When your boss is an algorithm
- Ufrieda Ho
The digital revolution has opened unimagined opportunities, but it comes with a threat of leaving the most vulnerable workers behind.
The future of work may look like algorithms will be doing the hard graft, but in reality, it may be less a case of humans being able to sit back and do less than of human workers becoming increasingly invisible.
It’s a trade-off, but one that researchers say deserves greater pause and considered intervention. What comes next in our digital future must be a better understanding of its impact on workers and consumers. We need appropriate and implementable regulations and protection to ensure that workers are an integrated component of a productive digital economy, and that they do not slip further through the cracks, becoming more vulnerable in the process.
A recent research project by Professor Bridget Kenny of the Department of Sociology has focused on the experiences of warehouse workers who are employed by a large online shopping platform and how algorithmic management affects e-commerce logistics. Kenny’s research interest spans labour, unions, gender, race, and consumption with a specific focus on service work, precarious employment, and political subjectivity in South Africa.
Kenny describes a typical day for a warehouse worker who takes instructions from algorithms. Through this lens she highlights new workplace stresses, greater precarity for workers and more erosion of their rights.
“Workers start their shifts with instructions given to them with a handheld scanner or via a cell phone app. They are given a set of tasks to pick and pack for an order, collecting items that are identified by a barcode or QR code from different parts of a warehouse. Packers are dispersed throughout the whole warehouse and the time they take to complete each task is monitored through the app,” says Kenny.
She says this reorganisation of workflow has contributed to one of the most significant disruptions: removing the knowledge and command of a job from workers.
“New technology has broken up knowledge of the job and taken it away from the worker. In the past, a worker would perhaps have known where to find items because they knew the layout of a warehouse. They would have control over the tempo of picking and packing and were able to keep in their own mind the order of the collecting, packing, and dispersing. Now it’s a case of following an instruction that is algorithmically managed and being tracked,” says Kenny.
A task not a job
Kenny says workplace dynamics have also shifted. For instance, she says, when workers may in the past have been able to help a co-worker with a task, they are no longer able to do so because of how the app controls them.
“Everything requires a sign-in under an individual’s name. It means that people are reluctant to help out, or can’t because they would be held personally responsible,” she says.
In her case study, the majority of workers are employed by labour brokers. This, combined with how supervisors can pull people off shifts with little notice means workers don’t know how much work they will get or how money they are likely to make in a month.
Kenny says these kinds of reconfigurations have caused more workplace stress and anxiety and have also left the digital workforce more fragmented. It raises concerns, she says, about workers’ rights and their ability to organise or mobilise collectively.
The right to down tools
Researchers from the Future of Work(ers) Research Group at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) have homed in on the need for workers and unions to reorganise differently in these new digital economies. Public policy must also play a greater role. In addition, there needs to be a deeper awareness and understanding by end consumers of the real cost to the invisible workforce of consumer convenience - of same day delivery, getting a ride home via an app at 3am, or the guarantee of a pizza arriving sizzling hot “or your money back.”
The late Professor Edward Webster and Dr Ruth Castel-Branco wrote in The Conversation in November 2022 arguing for the role of unions to be bolstered – not rendered less relevant – in the advancing digital age. But the pair noted that this comes with significant challenges as trust in unions wanes, and union memberships decline globally as established trade unions remain reluctant to organise platform workers.
“Platform workers are geographically dispersed and work in an individualised manner, which makes collective claim-making difficult. The elusive nature of algorithmic management muddies the nature of demands. And the misclassification of platform workers as self-employed means that it is not always clear who they should make claims from,” the article says.
But the SCIS researchers and Kenny argue that workers do have power precisely through protest via the platforms themselves. It could be digital go-slows or a digital downing of tools by logging off the app as a collective. Examples of this have included e-hailing drivers logging off the app for a day to raise awareness about their working conditions.
Changing the AI story
Professor Gregory Lee of the Wits Business School lectures and writes on digital business, human resources, and business analytics. For Lee there is a need to reframe the narrative of artificial intelligence (AI) coming for jobs. Lee says it would be more helpful to push for targeted and enabling regulatory frameworks and to ensure that South Africa can assist more people in making the transition into a digital future.
“There are positive findings from new research that say that automation may actually add more employment than it destroys. Of course, there is a caveat that job creation in automation is unequal across a digital and skills divide,” says Lee.
He adds though that to begin with there may be more sideways employment, particularly among workers who have more manual skills, and especially in the construction and infrastructure sector. Even the building of smart cities still needs the muscle of those who dig trenches, lay pipes and support maintenance and repair programmes.
Lee says the thinking should be around finding new opportunities rather than just counting how many jobs are being lost to obsolescence. His example includes regional e-commerce businesses such as the supply of dry goods from South Africa to its neighbours. Rather than seeking to compete against Chinese e-commerce giants, the model could focus instead on different product offerings that it can bring to an untapped market.
He also says that there is a way to master AI in the workplace - including knowing when to turn it off. One of his projects is looking at getting workplaces periodically to “switch off” AI. It’s a trial to allow workers to intuit and create with more freedom, but also to know that AI remains an available tool.
“The digital future is not all bad. What I'm seeing is fundamental reorganisation in the way people do work. We have many things to get right still, but some of what is already happening is profoundly good,” Lee says.
- Ufrieda Ho is a freelance writer.
- This article first appeared in?Curiosity,?a research magazine produced by?Wits Communications?and the?Research Office.
- Read more in the 18th issue, themed #Work, which delves into the evolving nature of work, shaped by societal shifts, technological advances, and equity challenges.