Get the latest tech news
Your boss is watching | MIT Technology Review
Monitoring technology is increasing the power imbalance between companies and workers. Protections lag far behind.
In 2024, a report from a Senate committee led by Bernie Sanders, based on an 18-month investigation of Amazon’s warehouse practices, found that the company had been setting the pace of work in those facilities with black-box algorithms, presumably calibrated with data collected by monitoring employees. ACRE and other advocacy groups call what’s happening among app-based companies a “ deactivation crisis ” because so many workers live in fear that the ruling algorithm will boot them off the platform at any moment in response to triggers like low driver ratings or minor traffic infractions—often with no explicit explanation and no way to appeal to a human for recourse. Brandi Wolf, the statewide policy and research director for SEIU’s long-term-care workers, says that in collaboration with disability rights and patient advocacy groups, the union was able to get language into legislation passed in the 2017–2018 term that would take effect the next fiscal year.
Or read this on r/technology
