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

Thu, October 7, 1:20 to 2:50pm EDT (1:20 to 2:50pm EDT), 4S 2021 Virtual, 15

Abstract

The unprecedented economic crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, the global lockdown, the social distance restrictions, and the sanitary risk have created a breeding ground for an accelerated and unregulated expansion of digital platforms. Big data and artificial intelligence technologies have deepened that path of transformation by automating different spheres of economic, social and political reproduction around the world. Businesses, workers and consumers heavily rely on the use of platforms, services and online work making visible new socio-technical arrangements of the so-called “gig economy.” These new forms of production organization and work management bring opportunities for growth and profit, but also new forms of value extraction and exploitation. Under these conditions, new forms of resistance and organization have emerged in order to bargain the algorithmic labor management methods that companies are implementing. This panel aims to explore the effects of the widespread use of online platforms, algorithm management and other related technologies, and organizational methods in improving or worsening working conditions; and we are also looking for best-practice experiences oriented to the amelioration of working conditions based on fair work principles. The contributions to this panel are open, but are not limited to comparative analysis or case studies of how algorithmic labor management methods impact working conditions; we also seek contributions of how organizations engage on the social bargaining of algorithms, and other social actions aimed at negotiating, reducing, regulating, changing or counteracting those effects of algorithmic management on working conditions.

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