hi all this is my first post so i apologise if this is a regular question. i work in the public sector as a civil servant and my employer and installed cctv monitoring on our office to be on 24/7. it has always been there but only ever used in certain circumstances which we were aware of, well recently ONE person whilst on night duty broke the rules and was caught asleep, and as a result of this they decided to turn the cctv 24/7 to monitor us all. we had no warning about this, or discussions, it just happeed. also we watch cctv permamently, this is our job, however we work 6 hours straight looking at about 150 screens, than we should have an hours stand down period away from the screens, this is how it was agreed as by law you are only supposed to watch 9 screens for a maximum af 45 mins, but instead we watch for 5 hours than have an hour away. then start again. we have now been told in our stand down we are not allowed to read, eat or anything we have to remain infront of the screens and watch from a distance rather than a desk, so in affect we loose our stand down, also the chairs are wrong and we are not allowed to put our feet up despite the fact the chairs kill your back, and on a night shift we have to work 14 hours straight WITHOUT a break, we tend to not get breaks in the day either as we are so short of staff, so we used to eat at our desks, and put our feet up and have a proper stnad down period, we have now lost all this and we are being monitored to enusre we adhere to the rules and dont eat at destks or fall asleep at night etc.... they are using the cctv to monitor us, it is not for our safety or anything or to deter crime, it is simply to make sure we dont sleep or eat, put our feet up or look away from the screens we have to watch. is this legal?? the employer will argue it is for public safety as if we sleep we are not doing our job and public safety is at risk, i understand this and agree, but there must be a better way then recording us 24/7. one person slept now we all pay. they have never set us any guildlines as to what is expected of us, but watching cameras for 14 hours without a break not being allowed to look away is pointless as you go camera blind anyway. how can they justify recording us 24/7 and enforcing all of these new rules with no notice and no explanation as to why?? our union does not seem interested but then they dont know what they are doing anyway at the moment as there is a multitude of other things going on they are dealing with so we are not a priority. can my employer behave like this?? king regards x