Victoria’s Labor government has proposed workplace surveillance laws that would restrict when employers can collect biometric data, limit emotion inference and require workers to be told when monitoring technology is in use.
Under the plan, biometric information could be collected only when there is no less intrusive way to achieve the employer’s legitimate purpose. The proposal would also prohibit using biometric systems to infer a worker’s emotions unless a specific justification applies, with fatigue monitoring for truck drivers offered as an example of a potentially legitimate use.
The planned rules extend beyond biometrics. Employers would be barred from using artificial intelligence to track characteristics or behavior such as bathroom breaks, a limp or pregnancy without a defined and legitimate purpose. They would also need to ensure that surveillance and automated employment tools do not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, religion or other protected characteristics.
Disclosure and consultation form another part of the framework. Employers would have to tell staff when they are being monitored and consult them before introducing a new surveillance system or materially changing an existing one. Covert monitoring would be limited to situations involving suspected unlawful activity and would be subject to tighter controls.
The proposal gives humans the final role in consequential decisions. A person would have to review any significant automated decision based on surveillance data that affects a worker’s rights, and workers would be able to access surveillance information used against them. That would prevent an algorithm from being the sole decision-maker in matters such as discipline or employment status.
The policy builds on a Victorian parliamentary inquiry into biometric workplace surveillance, which examined how employers were using facial recognition, fingerprints, location tracking and other monitoring tools. The new proposal turns those concerns into a legislative program, although draft statutory language and an implementation timetable have not yet been published.
Victoria is not alone in confronting the overlap between workplace management and identity technology. A California proposal targeting workplace surveillance and AI monitoring similarly focused on notice, proportionality and limits on automated decisions. The Victorian plan goes further in expressly tying biometric collection to the absence of a less intrusive alternative.
The announcement is a policy commitment rather than law currently in force. Its eventual impact will depend on the definitions, exemptions, enforcement powers and penalties included when legislation reaches Parliament.
Sources: Premier of Victoria
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
