Disrupting Platform Capitalism: How Gig Workers Resist Algorithmic Exploitation

• In Event: Labor and Labor Movements Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Roundtable 10: Tech Labor, Platform Capitalism, and Algorithmic Labor Control 2

Abstract

The gradual casualization of the U.S. workforce gained tremendous momentum during the COVID crisis. Throughout the pandemic, media and policymakers focused attention and consternation on increasing remote and hybrid work among professionals. However, the most pronounced and enduring changes occurred at the lower end of the labor market as the ranks of low-wage ‘independent contract’ or app-based gig workers swelled. Abetted by an antiquated labor-legal framework devised for the 1930s Fordist production regime, neoliberal reform projects begun in the late 1970s have effectively frozen labor law in time. As individuals, collectives, and cooperatives, how are app-based workers resisting this digital “degradation of work in the 21st century”? To address this question, this paper draws upon field and interview data developed during three years as a worker, participant observer, and activist within the so-called ‘gig economy. As ‘independent contractors,’ gig workers are typically excluded from both occupational safety and wage regulations (FLSA) and, crucially, organizing or collective bargaining rights (NLRA). Within this legally disadvantageous context, this paper demonstrates how the growing gig workforce navigates the dischronicity between an industrial labor regime and platform capitalist present in novel ways: leveraging technology and platformization to their advantage on an individual level via ‘multi-apping’ across platforms at the same time and running third-party mobile applications (e.g., the Para and Solo apps) which allow workers to decode algorithmic obfuscation (i.e., uncovering ‘hidden tips’). Among more tech-savvy workers, these individual strategies of resistance introduced them to established online communities of fellow gig workers and leaders of nascent movements and worker cooperatives that promote data transparency, economic justice, and legal redress. In short, new forms of labor organizing are emerging despite—or perhaps due to—the mediating and atomizing features of platform capitalism.

Author

• Michael Slone, Case Western Reserve University