Abstract
Robert Williams died almost forty years ago in a Ford Motor plant. After climbing into a casting storage area, Williams was struck from behind by a one-ton casting transfer vehicle. Dying on the job is unfortunately nothing new to workers. But Williams’ death was the first of its kind—a five-story-tall robot was the responsible party. Like the plot of a science-fiction story, a robot killed a human. In a civil suit, a jury sided against Litton Industries, the manufacturer of the robot, and awarded Williams’ estate $10 million. Eventually, Litton settled for an undisclosed amount and admitted no wrongdoing. American workers already had enough to worry about after decades of sliding union membership, economic recession, and lifetimes of racism and sexism. Now, workers had to worry about killer robots.
Fortunately, we are not living out the plot of a science-fiction tale. There is nevertheless a degree of morbidity that surrounds the new technology. And that doom and gloom often takes the form of warnings that robots are killing jobs rather than workers. A 2017 Gallup poll showed that around three-quarters of American workers believe that artificial intelligence (AI, defined in the poll as “computers, robots or other technology that can accomplish tasks humans can do, as well as learn and complete tasks that humans may not be able to do”) will lead to a net job loss. 1 Workers in blue-collar jobs are more pessimistic than those in white-collar jobs. Today, as in the past, technology in the workplace is often fraught with fear of technological unemployment—the loss of jobs due to technological change.
A PBS segment titled “Are we on the brink of a jobless future?” aired in 2017. The piece featured a driverless car owner who trusts AI doctors over human doctors “any day”; economists who prognosticate that half of current U.S. employment is subject to automation; a Stanford University student who seeks to replace the legal industry with an app; and a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who discusses the abundance of new jobs in today’s economy, including “masseuses, yoga teachers, [and] advisors of every kind.” The message is clear: Technology is fantastic and, although some workers will lose, new precarious jobs will crop up. As with most of these pieces, some key questions remain unanswered: What is the nature of job loss due to automation? Is “technology” at fault? How is technology changing the workplace for current workers, and what can workers do about these changes?
Much of the fear around technology in the workplace is misplaced. Technology itself is not the problem—it’s the structure of our economy. In a capitalist economy, technology is just another tool for the owners of capital. Just like workers who organize against the boss for better wages and dignity, workers can and should consider and engage with the difficulties that technology can bring into the workplace.
Technology is often presented as an omnipotent force of nature. It’s as if the forward march of technology is like the rising sun—it just happens. If one criticizes the use of technology, the risk is being slandered as a “Luddite,” something seemingly akin to advocating geocentrism. The advancement and use of technology is, of course, a process that flows through society’s halls of power and is imposed on the lives of working people. Workplace technology could be beneficial to working people, but usually it is not. When workers have more power, technology is sometimes portrayed as and employed in ways more beneficial to workers. In mid-twentieth-century America, workers collectively had more power as compared to today. This is evident in a 1956 Time magazine article on automation that gleefully proclaimed, “Once automation hits its full stride, the 30-hour week and the three-day weekend will not be far behind.” 2 When was the last time a mainstream news organization nonchalantly forecast a three-day weekend? Today, automation, combined with gross income inequality, means that more of us will hold precarious jobs that cater to wealthy clientele (at least according to the tech entrepreneur quoted above).
According to most media accounts, the chief concern about technology is that it will displace workers. Yet, as the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) makes clear in a lengthy retort 3 to a recent robot-fearing report from economists Daron Acemoglu of MIT and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University, this is not necessarily the case. The EPI makes several key points: (1) Acemoglu and Restrepo give no reason to doubt the data-driven conclusion that, although automation eliminates jobs in certain occupations or industries, it has not historically pushed aggregate employment down; (2) technological change is not the leading cause for sinking wages and increasing inequality in the U.S. economy; and (3) automation is not the most worrisome aspect of the economy for U.S. workers. The massive imbalance of power between workers and employers in the workplace is far more ominous.
