From Algorithmic Labor Management to Strike 4.0

• In Event: Labor 4.0: Algorithmic Management, Working Conditions, Experiences and Actions of Organization and Resistance

Abstract

Technology directly affects the working conditions of those who have chosen digital applications as their livelihood. Workers live in constant tension over customer ratings and how the algorithm processes their performance by assigning them to the next job and calculating the corresponding payment. Far from the utopian futures in which technology is at the service of the worker, today algorithms have built their function within a 21st century Taylorism reloaded. In the case of delivery platforms such as Glovo in Ecuador, the change in the algorithm has directly impacted workers' fees. In 2019, by redesigning the payment calculation per delivery from 1.00 USD to 0.30 USD, by grouping the payment of two deliveries for the value of one, by decreasing the value paid per kilometer traveled, workers' income decreased significantly when performing the same work.
This is why "algorithm bargaining" has become the center of the campaign launched by UNI Global Union in September 2020, which has enrolled workers, and labor organizations around the world, in order to negotiate an agreement on the use of algorithms that covers the main requirements for the ethical use of algorithm management to prevent technological innovation from becoming an excuse to introduce mass surveillance in the workplace. The gig economy makes visible the socio-technical systems that underlie these new forms of work. The alliances between technological, social and economic orders highlight the increasingly powerful role of technological solutions for the organization of work in the gig economy. This is why introducing the role of the algorithm in labor demands becomes key to negotiating fairer working conditions.

Author

• María Belén Albornoz, FLACSO Latin American Social Studies Faculty