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When Your Boss Is An Algorithm (ft.com)
Slashdot reader Presto Vivace shares an article on FT.com about "workers without a workplace, striking against a company that does not employ them...managed not by people but by an algorithm that communicates with them via their smartphones."
And what they are rebelling against is an app update... They might be free to choose when to work but not how to work or, crucially, how much they are paid... Some gig-economy workers and unions are bringing this question to court. They argue that these companies' algorithms exert so much control over workers that they are really employees in the eyes of the law and thus owed hourly minimum wages, sick pay, holiday pay and the like.
The article offers a detailed look at historical precedents for today's strict "service level assessments," noting that for the companies, "algorithmic management solves a problem: how to instruct, track and evaluate a crowd of casual workers you do not employ, so they deliver a responsive, seamless, standardized service." But for workers in the gig economy -- 800,000 in the U.S. alone -- the question becomes whether reporting to an algorithm in an app is liberating -- or exploitative?
The article offers a detailed look at historical precedents for today's strict "service level assessments," noting that for the companies, "algorithmic management solves a problem: how to instruct, track and evaluate a crowd of casual workers you do not employ, so they deliver a responsive, seamless, standardized service." But for workers in the gig economy -- 800,000 in the U.S. alone -- the question becomes whether reporting to an algorithm in an app is liberating -- or exploitative?
Absolutely. And companies like Uber are recruiting real live people to devote their actual working lives and resources to supporting the company's profit-making business, with specific promises of the terms of work and pay. Then changing them (always in the negative direction) without warning, or appeal.
This is why company's everywhere need regulation. Crazy abuse of workers for profit will happen unless standards are imposed and enforced, otherwise it is always a race to the bottom. Uber sounds like it is turning into a sweatshop on the street.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
In other words, their regular job doesn't pay a living wage, and neither does Uber or they would quit their regular job and do Uber full time. The "gig economy" is a symptom, not a solution, for the rising numbers of the precariate - people who are living with a precarious job because the benefits of the rising economy don't float all boats.