More worthy of our attention is the manner in which technology is changing the twenty-first-century workplace. One hundred years ago Frederick Winslow Taylor advocated “scientific management,” a euphemism for “more efficient exploitation.” Today’s scientific management might be called Digital Taylorism. It depends to a large extent on what you can’t see—lines of code that form software platforms, algorithms, and artificial intelligence that are used to dominate workers like never before. Take workplace scheduling. A 2014 New York Times article reported how scheduling software wreaks havoc over workers’ lives. 4 Such software is good for helping retailers and restaurants control labor costs but bad for workers who need consistent and regular hours. For example, “clopening,” or closing late and then opening early the next day, makes logical sense for a computer program but is exhausting for workers and often untenable for those who have families. Many workers are also essentially on call as the scheduling software selects employees for work when it’s convenient for a retailer. And in many contemporary workplaces worker surveillance is the norm, including rating and ranking of workers with algorithms, nurses who wear electronic badges that track hand washing, and UPS trucks that send dozens of driver data points—from safety belt buckling to vehicle idle time. Walmart even filed a 2018 patent that would allow sensors to collect and analyze cashier audio data for, among other things, bagging time and the content of customer interaction. One former Amazon warehouse manager recently remarked that “[i]f [associates] did nothing for a set period of time, the system would note they were off task. . . . If they were off task for more than an hour, it was an immediate firing. It was really difficult for me because the firings were automatic in the system in general, and I had no control over helping out associates. I had to fire people multiple times, and they were devastated because they counted on the health insurance.” 5 For many workers, this is the promise of twenty-first century technology in the workplace—management by software package.
However, workers are fighting back. Just recently a multistate hotel worker strike ended with contract language dealing with the use of technology in hotels and how it affects worker livelihoods. The final contract will include language around technology use, such as an almost six-month “advance notification of new technology and mandatory training for workers whose jobs will be affected by it.” 6 Use of technology was a central bargaining demand and the union was careful to present the technology problem—which included use of “robots delivering room service, check-in kiosks with facial recognition technology, and ‘smart’ speakers that serve as an in-room concierge” 7 —as not something to simply oppose but rather that workers should be involved in how automation is implemented. Anand Singh, president of UNITE HERE’s Local 2 in San Francisco, remarked, “We want to be equal partners so we have a voice in how that technology can be supportive of workers rather than disruptive.” 8 As for public policy, in 2017, a coalition of unions and advocacy groups in New York City won “Fair Workweek” legislation that deals with “clopening,” among other issues common to scheduling software. The series of proposals attempts to help low-wage workers attain stable scheduling in order to better deal with concerns outside of the job—namely child-care scheduling, juggling other jobs, or attempts to further their education.
Where to go from here? Short of workers owning the digital means of production, here are some ideas for what organized labor can do. Unions must consider how technology affects its membership and how, both in contract and in policy, unions can fight the misuse of technology against workers. Too often the discussion is about job attrition, which is important, but we must also consider how technology affects workers in current jobs. How are new technologies squeezing workers for productivity and deskilling their work? Also, too often the threat of technology is focused on hardware—especially robots. But today’s digital economy depends on software that automates decisions that many white-collar workers performed in the past. What does it mean to live in a world where a computer is making management decisions? Workers shouldn’t be afraid to voice concerns about technology. However, they must frame critiques of technology as critiques of the boss’ power and not the technology itself. As the late historian Eric Hobsbawm argued, the original Luddites should be understood as early labor organizers who were not explicitly against machines but rather how the emerging technology was being used against weavers in a changing socio-economic order. 9
Furthermore, the labor movement should consider how to link tech workers with the rest of the labor movement. Tech workers have enormous structural power—after all, someone has to write and test those trillions of lines of software code (a process that hasn’t been fully automated yet). And sure, many tech workers earn high salaries, but they also live in housing markets with bloated rents. Those salaries won’t be glorious for long—as more tech workers enter the labor market, wages will sink. Also, despite the glorification of tech workplaces (Free massages! Video games! Snacks for your friends!), many tech workers are interested in a better work-life balance and safer working conditions. In early November this year Google employees in cities across the globe walked off the job to protest working conditions. One of the main organizers stated that the action was prompted by treatment of women, people of color, and just about any Google employee who has experienced “feeling diminished or disrespected.” 10
Debate around the use of technology in the twenty-first century workplace is often laced with morbidity and pessimism. Thankfully most workers will not meet the spectacular fate of Robert Williams, the first worker killed by a robot. This actually makes the task much harder. Technology—even if explicitly designed as a labor-saving device—can only be used against workers if there is an imbalance of power between workers and the boss. This is the world we live in. But with organization, workers can confront exploitation that is made easier with today’s technology.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.