GPS Legalities Series — Part 3

Here’s a couple examples of how a city and a county I have worked with made GPS happen for them, kept it legal and kept their employees happy … well, perhaps not too unhappy.

Important Disclaimer:

I am not an attorney, I don’t even play one on TV, and I can not provide legal advice. This information is offered in good faith but with absolutely no assurance as to accuracy or applicability to your particular situation. If you need legal advice, you need an attorney. Use one.

Sweeping up the Savings:

The client was a medium-size (250,000+) city in the Rocky Mountain region.  They first investigated GPS Tracking because of a special need to monitor their street sweepers … driven by some EPA regulations that I guess I ought to blog about someday soon.  The city employees were unionized and concern for worker unrest and dissatisfaction came early to city leaders minds.

Unlike a great many of my former clients who were obsessed with the idea of “secret” monitoring of employees, these folks took the forthright and more intelligent path.  They sat down with union leadership in the very early days of planning, laid out the problems they were facing, made the case for GPS tracking and asked for union input. 

Union leaders were, of course, worried that this tool would give the city some unfair advantage in monitoring employees work habits. After some discussion a compromise was struck.  The union and the city agreed that in return for union support of the project the city would explicitly refrain from using information gathered by the GPS street sweeper tracking for any disciplinary actions.

In six months the success story had really unfolded:

• Substantial increases in miles of sweeping per unit
• Average time sweepers returning to the city garage to “quit for the day” was more than 1 hour later.
• A significant claim of damage to a private vehicle by a street sweeper “disappeared” when the plaintiff’s attorney was shown GPS records that proved the city sweeper (and city employee driver) was no where near the damaged vehicle .. saving a lawsuit and perhaps an employee’s job.

What had to be done at the end of six months to finalize the acceptance of the system?  The vendor was asked to provide a separate list of employee productivity that could be posted outside the dispatcher’s office daily … the drivers had been “bugging” the dispatcher every day for a report on their individual “numbers” and the new report would cut down on interruptions in the dispatch office.  Kewl.

Sometimes a Sign is As Good As a Satellite:

Another client was a county in the Midwest with about 300 vehicles.  The fleet manager felt that his major problems included speeding, loafing and trips to a nearby casino.  He had verified some of these infractions by his own observation and wanted GPS to be a 24-7 impartial observer.

As I always advise, the county consulted their attorney before proceeding and he, as is usually the case, reported that there as no legal restriction involved in monitoring employees on the payroll in county-owned vehicles.  To avoid and appearance of  clandestine spying, though, the attorney suggested all vehicles being monitored be marked so that employees knew that they may be monitored.

My client bought about 20 tracking units for his pilot program,  he also order several hundred stickers from a local printer that said “Warning, this vehicle subject to GPS monitoring at any time”.  These stickers were place don the dash of all country vehicles as they came into the county garage for service.  In the first six months the client noted:

• 80% drop in personally observed county vehicle speeding incidents.
• Zero sightings of county vehicles in commonly known “loafing” spots
• 100% reduction in sightings of county vehicles at the troublesome casino.

Said my client to me: “I don’t know if I need to buy any more of these tracking units, it seems like the dashboard stickers work nearly as well.”  Poor me

As always, I welcome comments, disagreement is encouraged, and you can also email me direct at: davestarr (at) gmail (dot) com or call me on 1-719-423-8872. If you liked this article, please subscribe to my RSS feed so you get all my news and views.