"Modern Times in Connection with Baase's "Employee Monitoring"

“Modern Times” uses comedy to expose the commoditization of the factory worker. Ironically, the same points of contention that workers held with management in the Chaplin era exist today. In “Employee Monitoring” Baase addresses privacy invasion. The scene in “Modern Times” where the company president, in a very Big Brother-esque fashion, catches Charlie Chaplin’s character smoking a cigarette in the bathroom parallels the modern instance of managers having access to employees’ computers in real time, thus allowing them to make sure the workers are actually doing what they appear to be doing. While these techniques were developed to increase the efficiency of the factory, they actually take a toll of the factory since they cause employee demoralization. At what point does employee monitoring become unethical or invasive? Since management’s goal in such an environment is to increase productivity, a person coming from a management standpoint might argue that no such demarcation exists. Such a person might argue that while at work, the worker is the property of the company who is paying them therefore is required not only to do work, but also to do work as efficiently as possible. On the other hand, a person from a more humanitarian standpoint might argue that though the workers are technically the property of the company while at work, they are still people. These workers are people first and foremost and cannot be expected to function like machines. The humanitarian would criticize management’s narrow focus on the trees of productivity causing them to miss the forest of employee satisfaction.