Curated from Deeplinks — Here’s what matters right now:
At EFF, we believe that tech rights are worker’s rights. Since the pandemic, workers of all kinds have been subjected to increasingly invasive forms of bossware. These are the “algorithmic management” tools that surveil workers on and off the job, often running on devices that (nominally) belong to workers, hijacking our phones and laptops. On the job, digital technology can become both a system of ubiquitous surveillance and a means of total control. Enter the EU’s Platform Work Directive (PWD). The PWD was finalized in 2024, and every EU member state will have to implement (“transpose”) it by 2026. The PWD contains far-reaching measures to protect workers from abuse, wage theft, and other unfair working conditions. But the PWD isn’t self-enforcing! Over the decades that EFF has fought for user rights, we’ve proved that having a legal right on paper isn’t the same as having that right in the real world. And workers are rarely positioned to take on their bosses in court or at a regulatory body. To do that, they need advocates. That’s where unions come in. Unions are well-positioned to defend their members – and all workers (EFF employees are proudly organized under the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers). The European Trade Union Confederation has just published “Negotiating the Algorithm,” a visionary – but detailed and down-to-earth – manual for unions seeking to leverage the PWD to protect and advance workers’ interests in Europe. The report notes the alarming growth of algorithmic management, with 79% of European firms employing some form of bossware. Report author Ben Wray enumerates many of the harms of algorithmic management, such as “algorithmic wage discrimination,” where each worker is offered a different payscale based on surveillance data that is used to infer how economically desperate they are. Algorithmic management tools can also be used for wage theft, for example, by systematically undercounting the distances traveled by delivery drivers or riders. These tools can also subject workers to danger by penalizing workers who deviate from prescribed tasks (for example, when riders are downranked for taking an alternate route to avoid a traffic accident). Gig workers live under the constant threat of being “deactivated” (kicked off the app) and feel pressure to do unpaid work for clients who can threaten their livelihoods with one-star reviews. Workers also face automated de-activation: a whole host of “anti-fraud” tripwires can see workers de-activated without appeal. These risks do not befall all workers equally: Black and brown workers face a disproportionate risk of de-activation when they fail facial recognition checks meant to prevent workers from sharing an account (facial recognition systems make more errors when dealing with darker skin tones). Algorithmic management is typically accompanied by a raft of cost-cutting measures, and workers under algorithmic management often find that their employer
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Original reporting: Deeplinks