California worker tracked 24/7 on her company-issued iPhone was fired because she was vocal about that

Some employers may be making it impossible to get away from the job.

That's what one California worker is alleging in a lawsuit, claiming that her former employer, a money transfer service called Intermex, installed an app that ran constantly on her company-issued iPhone and tracked her 24/7. After voicing her objections and disabling the app, she claims she was fired from the company, according to the lawsuit, which was obtained by Ars Technica.

The lawsuit highlights how corporations are increasingly using technology to track and monitor employees, which is raising concerns about worker privacy. Given that employees often work at home in the evenings or weekends -- checking email or finishing projects -- the line between work and home life can easily become blurred.

"Employees have reasonable expectations of privacy outside the workplace, and they should feel free to assert themselves," Gail Glick, an attorney who is representing Myrna Arias, told CBS MoneyWatch. "She was fired because she was vocal about her complaints."

Meanwhile, tracking employees is itself an emerging business, with more than 20 companies now selling software tools for analyzing and monitoring employee behavior, according to Bloomberg News.

Intermex was allegedly tracking employees in order to monitor whether it needed to buy company cars, Glick said. According to the lawsuit, the company asked the plaintiff, Arias, and other workers to download an app from a company called Xora to their smartphones. Xora uses a GPS system that tracks workers via their phones, prompting Arias to ask Intermex if it planned to monitor employees outside of work hours.

Her boss allegedly "admitted that employees would be monitored while off duty and bragged that he knew how fast she was driving at specific moments ever since she had installed the app on her phone," the lawsuit states. "Plaintiff expressed that she had no problem with the app's GPS function during work hours, but she objected to the monitoring of her location during non-work hours."
[link to www.cbsnews.com]