For the generation of Digital Natives work is becoming less and less worthwhile. Not for some because they inherit a lot anyway, not for others because they don’t inherit anything anyway. A long, hard working life is less and less able to make up for this difference. The conflict between work and capital is becoming clearer again and technical progress is playing a decisive role. Digitization is not only changing the economy and society, but also our work.
The digital monitoring of work
Work, the livelihood of the vast majority of people, should be digitally controlled and remeasured. Pioneers and giants of digitization like Amazon have learned about methods of price control, enforce corporate governance. Following this example, they now also want to monitor the workforce more closely and thus expand their power over the employees:
- a work glove that records our hand movements and vibrates when we deviate from the given pattern,
- a hand scanner that guides us to the next package and records whether we are talking at the same time or even taking a break,
- a call center software that listens to us and evaluates whether we are getting emotional,
- a software that packs our productivity in the (home) office into one key figure.
All this pursues the goal of collecting data in order to allow algorithmic control of work processes. The digital supervisor receives information on an ongoing basis. In an uninterrupted feedback loop, she learns to process them. So she can make more and more precise specifications, clock ever tighter.
This is intended to ensure that highly qualified specialists can be replaced by unskilled and cheaper employees. They receive detailed instructions from their digital supervisor. The devaluation of work is explained Managementstrategie. In this way, the digital corporations are creating a new, digital servanthood.
How the digital servanthood emerges
Two groups of workers emerge: Some work to the point of exhaustion, among other things on the development and implementation of digital systems, until there is no more strength left for household and care work. The others, the digital servants, do the raising, cleaning, cooking and delivering for them. You get those jobs algorithmI mediated and only paid starvation wages.
Algorithmically mediated work can offer the advantage of simplified entry into the labor market. Language skills and personal networks hardly play a role. This also favors that the Sorgearbeit of the middle class is being performed by the new migrant underclass.
Even before the COVID pandemic, underpaid professional groups were systemically important and often misjudged top performers. Despite its high relevance for society and the capitalist economic system, their work has never been sufficiently recognized.
How can digital servanthood achieve the social and financial recognition it deserves? The fight – like that for human-centered technologies – leads through a political debate and ultimately also through resistance. Fair pay and a just digital world of work will not exist without rebellion and protest.
Old and new labor dispute
The digital servants usually work sporadically. However, you cannot successfully wage a labor dispute alone. This is only possible together – and encounters take place both virtually and physically in the 21st century. In addition to virtual resistance, classic organizational work is required, especially in the professional groups of digital servants.
The increasing pressure from more and more surveillance and control is increasingly spreading from cashiers, professional drivers or messenger service providers to so-called knowledge workers. Evasive maneuvers and sabotage, such as patient visits by the doctor while the patients are sleeping, are a possible counter-strategy to still meet the impossible requirements.
union is necessary
Ultimately, however, there is no way around union organization. Historically, too, the (union) organization of the masses succeeded in waves. It is possible that we are facing a next wave today.
In the USA it can be observed that this wave is also supported by well-educated workers who join the organizing movements. Academically trained people hire as warehouse workers with the aim of organizing the operation together with their colleagues (“salting“). A first success of this movement is the establishment of a works council for the Amazon fulfillment center on Staten Island in New York. The election of Chris Smalls as works council chair includes Brima Sylla, a linguistically fluent Liberian immigrant with a PhD, and Pasquali Cioffi, a dockworker. Together they managed to collect hundreds of declarations of support, despite a 4 million euro counter-campaign by the Amazon group. Her recipe for success was barbecuing for months at the logistics center’s bus stop and distributing food and drink.
Chamber of Labor helps the digital servants
Even in the age of digital supervision and algorithmically mediated work, the recipe “workers organize workers” is unbeatable. For this reason, the existing institutions of the labor movement must open up to cooperation with grassroots movements. This is particularly true in connection with digitization. After all, it is not uncommon for companies to use technical interfaces to try to re-enforce precarious employment relationships, re-fight the class struggle and circumvent existing protective regulations.
He makes a contribution to this Digifonds work 4.0 of the AK Vienna. This promotes projects in which workers from the digital servants organize themselves for their interests (see examples below). This shows that the conflict between capital and work can also be conducted and shaped by the workers using digital technology.
The multiple crises of the present increase the explosiveness of the distribution conflicts. An answer to this must come from the interplay of forces and mutual empowerment to resist in order to be able to counter the control and superiority of digital corporations and technologies (e.g. for surveillance).
- In Austria, too, works councils have been set up in companies that can be counted among the digital servants: specifically with the bicycle bots from Lieferando and Mjam. Supports through the Digifonds of AK Vienna offers that Riders Collective practical support for drivers in the Stadtbahn arches of the Vienna Belt. They’ll find things like repair tools for their bikes and a “break room” with refreshments. The works council and trade union can also be found there.
- 24-hour supervisors campaign for more information, advice, protection and better working conditions in 24-hour care and nursing work.
- The vida union organizes a digital community of professional drivers. In this way, employees who work sporadically and are difficult to reach can be reached and organized.
- Die Caritas develops solutions for more say, work autonomy and collaboration among her mobile care teams together with her works council.
- Employee cooperatives: They can be a model for former (new) self-employed in the IT and creative industries to improve social security.