workers, regardless of how much pressure they reported: 61 per cent wanted the union to establish which data are collected and explain this to them clearly, rising to 69 per cent among workers who reported the highest level of digital pressure.

Dr. Öngel: transparency "is not a secondary task"

Speaking to IndustriALL, Dr.Öngel said three findings stood out to him in particular: that the type of system, rather than the number of systems, explains the pressure workers feel; that workers doing the same job in the same workplace often disagree about what monitors them; and that understanding how a system works changes how strongly it is felt, rather than easing it.

"Explaining to workers which systems are present in the workplace, what they collect and how they operate is not a secondary task but one of the union's fundamental duties… The pace a system sets and the performance score it produces must cease to be given facts that each worker confronts alone, and must become matters for collective bargaining. Data gathered on safety grounds must not be used to measure pace or to score performance; otherwise the worker's health becomes an argument used against them," he said.

"The decisions once made by the foreman are increasingly passing to software and to artificial intelligence systems," Öngel said. "Rather than waiting for this transformation, unions need to determine now the framework with which they will meet it."

IndustriALL's position

The findings echo positions IndustriALL has already taken on artificial intelligence and algorithmic management at work. IndustriALL's policy paper on artificial intelligence identifies algorithmic management and data privacy, and occupational health and safety, among its priority areas for union action, calling for transparency, accountability and limits on workplace surveillance.

"The survey shows that, depending on how it is used, digital surveillance can severely undermine workers' humanity and dignity. Therefore, trade unions and workers' representatives must be fully involved in the development and deployment of digital monitoring systems from the beginning, including at the design stage. Transparency and the right to object must be written into collective agreements, not left to the goodwill of employers," says Kan Matsuzaki, IndustriALL assistant general secretary.