Because I’ve been a consultant hired hourly, and I would never agree to that kind of surveillance. If you don’t trust me, don’t hire me.
It all depends on the nature of the consultancy agreement. If you work for the financial industry as a consultant you can expect to allow monitoring.
I don't know of a single place that makes the law clear, but if you dig in a bit, you can find a lot of resources that describe the legal differences between contractors and employees. One thing that's evident in nearly anything you can find is that contractors basically have no protections.
So if you think about this way, where federal, state or local laws might protect against things like unreasonable surveillance of an employee, very few, if any, protections are in place for contractors.
The IRS doesn't care in the slightest if an employer monitors a contractor.
The key difference between the two is precisely that employers are not presumed to watch and control how a contractor works.
I've been a consultant and an employee many times in my career. You can take any variation of the following sentence and it'll remain true:
I've worked for a company as a [ hourly consultant | salaried employee | per project consultant ] that [ monitored my every keystroke | monitored attendance | monitored nothing ].
Every variation is possible, and I've seen every variation.
Exactly, but how can I trust you without knowing you ? Trust but verify right ?
I've also been a consultant and worked in a place where they manage sensitive data. They told you on day 1 that the computer they provided is monitored for everything and that they can take screenshot from time to time. If you don't agree, you don't work there.
> The output of the work should be all that matters.
Not when you're hired hourly/weekly/monthly, the output is irrelevant. If a company hire you for your time, it means that your time is at "their" disposal. If they tell you to be at the office during that time, you're supposed to be there.
And if they think that it's best for them to have you sit in a room with 20 other zoom callers for the possibility that you might talk with someone down the hall and that it might raise the revenue, that's their decision.
Work is a business relation between 2 entities with rules in place, if 1 entity doesn't like some rules, the relation stops.
And as they are paying, they have the right to verify that they receive what they're paying for, whatever it is.
Just like it's my decision to accept that I must pay the plumber for his time when I ask him to explain me some stuff about my boiler that I could read online.
Especially for "subscription" services. I've found it's best to trust, but verify that they are coming out as frequently as you're paying them to and doing everything you're paying them for. It's not even a malice thing; humans make mistakes.
I hire you to change the electrical panel and you charge me X to do it, I'll leave you alone and might even leave the house because the electricity is out.
If I pay 150$/h to have something fixed, you can be sure I won't be far.
But if I want to watch them work, I ask first if it's ok for them.
"If you hire someone to fix the plumbing in your house and you pay him by the hour, would you check that he worked what he's asking or do you pay blindly?"
Yes "Amazon bad" and whatnot but in the end it all boils down to the same thing, we live in a society where you want what you pay for, whether you're an individual or a company.
And as a plumber, if you don't want to be checked or followed by some annoying customer, you ask to be paid for the completed job, not by the hour.