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CHRIS TETLIN: About 40 million people in the United States work on computers. And the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health estimates that 2/3 of them are electronically monitored while they work. Most of these people hold relatively low-paid clerical type jobs, data entry or giving out insurance information over the phone.

The vast majority of them are women. A large percentage are minorities. And less than 10% of them are unionized. Traditionally, monitoring has been recognized as an employer's right.

And there are virtually no laws regulating electronic monitoring. But a growing number of workers are unhappy with the way they're monitored.

CARLA JOHNSON: The monitoring statistics that you get mostly are the ones that are hooked to your telephone.

CHRIS TETLIN: Carla Johnson is a reservation agent for a major airline in a large West Coast city. She asked that we not use her real name or identify her employer.

CARLA JOHNSON: It counts your phone calls. It counts how long you talk on your phone calls. It counts how long between your phone calls. When you go to the bathroom, when you go to break, whatever you do, this telephone counts that. The other monitoring is by the actual computer that you're typing on every minute of your day. Every minute of your day is counted.

CHRIS TETLIN: Carla Johnson says her supervisors use information from the computer to force employees to work unreasonably fast, which she says, makes her job extremely stressful. Although, she doesn't like the manner in which she's monitored, Johnson doesn't argue against monitoring itself. She says her supervisors have no other way to find out how well she does her job.

ALLEN WESTON: I'm a customer. I have to call the telephone and get a number. And I have to call a hotel or an airline, and I resent it when I am not given decent service.

CHRIS TETLIN: Allen Weston is a professor of public law at Columbia University. He wrote the book Privacy and Freedom. And he studied computer monitoring for the Congressional office of Technology Assessment.

He says there are many jobs like Carla Johnson's, which supervisors must monitor electronically. Weston says most workers he's talked to think monitoring is OK if it's done fairly.

ALLEN WESTON: That is the standard that the employer sets for the amount of work that has to be done, a fair one that recognizes employee abilities, the nature of the equipment, and how much time it takes to do the job properly, and so forth.

CHRIS TETLIN: While most people who are electronically monitored work at computer terminals, a growing number of workers in other fields are being monitored by computers. At Schmidt Printing in Rochester, Minnesota, 200 people work at presses and other printing machines.

Every workstation here is hooked up to a computer system. The computer tallies everything, it seems, how much paper is used for each job, what time the employees show up for work, and how many days they miss each month?

AL TUNTLAND: These three will change. What you have here, these are 10 presses out on the plant floor. You got the press--

CHRIS TETLIN: In another part of the building, company President Al Tuntland, sits in front of a computer screen in his office. The screen shows him what's happening at every workstation in the plant. Tuntland says the employees at Schmidt are pleased with the monitoring system, in large part, because they helped design it.

AL TUNTLAND: This is a bottom up system. This is not a top down system dictated by a bunch of guys, and black and white shoes, and advanced college degrees that have never made a living sweating for a paycheck. The whole idea of the computer system here is to help the people on the floor.

I mean, not to dominate them, not to control them, not to play this aha game, the got you game. It is to allow the people on the floor to monitor themselves and see where they are on the job.

CHRIS TETLIN: Tuntland says the information the computer collects about worker performance is used along with subjective information. When employees get job reviews, the supervisors evaluate worker attitudes, as well as speed and accuracy.

On the floor of the print shop, pressman Chris Andrist is printing inserts for a national magazine. A small computer screen next to his press flashes with information about his current printing job. Andrist says the system occasionally puts unfair pressure on new workers to keep up with their more experienced colleagues.

But overall, he likes the computerized monitor a lot. He says it makes him less wasteful and more productive.

CHRIS ANDRIST: I'd rather have that than anything else because it's precise. And it tells you-- that tells you what you do during the day, how much paper-- if you wasted more paper than what you should. You really don't even have to go ask for help because if you run into a little trouble, they'll be out here to check it over.

CHRIS TETLIN: Schmidt Printing President Al Tuntland says there's no doubt that some managers will misuse computer monitoring to harass workers. But Tuntland says the information gathered by electronic monitors is merely a tool, neither good nor bad in itself. Monitoring is a weapon, says Tuntland, only in the hands of an unscrupulous manager.

AL TUNTLAND: It's one more weapon in the arsenal to shoot the employee with or beat him up, the AK 47, if you will. But they had the other weapons before, anyway, and they employed them before, anyway. So of itself, the data can help a good manager. But a bad manager, an unscrupulous manager, that would use the data to take advantage of an employee would have taken advantage of the employee, anyway, with or without the data.

CHRIS TETLIN: But labor organizer Holly Roden believes computer monitoring can make bad managers worse. Roden works in Minneapolis for the Service Employees International Union, one of the unions that's trying to organize more office workers. Roden believes most employers don't care enough about the way changes in a workplace affect the workers.

HOLLY RODEN: I mean, it's how it affects the company, and how it affects the bottom line, and how it affects this quarter's earnings ratios and stuff? And that's what they think of first. I wouldn't want to just assume that the employer is looking out for my best interest because I just don't really think they are fundamentally.

CHRIS TETLIN: Roden says monitoring does protect some workers by giving them statistical evidence that they're doing a good job, but she'd like the government to set strict guidelines for electronic monitoring. About half a dozen state legislatures, including Minnesota's, have discussed setting some kind of guidelines.

And in Congress, a bill that would regulate monitoring was introduced last year. But so far, no state or federal legislation has made it out of committee. This is Chris Tetlin.